Rock Art & Live Webcams at Moab, Utah - 2009

 

Rock Art & Live Webcams at Moab, Utah

 

I just finished a new website devoted to the Indian Rock Art found near Moab, Utah. The Home Page at MoabRockart.com includes a story about author and naturalist Craig Childs, as he leads a writers group up Seven Mile Canyon during the Confluence Celebration 2008.

 

·    The website also includes a two-part article about Native American rock art along Mill Creek, in Moab, Utah.

 

During my August 2009 visit to Moab, I repaired or replaced several of our old webcams with higher quality Logitech, International. units. Currently, we have three live webcam feeds from Highway 191 South, at the Moab Rim CamPark. Additionally, Moab Ranch has a live webcam feed from the Pueblo Verde Tract in the Spanish Valley. To review all of our webcam feeds, go to the MoabLive.com Webcam Page. There you will see live webcams from Downtown Moab to the Spanish Valley.

 

Currently, we have two webcam systems that are tested and ready for deployment in Moab. If you live in the area and have a business and a great view; let us talk about a shared feed through MoabLive.com. We are actively looking for business partners and will lease an entire system on an annual basis or barter our webcam placement for your services in return.

 

While in discussion with Michele Hill, newly appointed Facility and Event Promoter at the Moab Area Travel Council, (developing conference and event planning for Moab), we mentioned how fun it was travel throughout the West and always be able to see four live views of Moab. Apparently, we made it sound like the sole purpose of the Moab webcams was for personal pleasure. In explaining that we sometimes succumb to hyperbole, we told Michelle that our writer hero is Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). Known during his lifetime as an American prophet and a humor writer, Mark Twain enjoyed making up his own version of any facts that were not readily at hand.

 

Then it struck us; what would Mark Twain have to say about webcams and streaming video? Clemens lived from 1835 until 1910. Imagine meeting the spirit of Mark Twain that less than one century after his death. There, you would describe a worldwide viewing-port, capable of producing live images of his favorite places on Earth. Might he think you were telling a story as tall as his own, "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". According to his biography, Clemens met with Alexander Graham Bell regarding investing in the fledgling Bell Telephone Company. Bell offered Clemens as many shares of stock in the new company as he might want, at any price he was willing to pay. Although Clemens spent his fortune and over a decade of time funding an ill-fated typesetting machine, he did not see the value of Bell’s telephonic device. Maybe if Bell had a working webcam at the time…

 

From our place of understanding, one of the most popular searches on the internet is for webcams that are local to the searcher’s point of interest. Believing in that theory and believing in the beauty of the land, sky and weather around Moab, we launched our first webcam in October 2008, at the Moab Rim RV CamPark. There, it stands today.

 

Over the past year, we had our share of webcam failures. From power failures to hardware and software glitches, we experienced it all. Since early August 2009, all four webcam systems have operated flawlessly. In our case, “flawlessly” means that from time to time, individual frames may drop out. Using a cable modem or DSL at the head-end of our systems, available bandwidth does not allow for an infallible feed. More costly, dedicated bandwidth would solve that issue.

 

As of August 2009, we are proud to say that no other organization has more live webcams streaming from Moab and the Spanish Valley. Here, we tip our hat to Red Cliffs Lodge for their pioneering webcam work along the Colorado River. Although their Colorado River webcam is reliable, the MoabLive webcams refresh every three seconds, rather than every three minutes.

 

We see a future in which almost every business in Moab will have at least one webcam. By offering MoabLive, and in color to the world, interest in tourism surely would grow. How could any distant viewer resist the beauty that we see each day, around Moab and the Spanish Valley?

   

Currently we are in Simi Valley, California, writing and developing new webcam systems. To view our current test, look at CasaCarrieCam, live from Simi Valley. In early October 2009, we will return to Moab, for both business and pleasure. While there, we will cover the 24-Hours of Moab Bicycle Race. While the race is on, we will post an updated article on our blog.

 

If you go to Moab24Live.com, you will see our coverage of last year’s race. In October 2008, we followed Dax & Dean of Team Shake & Bake. From prerace to podium, we covered their first-in-class victory. This year, we have agreed to cooperate further, reporting their story through the written word, still images and video. Dax has assured me that he and partner, Dean will win their class again in 2009.

 

With proper exposure, this race could have enormous TV appeal. Couch potatoes all over the country would like to be riding free in the wind, as Dax & Dean shall for the 24 Hours at Moab. The race starts at Noon, local time on Saturday, October 10. The race will conclude at Noon on Sunday, October 11, 2009, with award ceremonies to follow.

