Falling In Love With Moab

The amazing thing about taking a trip sans circus is how much money it seems to not cost to do so.

I mean, think about it.

We're going from eight people with lodging, food, and activities, down to two people with no lodging,  less food, and  still activities.

You save a pretty penny when you sleep out in the middle of nowhere in your cargo trailer instead of in a campground with full hook ups and a pool.

My favorite part of our "middle of nowhere" camping spot was the toilet.
If nothing else, our run away to Moab was a success simply because of this beauty.

I mean, who needs a door on the bathroom?

Let alone a roof...

I'm just counting my blessings that it had real toilet paper.

We went to Moab a few weeks ago (here) without really knowing what we were doing.  We'd never been before and didn't know exactly what there was, except for a few items that we'd heard of, and didn't know where to find anything.

So we hit information and tried to figure out how that place worked.

This time we went back and knew a thing or two, although we still have a lot to figure out with that place.

Uncle Tim and cousin Josh joined us and we spent Friday night sitting in the cool darkness, talking about tomorrow's plans, looking at the stars and...

mostly trying to get a good picture of this little guy, who seemed pleased as punch to run around our feet for as long as we sat there.

Mostly I think he liked the food that kept getting dropped to keep him around.

We went to bed that night and every time I woke up through the night I would look out through the open trailer doors and it was shocking how incredibly bright the stars were burning.

 Come sunrise we were up and getting ready to hit the trails.

But first we hit the Pancake Haus for breakfast. (The best!)

We started with Fins and Things.

The lack of depth in pictures can't even begin to show you the things we climbed up, or climbed down.  There was a lot of squeezing: squeezing close of my eyes, squeezing of my hands on the "oh crap bar," squeezing of... lots of other things.

But mostly, I trusted The Man.  I had complete and utter faith that if he was going for it, then he must be confident that we were going to make it.

And we always did.

After Fins and Things we headed over to Hell's Revenge, which The Man did last time with his dad, but no one else had been on.

We checked out the overlook:

And sat for a few minutes watching these guys debate on whether or not they should try The Devil's Highway Hot Tub or not.

The Man played in this easy peasy bathtub.

Finally, when it was clear that those guys weren't going to tackle the devil's hot tub, we drove over to Mickey's Hot Tub, where those guys showed up and actually tried it.




And even though it was cool to see that one of them made it (with the help of guiding ropes of course), it was more fun to see that one of them didn't :).

We watched a jeep make it's way up the escalator. (an example of the live excitement of the escalator here)

And we watched those same guys from the hot tubs do it too.
The Man is certain that next time we go out there, he's taking on the escalator.  He took on Tip Over Challenge (with me in the seat next to him! Gah!) (a live example here) and made it (he had no doubts) so his sights are on the escalator next time.

After Hell's Revenge we took Tim and Josh to potato salad hill, where we didn't see anyone trying to climb it (live example here), but we played around on it a little bit ourselves. 

And the man drove up Baby Lion's Back:


We got a shaved ice again and have decided that little shaved ice stand is a Moab tradition for us.

We drove over to Poison Spider and the sheer cliffs along the road were amazing. 

Breathtaking.

We had to open the sunroof to see them in all of their majesty.

Next time, this is where we're going to camp, at the base of these cliffs in the middle of the green trees, next to the river.

But not in a van.

There are dinosaur prints at the trail head of Poison Spider. 

There's some debate on whether they're authentic or not, but it was still fun to hike up to them.

And we tackled Poison Spider.

We tackled The Wedgie, but didn't get pictures of it.

The Waterfall:

This trail is supposed to end in a view over a river, but we were running out of daylight, and there were some pretty gnarly obstacles at the beginning of the trail that we didn't want to have to go down in the dark.

We had to turn around before we reached the end of the trail, and race the sun back to the trail head.

But we made it with a little time to spare. 

We ate dinner at Zax and returned to our middle of nowhere, no roof or door on the toilet spot and crashed hard.

It's funny to think that riding around in 90 degrees would wipe you out so much.

The next morning Tim and Josh left early and since I'd done a full day of riding with The Man, he committed to doing a day of hiking with me. 

Which is sweet of him since he hates it.

I took it easy on him and picked the hikes that were under a half mile.

Meaning, you could see most of this stuff from the road, but it was stuff we'd never seen before.

Balance Rock:

I'm always so fascinated with these arches and this red rock.  I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

So far.

Turret Arch:



The Windows:

North Window with the coolest dead tree ever. I wanted to bring it home and use it for Halloween.

From inside the North Window:

Double Arches:

The outside of Fiery Furnace (you have to sign up for a guided tour to tackle the inside of this place.  It's on my hit list for our next visit, which may be next month if anyone wants to join us :)).

Our favorite arch (besides delicate for me) was the Sandstone Arch:

Our last arch of the day was Skyline Arch:

Next trip I'm bailing on The Man and tackling Devil's Garden. 
We're signing up for the Fiery Furnace tour.
We'll finish the Poison Spider Trial and there are few other trails The Man wants to check out.

Seriously, this place never gets old.

Also, sometime in my life, I need to get there with Mik and her family so they can show me the water hole near potato salad hill that you can jump into.

Not that I would jump, I have issues with jumping off of high things, but I still want to see it.

This weekend was amazing.

On the way home we stopped in Green River lunch, right on the river.

And we watched One For The Money in our car while we waited on my X to show up with the girls. 

This weekend was perfect. 

I love my man to the moon and back.

Maybe more.

I think it's safe to say we've fallen in love with that place called Moab.