Naked Southwest

Center Café is a rather swishy restaurant for this sporty, more-than-happy-to-rough-it town. Chief among MHD’s instructions to our GearHeads attendant had been that he recommend a healthy restaurant. Someplace that would have ample vegetarian offerings for my selfless companion who’d made such a sacrifice the previous night so that I could bury myself in bar-b-q ribs. We would soon discover that Center Café is not only a healthy restaurant with impressive vegetarian dishes, it is also the best restaurant in town. Or certainly one of the best. To be fair, we didn’t have dinner at any other restaurants in town, but our charming server informed us in no uncertain terms that we wouldn’t find a better meal, better atmosphere or a funnier waitress anywhere else in Moab. We were inclined to believe her.

We ate and drank like king and queen and lingered long after our meal was finished for delightful conversation with the servers since we were the last ones there. The truth be told, I kept up the chatter while MHD (still a bit new to camping and not 100% comfortable with the notion of going to bed without performing all of her pre-bed rituals) used the Center Café restroom to clean and brush up for bed. The wait staff was amused and charming. A high recommendation under the circumstances, to be sure.

Inevitably our arrival at Arches National Park was met with a vigorous nod from the ranger at the entrance booth. “Nope. Full up for the night.” So we headed back to, through and past Moab. We wound our way up Sand Flats Road to the Slickrock campsite where fortune smiled upon us. We set up our tent in the triangle of light our headlights were burning into the dark night and fell asleep quickly.

Morning welcomed us to the lifestyles of rock crawlers, a breed of human fascinated with driving over rock without dieing or destroying the means of locomotion. There seem to be two very different strains of the breed, those who have tuned their muscles and metabolisms to complement and mesh seamlessly with mechanically sophisticated mountain bikes, and those who have tuned and adapted their mechanically sophisticated 4x4’s to the neglect of their muscles and metabolisms. It was this latter strain that woke us early with engines revving and stereos blasting. We packed up and headed into Moab.

After breakfasting on killer burritos and made-on-the-spot fruit smoothies, we hit the visitor center for a water orientation. Oriented, we left town on Highway 191, but before crossing the Colorado River on our way out to Arches National Park, we turned right on Scenic Byway 128 and immediately pulled off the road to refill our drinking water stores at a natural spring. The water was cold, clean and refreshing.

  8 :: 9 :: 10 :: 11 :: 12 :: 13 :: 14 :: 15 :: 16     

About Us :: Team Margaux :: FAQs :: Sitemap :: Privacy Policy :: Terms of use :: Contact Webmaster :: Credits