a stroll around moab

In Moab, Utah, we stayed three nights in an Airbnb room in an adobe house owned by Linda and Kim.  One morning, after breakfast outdoors on the patio, Linda took us for a stroll around her beautiful property, including her amazing gardens.

We wandered amidst unexpected greenery in an otherwise arid landscape.  A horse sculpture’s yellow mane glowed in the sunlight.  The chain fruit cholla, also known as the jumping cholla for its cacti spines that easily detach and cling tenaciously to unsuspecting wanderers, stood poised, waiting for us to wander too close.

The adobe house itself was defined by its southwestern decor, its cowboy and Native American theme: Navajo rugs with desert landscape themes, a cowboy hat and boot made of rusty twisted fence wire, a dream catcher, dancing bronze Indians, colorful medicine men, lampshades with Indian motifs, a giant verdigris lizard doorstop, a bronze night light with a lizard cutout.

Wandering through the garden, we found Mormon tea, used as a beverage, a “spring” tonic, and medicine, often taken for sexually transmitted diseases, as well as colds or kidney disorders. Ghost honeysuckle basked under a ramada (similar to a pergola) – pale green flat clover-like leaves with pale yellow-green flowers.  The garden was tossed about with sagebrush, tumbleweed, chocolate (which smells like chocolate but looks like a yellow coneflower), prickly pear cactus, yucca, desert globemallow, Maximilian sunflowers, and Apache plume with bees buzzing around it.  We found small trees: peach, apple, and cherry trees, cottonwoods, with their bright glowing green leaves on white barked trunks, birch and aspen trees, and willows which Kim insisted make a huge mess.  Linda marveled that goldfinches and orioles visited frequently.

Kim’s electric train choo-chooed around on a platform he built on raised railroad ties.  We met Bernard the rabbit.  Later a smaller bunny hopped past; Kim called it Bernadette or Bernard Junior.

After spending the day at Canyonlands National Park, we returned to Moab, where, after enjoying quesdillas at Quesadilla Mobilla, we strolled around the small town.  At Lema’s Kokopelli Gallery, we bought a cool rusty owl for our screened porch, and some Navajo earrings for me.  At the amazing Hogan Trading Company, we bought a small water lily-shaped water fountain for our porch.

At Yeti’s Frozen Blast, we bought cones, mine a brown sugar cinnamon ice cream, Mike’s a blueberry basil gelato. We wandered the town, licking our cones, while three busloads of middle school students from Salt Lake City swarmed around us.  As in CocoRosie’s song, “Lemonade,” we “ate ice cream in a desert dream.”

The next day, we would head south.

*Thursday, May 10, 2018*

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On Sundays, I post about hikes or walks that I have taken in my travels; I may also post on other unrelated subjects. I will use these posts to participate in Jo’s Monday Walks or any other challenges that catch my fancy.

This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: Punta del Moral.