Thompson, UT

This is a post about things that we did in a literal ‘middle of nowhere’.  We spent a week in Thompson, UT. Now, Thompson is not ready to admit that it is a ghost town so they tout Sego (4 miles into a nearby canyon) as ‘the ghost town’.  Anyways, Thompson is about 45 minutes outside of Moab (the closest form of civilization), very few people live or stay there, and Jim of Ballard’s RV Park in Thompson seemed like a nice gentleman, so we decided to stay there. Great decision- we were the only people in the park all week. 

IMG_6082
The Thompson Hotel- Plenty of vacancy & every night is free of charge. Also, the windows are boarded up. 
IMG_6084
A comfortable waiting area in the Thompson Motel.
IMG_6111
Sego Canyon. A ghost town of the mining variety.
IMG_2218
Pictographs near Sego painted by ancient peoples. Ancient peoples who were clearly into creepy depictions of humans.
IMG_2219
Our trusty steed, Red Rammer. Because attempting to bike to Sego the evening prior resulted in a crank falling off of Jake’s bike.

Not satiated by staying in a ghost town with an adjacent ghost town, we headed to Cisco, UT. Can you believe that there would be ANOTHER ghost town out here in the middle of nowhere? 

IMG_2229
Popping into the Post Office to pick up that FedEx package I’ve been waiting for.
IMG_2223
Who would abandon these treasures?
IMG_2226
Looks like the drilling company really cleaned up after themselves. Not.
IMG_2236
Another Cisco treasure.
IMG_6117
If the owner of this beast was in town, we would ask if he’d do a straight trade for Dyna.
IMG_2239
Church goers gotta get to their field trips destinations- even in ghost towns.

Another thing that you can do in ‘the middle of nowhere’ is find dinosaur related things. Like footprints. And bones. And laying down dinosaurs. We were pretty excited to see dinosaur stuff. The footprints were super cool because they looked like dinosaur footprints! The bones that we (tried) to see weren’t so cool. Probably because we aren’t very good at dinosaurs. The guy who told us about the bones spot said they were awesome. So if you’re good at dinosaurs maybe you’ll like them; they mostly just looked like rocks in rocks to us. 

IMG_2313
Jake stomping around in some ‘long neck’ (brontosaurus?) tracks on Copper Ridge.
IMG_2328
Dinosaur boneyard. Mostly just looked like rocks in rocks, even though we studied the signs hard to figure out where the dinos were hiding.
IMG_2327
Dino print!
IMG_2331
No wonder they went extinct; sleeping right next to the future site of a dino museum outside Moab.

When we weren’t lurking around abandoned places or giant old footprints, we were playing on and around Arches.  The park is really well named; it has a lot of arches! We walked under, climbed on, and stargazed from the arches. I really liked one name ‘partition’ arch. Mostly because it shares a name with a great Beyoncé song, but also because it was really beautiful. During the day most of the arches were being viewed by a lot of people, but when we went at night to try and see the Perseid Meteor Shower, we had them all to ourselves! Also probably the mountain lions were there, but Jake carried my yellow kitchen knife to fend off any predators, so, totally safe.  

IMG_2300
Perma-tourists.
IMG_2296
So many climbing obstacles!
IMG_2268
Jake also found a new friend- the very angry bird on top of this fin acting all ‘crazy bird’.
IMG_6141
‘Double O’ Arch.
IMG_6157
Landscape Arch.
IMG_6156
Daytime Partition Arch.
IMG_2271
Jake found a sleeping hole.
IMG_2281
Jacob doing circus tricks under Private Arch.
IMG_2286
Gentle, non-circus stunts on top of ‘Private Arch’.
IMG_2291
Never miss an opportunity for snacktime.
IMG_7109
We’re so happy about Arches!

And now we’re off to Salt Lake City!

,