Not The Painter

May 20, 2026  — Day 57 Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT We’ve spoken before about dinner and a show (when there are people parking in neighboring sites, sometimes it’s pretty hilarious). How about breakfast and a show!? The campers at the end of our row turned left to leave & took out their water spigot. Susan saw them hit something on the drivers side but at the time didn’t realize it was the water spigot. Paul saw them go up and over the curb on the passenger side. Two things in 30 feet. That’s some seriously bad driving. Worse, they just drove away! (Oh, if only everyone was perfect like…

May 19, 2026  — Day 56 Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT So today we’re doing the Shafer Trail. We hadn’t planned on doing 2 trails in a row, we need a break from the Jeep and the washboard roads beating our bodies up, but 11AM-ish line into Arches looked to be about an hour long. Arches no longer has timed entry tickets, so, like Monument Valley, you just wait in line until someone else leaves. No thanks. And we still didn’t feel well enough for anything that didn’t involve sitting in the Jeep, so off we went to the Shafer Trail! To get to the Shafer Trail we need to…

May 18, 2026  — Day 55 Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT Today’s adventure is driving the Gemini Bridges trail. This is an easy “off road” trail. It is in scare quotes because a Subaru could do this trail. But it’s legit off-road and some of it is, shall we say, interesting. Now the thing to know about off road photography is that a steep road never looks steep in pictures. So when it looks steep? It’s steep! Here we demonstrate that photographic phenomenon. We hope nobody’s coming around that bend! This is why we have a Jeep. We can explore way, way, way off the beaten track! We got a…

May 17, 2026  — Day 54 Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT Sometime during the past Plague week we decided that we’ve spent about a week in Moab and not had a bit of fun! Because of that realization we booked in another week so we could enjoy what Moab has to offer. Today, the 17th, we stepped outside of the first time in days. So what do two people who’ve been sick & stuck inside do? We went to see dinosaur tracks! You may remember from a past blog that we like dinosaur stuff. This will be picture heavy. They’re not in order, mostly, that’s ok because does it really…

May 11-16, 2026  — Day 47 to 53 Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT Susan went to Urgent Care on the 11th. It wasn’t flu or COVID “just” some stupid virus. While Paul was waiting in the lobby, a masked up COVID patient came in. Susan convinced Paul to wait outside. (susan here: he did not need to catch COVID on top of whatever it was that we picked up.) Paul was feeling a little off and he jokingly thought he should join her in the examination room. We went to the grocery store to stock up on easy to prepare foods, and the supportive things that were recommended then headed…

May 10, 2026  — Day 47 Monument Valley KOA, Monument Valley UT — Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT “You’re in no shape to drive,” he said, and she didn’t disagree. Susan was sick. We could have stayed here while she recovered, but it was dusty, hot and in the middle of nowhere. Let’s go to Moab. Moab. This is Jeep mecca, mountain biking mecca, never in any of our planning did we think we’d visit Moab. But why Moab? We wanted to get out of the heat. We can’t remember if we mentioned this earlier in the blog, but the plan was to leave Phoenix and follow the bird migrations…

May 9, 2026  — Day 46 Monument Valley KOA, Monument Valley UT Susan woke up still feeling tired [cue ominous music] so we just hung out some. It seemed that the best way to see the Monument Valley sights was to get a Navajo tour and one geared towards photography. You need two tours actually, one for sunrise and one for sunset. We watched a video from one of our favorite YouTube vloggers, Through My Lens, and he drove the scenic drive. They only allow a certain number of cars in at time. This means you could end up waiting a while just to get in. Given her fatigue, we…

May 8, 2026  — Day 45 Valley of the Gods BLM, Mexican Hat, UT — Monument Valley KOA, Monument Valley UT. We had been up late but somehow Paul woke early enough to see the sunrise. He wasn’t going to wake Susan up unless it was worth it. He sat in the front passenger seat watching the sky glow increase. When color hit the Seven Sailors he knew she wouldn’t want to miss it. So we went outside watched. Paul photographed the sunrise. Then, what’s next? We couldn’t head down to Monument Valley to check in, check in time are usually between 1 and 3pm. Driving the Valley of the…

May 7, 2026  — Day 44 Antelope Point Marina & RV Park, Page, AZ — Valley of the Gods BLM, Mexican Hat, UT We googled around and found that photography is better at sunrise than sunset for Horseshoe Bend. Plus, it would be far less crowded. So we got up at 4AM. Really we did! Tea was made and we woke up enough to make the 25-30 minute ride. We needed time to do the 1/2 mile walk to the viewing area plus a bit of time to setup before sunrise at 5:25am. We were concerned about the parking lot being closed because the posted hours are sunrise to sunset.…

May 6, 2026  — Day 43 Antelope Point Marina & RV Park, Page AZ We were plugged in all night long and yet we found that our batteries were not at 100% in the morning. We had reached 100% but were now discharging. How odd. Paul has been working on some battery monitoring software and it has helped us a lot, and it agrees with the Victron app, we’re not charging. It rises to 100% ((920Ah) and then falls. And the remote says we’re not charging. We’ll figure this out later. The washer, dryer work, and refrigerator work. Let’s keep loading and unloading dirty clothes, towels and sheets for what…