Moab

Stacie and I spent Memorial Day week in Moab, Utah. We flew in to Salt Lake City on Saturday and then started the 4.5 hour drive south. We decided to stop halfway and stay in Price since it had already been a long travel day. The drive from SLC to Moab is beautiful and has elements that reminded us of Colorado and parts of California.

Once in Moab on Sunday morning, we started off by taking a short hike to Corona Arch. This was our first arch visit and we weren’t even in Arches National Park yet. Apparently, these things are quite common in the area. This was a great one to start our week. It was huge and as usual, there are other varieties of arches and formations very close. We finished the day hiking the Negro Bill Canyon Trail that leads to Morning Glory Arch. Most of the hikes we did were in areas of mainly sandstone and scrub brush except this trail followed a tributary of the Colorado River so there were multiple stream crossings and we were under shade trees for much of the hike.



Monday was our first day in Arches National Park. It is only a couple of miles outside of Moab and you are in impressive scenery within minutes. We did some great hikes over the next couple of days and saw cool things like the iconic Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch and Double Arch. Devil’s Garden Primitive Trail.







Later in the week we went to the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park. There weren’t many arches in this area, it was mainly about the deep Canyons that have been carved out by the Colorado River. The next day we hit up Dead Horse Point State Park which is in the same area, but had much nicer views. We did a big hike along much of the rim.



We finished the week back in Arches and did a little more hiking in Park Avenue.





Along with the great hiking, we had some killer meals. We didn’t eat anything fancy, but almost everything we ate had such great flavors. I don’t know if things were fresher or it was the seasoning they used but we were impressed with what was available.

We drove back to Salt Lake City on Friday and spent a few hours touring the Mormon Church campus before heading to our B&B. This place is mighty impressive. You can go through and tour just about everything but the Temple. It’s a members only sort of thing and since we weren’t Latter Day Saints we just get a smile and a polite “No.” While we were there, we saw multiple couples having their wedding pictures taken. They were churning out married couples like a factory.

The next morning, we caught our flight home and this year’s biggie vacation came to a close. I recommend Moab and the surrounding areas to anyone that enjoys being outdoors. Stacie wasn’t interested in any of the abundant 4X4 activities in the area so we stuck to hiking the trails. That was enough to fill most of a week and leave some downtime for relaxing. I could see myself going back for a long weekend with a group of guys and renting a Jeep for some off-roading and heading deeper in to some of the parks.