21st April 2015 – Moab to Rangely

We rise at 5:20 am this morning to go back to The Arches National Park to watch the sunrise over this stunning park. As we walk up to the Windows in the dawn light we catch a glimpse of a coyote walking beside the path, but it disappears quickly back into the scrub. We sit on the rocks beneath the enormous arch of the large window and watch the sun come up and light up the smaller window opposite. The rock formations around us are gradually lit up with the suns rays as they spread out over the park. It’s a lovely way to start the day.We leave today being led by Calvin in his lovely Triumph as we follow the Colorado River through a beautiful gorge with sheer high sides that reflect red with the morning sun, just stunning. We are on our way to Fruita in Colorado to meet with other members of the Whitworh Nuts Motoring Club. On the way we come across a herd of deer that cross the road in front of us. When we arrive in the car park there is a magnificent display of cars, MGA, TR3, Alfa Spyder, MGTD, MGTF, Austin Healey, Jaguar XK & MG Midget, what a wonderful welcoming it is. All of these members are so pleased to see us it’s quite humbling. We all stand around chatting and making new friends over a coffee, before 4 of them lead us up to their National Monument. We stop half way up to look out over the town and beyond down the valley, before continuing up to the visitor centre which has a very interesting display about the area.ÿ We continue to another lookout over Independence Monument where each car in our group is presented with a Whitworth Nuts Motoring Club grille badge. We are very grateful to this group of classic car enthusiasts for meeting us and showing us around their town. Like all the classic car people that we have met on our adventure in South America and Central America they are very enthusiastic about our visit to their town, which we greatly appreciate.LaVerne put together a video of our visit today -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYXZf4szVmMWe continue our journey to Rangely but on the way Blue B’s alternator ceases going up a mountain road and it’s replaced by a spare one that red car is carrying. The team springs into action, the ceased one is taken off and the spare fitted in record time and we are on our way again. The alternator now fitted to Blue B has a different bracket to the original and the pulleys don’t line up, so this will need to be fixed sometime soon.Calvin put together a video of the repair done on the side of the mountain -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_WH_NczXQWhen we reach the peak we are at over 8,000 feet above sea level and there is snow dotted around on the ground, but it’s not all that cold as the sun is shining.We drive down into Rangely and have a late lunch of a burger and a shake at a real American diner. Blue B stops off at an Auto spare parts place and orders a new alternator that will be available at 7:00 am tomorrow, so we stay the night here. Across the road from the diner is a new car museum that is being set up by a local car buff, so when he sees all our cars pull up he comes over to talk to us and invites us into his museum, which hasn’t opened to the public yet. After we check in to our hotel we visit Bud’s wonderful collection of mostly pre-war American cars (there is car from Belgium). We have a lovely time being shown around the display and we even get to sit in a couple of the cars. Thanks Bud. After the visit to the museum we say farewell to Calvin, we’ve had a great day today and really appreciate what he has done for us.ÿ Thanks to Calvin and LaVerne for making our visit possible.