Last night was rough. The van not starting was a bit of a wrinkle, to say the least. As we ate dinner around 9:30pm, I remarked that at least it was the van, and not our bodies, that had suffered some incredible misfortune. We were lucky to be completely safe and sound, just a little stranded. But even with our stranded situation, we were along a heavily trafficked (as heavily trafficked as it gets out in the boonies) road and were able to flag people down.
Pictured below is the only picture we took of Dave or Tony, the kind gentlemen who seemed to know a lot more about cars than Jason and I put together. That arm is reaching towards the hose clamp to our air intake to extract the air filter. “Are you a car mechanic?” I asked him last night. “No, I’m just handy”. Yeah right - I identify as handy but you don’t see me reaching into cars like a veterinarian reaching into a cow. Those are the kinds of things you do if you are qualified and have an ounce of an idea (hopefully more) of what you’re doing. We were impressed.
Jason and I woke up, ate breakfast, reconnected the car battery once again (I had disconnected it overnight, just in case), fired up the jetboil for coffee, and sat facing each other. “What’s our plan if the van starts?” Jason and I practically asked in unison. It was obvious what we would do if the van failed to start - call up a tow truck using Jason’s precious single bar of service. We had left chairs elsewhere to mark our camping spot the previous day, and we didn’t really want to desert them. We agreed to a plan of driving to our former campsite, swooping the chairs, and then driving straight to Moab. The idea of staying other night in Indian Creek was on both of our minds, but it seemed like a better choice to seek civilization in case the van decided to throw another fit.
Nervously turning the key to crank the engine, we both exhaled relief when it fired up normally. We drove to the campsite, turned off the engine (we deemed idling to be dangerous since last time we idled for several minutes the engine died), and walked the 200 yards or so to our campsite that we shared with a big group of French climbers (and one woman from the UK). Calling out a “bonjour”, we chatted with them and they acknowledged that they thought it was weird we hadn’t returned to our site last night. We learned that they heralded from all over France (Grenoble to Verdonne), and were out in the States for several more weeks. Zion and Yosemite were next on their itinerary. Finally, we bid them adieu and wished that we could have enjoyed more campfire time with them.
The road leading out of Indian Creek to Moab, complete with cowboys and cowgirls if you look to the right of the truck
Windows down, tunes playing and wind blowing through the van, our nervous systems hesitantly let down their guard as we drove closer and closer to Moab. “Want to check out Newspaper Rock?” I asked Jason as I knew he was interested in the petroglyph site on the way out of Indian Creek. “Nope - one of these years I’ll make the stop, I think we shouldn’t stop until we get to Moab.” He was making a good choice.
Jason called several car mechanics while I was driving and found us some day-of options, one of which we booked for that afternoon. After weeks of mainly eating tuna, mac-n-cheese, hummus, tortillas, and bagged salad greens, we decided to go out for lunch. Trailhead was the name of our chosen restaurant, and man did it deliver. Very tasty food. An eccentric server who revealed himself to be a master diver who had discovered a unique shark species. Very good time.
At 3pm we stopped by the car mechanic. Long story short, they found nothing. While we waited, I really enjoyed reading a local newspaper (why is the local newspaper so much more interesting than a national paper? The articles feel like they are written by opinionated people I’d love to get a beer with, rather than polished journalists) and Jason found this large bug that was digging just like a dog at a beach. I smiled and this is one of the things I love about Jason, he’s easily in tune with nature and doesn’t immediately seek out his phone when waiting is required. He looks around and finds hilarious bugs excavating the earth. Finally the car was inspected, and after seeking shade to discuss our next action, we decided to drive to Grand Junction to camp at Colorado National Monument for the night. We hit the road, and the van started.
Camper vehicle we spotted in Moab that looks capable of going into battle