If you look at a map, Moab, Utah, is nowhere near Tennessee or Michigan. Yet, that is exactly where our “Mashville” roadtrip transformed from a clever country-and-lake-life mashup into an extended pitstop for an injured foot.

Utahraptor State Park was supposed to be a four-day stop, but by the time we actually got there, it had already become three. Ogden needed an extra day so we subtracted it from Moab. At the time, it felt like normal long-trip math: move a day here, trim a day there, keep the route alive. Annoying, but not alarming.

For the practical campground details, site notes, and our rating, you can read our Utahraptor State Park Tow Stop review. This post is about everything that was happening behind that stay, while the trip kept rerouting in front of us.

Disabled and Defused

I’d started noticing that Harry’s foot was getting really puffy and swollen when we were at the hot springs in Idaho, but by Ogden, it had started becoming increasingly painful for him. We bought a cane for him at a Love’s Travel Stop hoping it would help him walk a little easier and alleviate some of the stress and pain on his right foot. Did you know there’s a wrong way to walk with a cane? Well, we found that out the hard way.

It all started the night before. I’d taken a shower with no problems, but when it was Harry’s turn, he was asking me if I smelled anything like something was burning. Something definitely had a funky, burnt smell to it. I didn’t know what it was, but I quickly turned off the gas water just in case something was going on there. I’d left the electric water heater on though. The next morning, I noticed we didn’t have any hot water at all. AGAIN. The high winds the night before likely affected the flame of the gas heater and caused the thermal fuse to do it’s job…and die.

We found a store in town that carried RV supplies. It was a longshot, but we headed to Farm & City Feed and RV Supply to see if they had any thermal fuses. Since Harry was in an indescribable amount of pain, I had to drive us to the store. Yes, me, behind the wheel of Tank, driving. I told you Harry was in a whole lotta pain! Anyway, let’s not make that a big deal. Okay, back to the story of our newly learned life lesson. I safely got us to the store. We struck gold! They had at least a half dozen or more of the exact part we needed! We bought two packs of them, each of which had two thermal fuses in them. We were armed with 4 additional parts just in case. We also left with some farm-fresh eggs – my favorite!

After a long couple of days, I wanted a beer and Moab Brewing was just up the road from the supply store. Harry was able to drive us the few blocks there since it would be a little dicey for me to park our big truck. We hobbled in, grabbed a seat, and had a couple of really delicious beers and decided to just have dinner there that night. We still needed to get a few groceries and thankfully, there was a small store in the same parking lot as the brewery. Harry used his cane to walk there and back, and at the time, he felt okay to drive us back to the campground.

While Harry’s right foot was already in a lot of pain and swollen, we noticed that his left foot was also started to hurt and get a little larger than normal. Here’s where knowing how to walk with a cane became important. Apparently, you’re supposed to hold it with the hand on the opposite side as the injury. In this case, he should have been walking with it in his left hand. He was not, and so his left foot was doing some unnecessary overcompensation, which caused it to have its own issues.

Counting on Borrowed Time

With both of Harry’s feet now on the injured list, we knew three days at Utahraptor State Park were not going to be nearly enough. We very quickly turned that three days into five, like we were magicians doing mathematical tricks. We stole those couple of days by changing our New Mexico and Mesa Verde reservations so the rest of Mashville could stay on track. It wasn’t ideal by any means, but it still felt like something we could absorb. This kind of thing happens on a long trip. You move one reservation, then another, then stare at the calendar like maybe it’ll apologize to you.

For a minute, five days seemed like it might be enough. Harry could stay off his feet, we could regroup, and most of all, the trailer was parked somewhere we actually liked. It wasn’t the Moab adventure we had pictured, but it felt like a reasonable enough Plan B.

Then Plan B started looking suspiciously flimsy.

The Anatomy of a Travel Pivot

After a couple of days at Utahraptor, Harry was still not improving the way we’d hoped. The upcoming stops started to look less like fun and more like a series of places where he would be limping from one thing to the next, pretending everything was fine. And Nashville, which had been one of the big anchors of the whole trip, was starting to sound ridiculous. At that rate, he was not going to be two-stepping anywhere unless the dance floor came with a chair and an ice pack. That was the part that made everything feel different. Up until then, we’d just been making a few tweaks to the trip. Now, we were staring at the part of the route that made Mashville Mashville and realizing it might not survive.

Harry had put so much work into building this trip. He planned the route, booked to camp spots, he lined everything up, and one of the best parts was supposed to be that we could finally just enjoy the ride. Instead, we were sitting in Moab moving reservations around like a very sad game of travel Tetris.

Nashville was not just another stop. It was half the name. “Mashville” was Michigan + Nashville. That was the joke, the hook, the whole ridiculous little identity the trip had taken. We’d pictured music, dancing, friends, and all the fun that was supposed to come with finally getting there. The idea of cutting it felt awful, even before we had to say it out loud. At some point during those Utahraptor days, Harry started looking around Moab to see if there was any way we’d be able to stay in the area longer. Neither of us were expecting to find that diamond in the rough: one spot with two weeks of availability in the middle of one of the most outdoor adventure spots there is, yet somehow, Sun Outdoors Canyonlands Gateway had just what we needed.

This sudden option changed the conversation. It’d give Harry time to see if his foot was actually improving, it’d keep us near medical care in Moab if things got worse, and if things went well, we’d still have a shot at making it to see friends in Indiana for Memorial Day weekend.

In Loving Memory of Our Original Itinerary: Rest in Pieces

Somewhere amidst the chaos, Mashville started slipping away and Destination Michigan started becoming the real trip. Not because we were trying to create a neat new theme, but because the old one didn’t fit anymore. Harry needed time to rehab his foot, Moab had a place for us, and Nashville, as much as it hurt to admit, did not.

Utahraptor was the messy middle part: the place where we added days, moved reservations around, changed our minds, changed them again, and finally admitted the trip was going somewhere different. We came to Moab with a plan and left Utahraptor State Park with a cane, a two-week recovery stay booked across town, a pile of changed reservations, and the first outline of a very different trip.

Not the Moab stop we pictured but definitely the one that changed everything.

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