Moab, the Dunes, and 1,900 Miles of Straight Line
Days 55–61 · July 22–28, 2026
Montrose, CO → HOME, St. Petersburg, FL
I didn't plan for this to be the last card. But Moab in late July is an oven, the inverter in the van gave out, and Piper was done — panting through the nights with no fan and no relief. Some trips end because you run out of road. This one ended because I looked at my dog and knew. So I got the three parks I came for, pointed the van east, and drove like I meant it.
Three easy hours over the state line and down into red rock country. Sun Outdoors sits just north of town on 191, and after Black Canyon it felt almost civilized — full hookups, a pool, actual other people.
Neither dog cared. We pulled in, I opened the door, and that was the last I heard from either of them. Kaia went down on the mat, Piper folded herself into the two feet of floor beside her, and they slept like the drive had personally cost them something.
Out cold before I'd even leveled the van. This is the whole travel crew, giving me nothing.
Nothing day. Groceries, laundry, ice, more ice. The heat was already showing me what the week was going to look like, and I sat down and did the math on the inverter and didn't love the answer.
Then the sky went the color of a bruise around dinnertime and I stopped caring about the inverter for about twenty minutes.
The view out my door. A storm rolling the rim and not one drop of rain out of it.
Arches National Park
Seven minutes from the campground to the entrance station, which still feels like cheating. This is national park #27. It was really cool to see all the arches — that's the entire pitch and it absolutely delivers. You come around a bend and there's just a hole in the sky, held up by rock that has no business still standing there.
Went early. Was out before the day turned mean.
Out before the heat had opinions. Every bend gives you another one of these.
Canyonlands National Park
This is national park #28, and I loved this park. Arches is a highlight reel — one incredible thing after another, all of it framed for you. Canyonlands is the opposite. You stand at Island in the Sky and there is just nothing, in every direction, further than your eyes are built to go. It made me feel small in the good way.
Packed up after and pointed east. Checked out of Moab for the last time and was in Colorado by evening.
Fins and scrub and not one other person in the frame. This is the part before the ground drops out from under you.
Great Sand Dunes National Park
This is national park #29, and the strangest one of the whole trip. It looks like a piece of the earth got removed and replaced with this park. Seven hundred feet of sand piled up against the Sangre de Cristos like somebody made a filing error. Super cool. Absolutely no reason for it to be there, and there it is.
The approach across the valley. You can just make out the sand stacked up against the Sangre de Cristos, and it does not look real until you're standing on it.
Amarillo, TX · Big Texan RV Ranch
Then Colorado into New Mexico into the Texas panhandle, and a night at the Big Texan RV Ranch. First time in weeks I went to sleep somewhere with no view at all, and I did not mind it even slightly.
North Little Rock, AR · Downtown Riverside RV Park
I-40 straight across Oklahoma and into Arkansas. Downtown Riverside sits right on the water looking back at Little Rock, and it was the last night I'd sleep in the van on this trip.
I don't think I let myself know that yet.
Moon up over the bridge, van parked for the last time. The dogs slept through it, same as always.
I made amazing time. Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and then the long slow fall down the length of Florida, and I was standing in my own house at 4:09 in the morning.
Sixty-one days. Twenty-nine national parks. Two dogs who have now seen more of this country than most people I know. Piper walked in, drank half a bowl of water, and went flat on the cool tile like she'd been waiting on it for a month.
Fair.