Moab, Utah

Riding through arches national park

I spent 2 nights in Moab so I could get a full day. The city is small and chock full of tourists like myself. According to the locals, this time of the year is when a lot of Europeans travel to Moab. In the "Fall" is when the Americans from different parts of the country arrive. They were right, there were heaps of Europeans walking around Moab, from what I can gather lots of Italians, Germans and French. I suppose Moab is a place that has that "Old West" look to it, which would be appealing to tourists.

The ride from Blanding to Moab was fairly uneventful, not as much scenery as from Torrey to Blanding. I was, however, riding for the first time without the assistance of GPS due to my iPhone fucking out. This wasn't a big deal for this ride, there was not many turns at all, the highway from Blanding turned straight into the main street of Moab, which is where my Hotel was situated. I was more worried about the ride from Moab to Glenwood springs in a few days.

Balanced rock and I.

Since I arrived way before check-in time, I wandered around the town. There were a lot of Touristy places along the main street. There was literally 10 t-shirt shops in a row. Which was kind of good for me since I needed a new t-shirt. There was also heaps of souvenir shops. I went and hit the bars that night, I hung out with some locals. One guy I remember being a geologist that works for one of the oil fields nearby. Another guy was a massive dude, an ex-bouncer of some of the bars in Moab. He had a lot to say about gun ownership, he owned about 15 guns including a fully automatic AK47. He told me that he didn't carry a gun on him in Moab, but in some of the places he lived he felt the need to due to the dodgyness of the town. Didn't seem like a guy you'd want to fuck around with. I remember him saying (not directly to anyone), "If you pull a gun on me, I'll go home, get my gun and shoot you. I don't care, we're in the middle of nowhere, this is the wild west".

The next day I decided to head up to "Arches National Park", this promised to have spectacular rock formations and good hiking. After paying to get in, I sloooooowly followed a bunch of cars around the roads to the different formations and trail heads.

It looks like I'm photoshopped in, but I assure you I'm not.

First up was "Balanced Rock", which I'll leave to your imagination what that was. Then I headed down to the "Delicate Arch" trail. The delicate arch is the most famous rock formation in Utah, so much so that it is featured on Utah number plates. I parked the bike, grabbed the SLR and set off. This ended up being a big mistake; the hike - although not too strenuous - was much longer than I expected. When arrived at the carpark there were kids and families milling around, and I thought: "Oh it mustn't be very far away". Wow was I wrong, turns out that a lot of them didn't hike the whole way.

About 20 minutes in, realizing that it was not just over the next hill I toyed with the idea of heading back and getting the water out of my panniers. But fuck it, how much further could it be? About an 45 mins in, I had to ask some Italians for some sunscreen. Finally I got there, and a little delirious from the lack of water I managed to hike down the wrong trail, and ended up walking behind the arch, which had a substantial drop off on one side. As I was standing there looking up at the arch, a bit dizzy from lack of hydration, hot red rock burning my hands, I began to realize that this was not my finest moment. Anyway I made it back up (thank god for my new, extremely grippy hiking boots), where some tourists exclaimed how crazy I was. Pfft, ain't nothing but a thing, us Australians like doing things a bit differently. I passed it off like I like a challenge, rather than me just being retarded.

Anyway, I sat under the shade of the arch, and talked to one of the only Americans I saw on the trail. She was on the final day of her short visit to Moab, and had decided to hike out to the delicate arch in the 8 hours before her flight back to Vegas. She was nice enough to give me some of her water! We then both headed back to the car park (the correct way this time, I exclaimed how much easier that route was), where I guzzled about a litre of warm water that was sitting in one of my luggage boxes. It was so hot that my bike had some trouble starting.

Managed to get a shot of the arch with no tourists around it!

Next up I rode down to the "Devil's Playground", had many hiking trails and other arches. What was really cool about these trails was that it was pretty raw, they let you climb the rocks and all. You also meet a lot of people along the way, and this being Moab, a lot of them were from Germany and France.

Utah... Rocks!

The "Landscape Arch".

Rocks and shit.

The "Partition Arch" and I.

View from the Partition Arch

After riding back I was pretty beat (feet were not used to the hiking boots, I'll leave out the gory details, but there was blood). Took a couple of hours to chill in my room, then I went out and hit the bars. Tomorrow: Colorado!