Lyndon Bains Johnson
May 25, 2026 — Day 62
Sun Outdoors Canyonlands, Moab UT — Rifle Gap State Park, Rifle CO
Today we leave Moab. Really, we do! You might not be counting days, and we haven’t been, but it seems like we’ve been here forever. We spent a week sick, then a week having fun, and the days blur together. We can’t even remember how many times we’ve re-upped the reservation here. But today we leave Moab for real!
On the way out, Susan yelled “Content,” which is our signal for the passenger to grab their phone and start taking pictures. There were people who have jumped out of perfectly good airplanes trying to land! Ok, maybe they stepped off of perfectly good mountains, but really, don’t they have better things to do with their lives? Seriously, more power to them. Neither of us would jump off a cliff or out of an airplane!
OMG, we’re in Colorado! When we started this trip we had no idea where the path home was or when we’d arrive home. That tornado scare, somewhere in the Midwest, really spooked us, we’re going north. And Colorado is north but not north enough yet.
Dunno about states and such, but isn’t Grand Junction in Colorado?
The roads get weird here, or maybe they get weird later on, but the elevation change between the two sides is getting weird. This reminds us of the roads between Flagstaff and Phoenix, where North and South change, there is a bridge. So wild.
Tunnels are weird, tunnels are scary, tunnels are the absolutely best thing is the world since you don’t have to climb and then descend that mountain. Both climbing and descending are scary. Also? Lots of curves. Curves are not fun at all!
We’re into Rifle Colorado row. We always love extra effort these towns in the southwest do. So much art that is unexpected.
They did it again!
That’s where we’re going. That’s a dam. We’re going over it. Paul is shooting out the passenger window and very glad Susan is driving. We’re going over that dam.
The very narrow dam.
So we pull in, set up, and there are birds. A little LBJ, little brown job. LBJs are the bane of birders. They are everywhere, and are they special? This one was. This was a Vesper Sparrow which was a life bird for use.
And at the end of the day we got out the Nintendo Switch and played Mario Kart. Because we could.
We’re laughing here, you can’t even see the red line from Moab to Rifle. It was big to us, but the map makes it disappear.
Daily: 169 miles.
Total: 3,688 miles
Return Driving miles/Day: 127 miles/day (8 days driving)
Return Overall miles: 1,016 miles
Total Driving miles/Day: 246 miles/day (15 days driving)
Total Overall miles/Day: 59 miles
Life Birds: 1 (Vesper Sparrow)