This part of the drive is a lot more canyonland like area and Court and I enjoy the view. The kids appear to be over it as Gideon is making a map of the different states he's been to on which trips and Abigail is reading Percy Jackson. Along the route there's an old geyser that people used to stop at and although the pictures I have seen of it from recent visitors shows it as having a lot of litter like some of the other visits we have had, we decided to give it a shot. We pull up near where it should be and all that we can see is a gas station that has rather obviously been closed for quite a while and a sign indicating that one of these ramshackle hovels near it is selling beef jerky but they are currently closed. It's probably for the best that they are closed. We can't see anything that looks like a geyser, no signs, no indications so we drive off.
Other than one interesting alignment change that we drove, not much happened again until we reached the Arches area. We topped off with gas again and Court and Abby went into the shop to stock up on water as the temp outside was already 95 and we knew that we would need some fluids. We head from here down to the admission booth for Arches and on the way listen to the information radio for the park in hopes that if they were having issues with the crowd, they would update the message. There was nothing interesting in the message other than if the line for the entrance backs up to the highway, you cannot stop on the highway and must turn away. I get a little nervous hearing that but it does explain what we've heard about this being one of the parks that has had some of the worst time with visitor increases. As we pull up to the turn I expect that we will need to pull by but there's actually a lot of room. Like there are two booths open and only three cars in each. We cruise through pretty quickly and the ranger checking our pass actually mentions that his brother works at EMC in Hopkinton, what a small world! We decide to visit the visitors center immediately since we did get here so late in the day and we didn't want it to be closed on the way out if we take a long time.
After the obligatory stuff from the gift shop (except for a coaster as we couldn't find one here for some reason), we pile back into the car and get ready to head out. We are greeted by some amazing rock formations almost immediately and are sure that this is going to be a park that we spend a lot of time in. There are arches, balancing rocks, canyons, these impossibly narrow fissures in some of the rock, mesas, it's everything that you can picture the southwest desert to look like. That includes being very hot. At one point Gideon and I got out to do a short hike on our own because the girls were less interested in it. When we got back to the van, after witnessing a lot of people failing to follow the simple requests posted at the start of the trail, I am told that the van was taking longer to start after the girls decided to turn it on to get the AC running. We continue with the park but do everything we can to make sure that we don't turn off the van just in case this is a bigger issue.
Almost 4 hours later, with only that small hike that Gideon and I did, we are leaving the park and heading to the hotel. The plan is to check in, find a place to get dinner and let the van cool some to see if it was just heat related. We also plan to start some laundry since it's time to clean some clothes. We do all of these things and find a place in Moab to get some food that sounds pretty cool. Court and I head out to the van to test the start again and while it's not as bad as the park, it is a little sluggish still. Instead of risking getting stuck in a park without cell service and not being able to start the car, we call AAA to get the battery looked at and verify that the starter and such looks okay. At first the AAA app says that they will be there in just shy of an hour so we wait it out. As the timer expires, the verbiage on the app changes to "on our way" and the timer goes back to about 45 minutes. Crap, we quickly realize that this means we are not going into town tonight for food so we head back into the hotel and see if the bar there serves food as well. They do and they serve primarily flatbreads so we order a round for everyone and a couple of drinks for Court and I since we are starting to get a bit frustrated and fearful. Everyone eats up and it is decent food at least. We had also asked for some extra towels forever ago in the hotel and they never appeared so we ask again and get some that Abigail brings up with her and Gideon while Court and I go outside since the AAA guy showed up.
Initial verdict from the AAA guy is that it doesn't look like an alternator issue and doesn't sound like a starter issue but he doesn't have a battery tester with him so we would need to follow him to his shop to get the battery tested. This of course all happened after the van started up without a problem the first time Court tried. Again, out of an abundance of caution, we head over to their shop since it was just five miles away. We get there and the guy who was helping us showed up and got the battery tester. He keeps playing with it and goes inside to get some new batteries for the battery tester. That's right folks, the battery tester isn't working because it needs new batteries itself. The other guy working here, we find out later that he's the original guy's father, says that he can run home and get new batteries for the tester and that he will be right back. We wait it out and while we wait it starts to lightly rain. It provides a beautiful little rainbow while we sit which is nice. He returns and we go through some paces with the van starting just fine each time and the guy essentially says that according to the testers there's nothing wrong that he can see. His guess is that the engine was extra hot and the tons of things that we had plugged in to the van as well were causing the symptoms that we were seeing. We think him and go on our way back to the hotel for the night. Hoping that there is nothing more interesting to report tomorrow.