Moab!

When I first moved to Utah four years ago I remember hearing about all the amazing National Parks Utah had to offer. During my stay at BYU friends would come back and tell me about the great time they had down in Moab, or Zions or in the St. George area. For some reason I chose to travel elsewhere and until this summer had yet to experience the wonder of Southern Utah. Well I made it a goal to get down there this summer and excited when Deborah agreed to join me on this adventure! The drive down was long but fun. We found out all too late that the heat in the Passat would not turn off so we had the windows down the whole time in an effort to stay cool in the 95-100 degree weather. We had tunes and plenty to keep us occupied. I only wish Deb would learn how to drive a stick so I didn't have to drive the whole way!
We finally pulled into Arches National park around 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon. We explored the visitors center and planned out attack route! There was so much to do in the park and we only had a limited amount of time. There is no way to really describe what we saw. Some of the rock formations and arches are simply amazing! Its pretty humbling to see what nature can do.

Balanced Rock
Shade!
The rock in this area is made up of several layers of different kinds of rock. In these pictures you can see it clearly. The bottom layers are composed of a sand stone while the top layers, while still sand stone are much harder. For this reason, the bottom layers ware away much faster, creating the arches and rock formations that you see today! (I sound like the informaitional video at the visitors center!)
We made the three mile hike up to the Delicate Arch and that was fun. It was SOOOO hot though! We were dying half way up this huge rock face that we had to climb. When we got near the top we found this cave/arch that was in full shade at that time! It was so nice to chill in there and cool down with the wind blowing through the arch. From there we had a straight shot view of Delicate Arch that was pretty sweet.

Here's our attempt at taking a picture with the Arch directly behind us. Oh well, we tried!
View from the shaded cave/arch.
Delicate Arch


We ran into a professional photographer up by Delicate Arch and he took our picture for us but it was on Deborah's camera so I don't have the shot. It was fun playing up there and seeing something in person that I had only seen on posters everywhere in Utah!

After Arches we headed into Moab city to gas up and check out the town. It was a cute, happening place. I was dying of thirst and a giant lemonade was the highlight of my Moab visit! :) We then headed to Horse Theives Campground located on the road to Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park.
Here's our fearless car!

We made the best foil dinners in history! I had BBQ chicken and Deb did Hawaiian chicken. While they were cooking we biked down to the ridge and tried to catch the last of sunset. It was beautiful.


Dinner was filling and dessert was great too. We got to bed around 10pm because we wanted to get up early to try and do sunrise down in Canyonlands. After we got comfortable in the tent it was quickly apparent early sleep was not going to happen! It was just too hot! Then it sounded like a storm was blowing in so we put the rain flap on but then it was even more hot and when the storm did hit it turned out to just be a wind storm that almost blew our tent in! I think the storm blew down and we finally fell asleep around 12:30am. Needless to say, we did not get up in time for sunrise but enjoyed a relaxing morning in camp and then headed out.
While driving into Canyonlands we find out that there is no water in the National Park. So we detoured to Dead Horse State Park where we could replenish our water supply and do some mountain biking. We got about 5 min down the trail when my bike broke! :( It was the same problem I had just got repaired and I was not happy. I packed the bike back up the trail to the parking lot and waited til Deb did a shorter loop then I did it on her bike. Sadly that was all the biking we got to do on this trip! But we look hot in helmets. At least we had that goin' for us!
We played around Dead Horse for an hour or so more and saw some pretty amazing views down into Canyonlands.






Early afternoon we were done with hot Moab and headed home. We pulled out the map and found the biggest body of water near or route home! It turned out to be a reservoir just past Price. It was the break we needed. The water was freezing but refreshing!


The perfect end to a disastrous yet fun trip. I dropped Deb off in Provo, jumped in the pool to survive the drive home and then made the 2 hour drive up to Logan in time to stop and play some ultimate frisbee with friends. So now I can say I have been to Moab!