I had honestly never heard of Moab before Colin told me we should stop there on our road trip. And if you Google "Moab" right now, the first things that pop up are actually about MOAB, the Mother Of All Bombs that was dropped in Afghanistan. That's not where we are -- we are in Utah. There are 2 national parks that are pretty close to Moab, UT: Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park (pictured above). They are both insanely beautiful! I'm surprised that I've never heard of them before, but add them to your list of places to visit RIGHT NOW. We spent about 5 hours in Arches yesterday, and I wish we'd had more time. We drove there from Denver, so we got a late start; plus, they are doing construction on the park right now, so we had to be completely out of the park by 7 PM. We drove to most of the sites that you could get to by driving, and we hiked some as well, but I could have hiked a lot more in the area if we had time to. I suggest at least a full day here. I'm not big on hiking in forests. I think trees are boring. I like water - waterfalls, creeks, etc. And I also like rocks. That's why Sweetwater Creek in GA was always great - it had water and big rocks. Arches doesn't have water, but it has BEAUTIFUL rocks. Today, we went to Canyonlands, and we had the entire day to explore. We were able to drive to 2 sections: Island in the Sky (mostly canyon views) and Needles (more big rocks!). They aren't connected by a road through the park, so we drove about 40 minutes to Island in the Sky from Moab, and then after we were done there, we drove through Moab again about 2 hours to Needles. My favorite was definitely Needles. We also spent time hiking there whereas we mostly drove around Island in the Sky. You could easily spend at least a day in each section, and longer if you wanted to hike more. The hiking trails are only marked with cairns (not signs or paint like I've seen on other trails). A cairn is a human-made pile or stack of stones. Some of them were pretty small, but the park did a good job of naturally marking the trails with enough cairns to follow the way. We are staying at the Lazy Lizard Hostel in Moab. We attempted Couchsurfing, but there aren't many hosts, and we requested pretty last minute. LL is great though - super cheap ($40 / night for a private room - ours sleeps 3, and $12 / night for a bed in a dorm room). Everything else we looked at in the area that was available last minute was at least $250 / night (other than camping which we didn't look into 1) because Colin is currently sick, and 2) because it's cold outside and I don't like the cold).
2 Comments
Mom
4/28/2017 06:22:43 pm
Well, you've made me want to visit Utah. I think that's where Ken Pollard is from. It sounds beautiful!
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Sara Patton
4/28/2017 06:32:04 pm
It is so beautiful! I had no idea. The landscape also changes so much while you're driving that there is a lot to see :)
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About MeHi, I'm Sara Monica Patton. I love animals, traveling, and eating. Read more about me in my first blog post here. Categories
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