Unexcused Absences Moab, Utah (he said)

Moab, Utah (he said)

by Kent 3 Apr 2015

Back East we don’t know much about Utah, other than it has lots of Mormons, some great ski areas around Salt Lake City, Bryce Canyon National Park, and strange liquor laws. But the athletic Colorado crowd knows Utah is home to Moab, a town about five hours from Vail with two claims to fame; it is home to a massive uranium mill tailings pile (not why I’m writing this post), and it is the mountain-biking capital of the western US.

Fisher Towers, north-east of Moab

Our friends Greg and Susan have been trying to get us to camp and mountain-bike with them in Moab for the last five years, and every year something got in the way – we had to get home for work (2011), or I wrecked my shoulder (2012), or we had to (had to…) go skiing in the French Alps (2013) or our schedules just didn’t align (2014). But this year we finally made it happen.

Setting up camp near Slickrock

While the term “Moab” is technically just the name of the town, the entire desert area of canyons, mesas, rivers, and Arches National Park, all falls informally under the name Moab. And everything is pretty much all about mountain-biking and camping. There are mountain-bike shops and camping outfitters on every street, and the local brewery has several beers named after biking and camping.

Mountain-biking in the Bar-M recreational area

So after our last day of skiing we took a few days and did all our laundry and got everything packed up to come home, then helped Greg and Susan pack up Godzilla*, their cargo van, with food and water and mountain bikes and clothes and camping gear and pretty much everything you’d need to survive the nuclear apocalypse for a month, except that we were camping for two nights. But that’s OK because we lived it up – camping with Greg and Susan was a showcase in how to properly camp.

Breakfast!

We ate fancy campsite dinners and pancakes and breakfast burritos and visited the Moab Brewery and they showed us some great hikes and mountain-bike trails and in general we had an amazing three days and two nights. Our camping site was one of Greg’s secret spots; exposed to the east, so you get early warmth from the rising sun, and behind a knoll so you aren’t disturbed by passing traffic, all under the gaze of the snow-capped La Sal Mountains to the south-east.

Happy hour after a hard day’s fun

The area is called Slickrock, and it’s essentially a petrified sand dune. The whole thing occupies several square miles, and forms the top of a large mesa. The ground is mostly smooth sandstone, alternating with a few pockets of loose sand and scrub brush. The scenery is straight out of Hollywood, and the whole experience was fantastic.

Arches National Park

If you say “Moab” to a person from Colorado, they’ll get a far-away look in their eyes and say something like, “Oh, Moab’s amazing, I can’t wait to go back.” And they are right. After five years of hearing about it, I get it.

* Godzilla the cargo van is so named because it is a) painted green and b) belches smoke