quickie

While H was travelling for work all last week, Milton and I were at home as an inversion settled in, trapping cold air and smog in the Salt Lake valley.  Up in the mountains it was sunshine and blue skies but down in the valley it looked like the coast of Maine when the fog rolls in.  When H got back Friday night, we decided to escape the inversion and head to the desert instead, just for a quick trip. 
We've always wanted to see what Moab and the Utah desert are like in the wintertime/off-season.  We just have to make the trips weather-dependent: there is a sixty mile stretch between Spanish Fork and Price, where the road winds up, over and down the mountain pass through Spanish Fork and Price Canyons, and that is not a stretch of road to be attempted in any sort of winter weather.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

We were in luck for this trip.  The same high pressure system that brought the inversion to the valleys also brought fair weather so the roads were clear and dry.  It was cold though.  That photo above was the cold point of the drive, bottoming out at -4 F just past the high point of Soldier Summit.  The car's defrost system was sorely tested on that stretch, between the extra cold temperatures and Milton's car-nervousness drooling put extra moisture in the air.  It didn't last long - and the windows cleared right up as soon as we got lower and back into the sun.  It stayed relatively chilly for the rest of the weekend, however, in the 20s overnight and only up to the low 40s by mid-afternoon in the sun. 

Mill Creek

We didn't actually do that much this trip because poor H ended up having to work quite a lot.  But M and I were able to take a bunch of walks (he especially likes to startle songbirds out of bushes).  Quite frankly, it was lovely to be in town during the true off-season.  When we came down over Christmas, it still seemed a little busy with local folk fussing around for the holiday.  This time, Moab was REALLY quiet.  Woody's was closed for renovations and the Moab Brewery was closed for cleaning (on a Saturday!), so we ended up having a couple of beers at Zax - and were the only customers sitting at the bar the whole time we were there.  Weird.

M in motion (he saw another dog)

Sunday morning was gorgeous and clear and as soon as it warmed up just a bit, the three of us drove out towards the Sand Flats Recreation Area.  We pulled off onto a parking area before the park, however, and took a hiking-only trail that H had noticed on his bike ride over Christmas weekend.  We were only out an hour, walking a pleasant trail under a huge wall out to a dramatic viewpoint overlooking Mill Creek, where we spotted more trails for explorations on subsequent trips.  We had the place to ourselves.  It was cool. 

Walk along a wall

Even cooler: as we were driving out, we noticed a woman walking a Great Dane and a miniature poodle.  Both H and I exclaimed, "Is that Amy? That's Amy!" and we pulled over and hopped out so M could have a reunion with his former foster mom.  We chatted with her for several minutes and she gave us each big hugs for taking such good care of her boy.

The boys

And that was it.  We were back in the car, heading north, at 2:30 p.m.  Amazingly, since the roads were dry and the traffic was light (and none of the three of us needed to stop for a rest break), we made it home in 3.5 hours.  As we pulled into the garage, H just shook his head, saying that twice now it has taken him longer than that to get home from a ski day at Alta, less than twenty miles from our house.  I did say it was a quickie this time.

This is blurry because my phone fogged up: I had to

keep it in my shirt so it wouldn't shut itself down in the cold