A Week in Blanding, Utah

November 5-12, 2016
Blanding, Utah

We scrapped our original plan of staying in Moab and ended up camping for a week in Blanding, UT. It was in a part of Utah that we hadn’t seen, and it allowed for day trips to Arches National Park as well as some other more southern sites like Canyonlands Needles District and Four Corners Monument.

The town of Blanding wasn’t especially enjoyable. It’s a tiny town that seems mainly to exist to support the Utah University Campus. There was one main grocery store and we were excited that it was right across the street from our campground…but it was also closed on Sundays (we are still in Mormonville) which was only a problem because I didn’t realize it ahead of time. There were no places for Brad to get free wifi to work, so we spent our work/school days a bit all on top of each other. The campground was a bit unusual as well – it was owned by the 7-11 gas station apparently, so you checked in at the gas station. Some positives were the beautiful sunsets, a library with a great children’s section, a fun playground, horses & chickens next to our campground, and groceries across the street (6 days a week). Some parts of being there felt a little like being back in time, though, such as the planned power outrage one night so that old poles on the only row coming into town could be replaced. If we hadn’t happened to leave town the day before the outage and driven by the electronic sign that read “Power Outage Blanding. No fuel 10pm-8am”, we would have thought the problem was limited to our trailer. (In these parts of the southwest the towns are so few & far between, no fuel at a certain part of the route is a big deal!)

A few days in to our stay there, another camper pulled in a couple of sites away from us, blocking our view of the farm animals. When we arrived home that evening to see this new arrangement, the girls were DEVASTATED. But a few nights later the other RV left and there was much celebration! “Yay! We can see the horses again!” After much rejoicing I just had to laugh…what is our life?! I think it was also a testiment to how bland the camping area was otherwise. (See what I did there?)

But during our week in this place, we managed to have several fun day trips, which I will elaborate on in the following few posts…