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 04:52 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

An Afternoon By The Colorado River - 2008

An Afternoon By The Colorado River

On Saturday, May 24, 2008, I traveled west and north from Hovenweep National Monument to Moab, Utah, a distance of 120 miles.  Once I got past the ancient Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) roads, the trip north on US Highway 191 was easy, even with while towing my travel trailer.

 

Arriving at the Moab Rim Campark, just south of Moab a day earlier than expected I found that there was no RV space available that night in all of Moab.  Thinking that the remote Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Horse Thief Campground would surely have space, I drove thirty miles up Utah Highway 313, only to find that there was no vacancy at any campsite within fifty miles of Moab.

 

With gasoline right at four dollars per gallon, my sixty mile sojourn to Horse Thief and back cost me around forty dollars.  Although high gas prices are supposed to be a deterrent to travelers this summer, it seemed like everyone within driving distance of Moab had decided to give it one last gasp before mothballing their camping equipment.

 

With nowhere else to go, I drove back to Moab, then south on Spanish Valley Drive to the Pueblo Verde development, where I have a deposit down on a residential building lot.  That night, I camped by the curb at Lot #7, where I plan to build my dream home in the next couple of years.

 

With only six of the twenty-eight lots currently occupied, the setting was tranquil and quiet.  Since my coach is self-contained, I had everything I needed to “dry camp” on the street.  The added bonus was to wake up and see the 360-degree view of the Spanish Valley as it will look when my house stands on that site.  To me, there is no better residential view in America, centered as it is between the Moab Rim and the peaks of the Manti La Sal Range. 

 

For those who are interested, there are one-third acre lots still available for less than one hundred thousand dollars.  If you come upon this entry in later years, do not blame me for not telling you sooner.  The window of opportunity might last into 2009, but after that, prepare to buy at the higher rates that baby boomer retirement purchases will inevitably dictate.  As my father used to say, “Get there early and get a good seat”

 

On Sunday, I moved to my reserved site at the Moab Rim Campark, where I spent the next six nights.  Meanwhile, my love flew from Burbank, California to Grand Junction, Colorado, known simply as “Junction” to the locals.  Picking her up at Walker Field Airport in Junction, I noted that their parking and traffic circulation upgrade was still not completed.  To my dismay, it features a main access point that few if any large RVs or buses could negotiate without overriding the curb.  This is what we in America used to call “Progress” with a capital “P”.

 

After driving west on Interstate Highway I-70 back towards Moab, we cut off at State Route 128, which goes through the abandoned cattle and railroad town of Cisco.  Cisco is famous for a nearby uranium ore strike in the early 1950’s.  Today, it is a crumbling wreck of buildings, many built from surplus railroad ties.  It looks too new to be a ghost town, but to old and decrepit to resurrect as a quaint tourist trap.

 

From there, the old two-lane highway wends its way across open prairie, then through ranch land and finally to the Colorado River, near the site where the historic Dewey Bridge was destroyed by fire in April 2008.  It was a classic case of a child playing with matches in a nearby campground.  His “science project” got away from him and rapidly burned the wooden bridge-deck of the old suspension bridge, a now lost treasure on the National Register of Historic Places. 

 

Pyromaniacs of the world take note.  Karma will seek its own resolution, whether here in this life, or at some future time and place, as determined by the confluence of fates.  There is at least one young boy somewhere in this land who will long remember his lack of judgment that windy April evening.

 

After crossing on the new bridge, the subsequent automobile trip down the Colorado River is its own reward.  Entrenched in a deep canyon along this stretch, the river was only a few days past its springtime, 2008 peak flow.  To the delight of the many rafters, there were rapids where usually one found only sandbars.  As the waters slowly receded, rushing water swept the banks clean of candy wrappers and plastic bottles, leaving the river looking much as it did in primeval times.

 

Along the way, we stopped at the Castle Creek Winery at Red Cliffs Lodge for an early and satisfying dinner.  The winery, billed as “Utah’s first and largest commercial winery” produces good, if a bit light wines that are consistent from year to year.  If you stop there, be sure to take a look at their Moab Museum of Film & Western Heritage, featuring “100 years of Cowboy History”.  Because of its undeveloped remoteness, yet easily accessed services in Moab, many classic western movies were filmed here and in nearby Castle Valley.

 

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 08:37 PM | | Comments (0) | Link