May 5-10
Days 32-37
We left Capitol Reef around 8:00 for the last leg of our ‘Mighty 5’ Utah National Parks tour. The day started out chilly, but beautiful. We traveled through Capitol Reef on route 24, another American Byway. The scenery was gorgeous with miles of majestic buttes and rock formations scattered across the barren, desert landscape.
About an hour into our travels we decided to stop at Goblin Valley State Park. A couple we met at Ruby’s told us that it was a ‘Must See’ stop on our way to Moab. They were absolutely right! Just when we thought we saw it all, there was more! The park was filled with thousands of the most otherworldly little stone gnomes and mushroom shaped formations . We felt like we fell through the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, without all the colors. It was a desert playground that invited us to wander around and climb on them if you felt adventurous enough. Tucker joined in on the adventure too. We are so glad we took the detour to check this park out.
Our little side trip lasted a couple hours and included a nice lunch. The last stretch of the drive to Moab took us back on interstate I-70. We hadn’t seen a major highway since we left I-40 back in Winslow AZ. We took the southern exit onto route Rt 191 and made our way to Archview RV Park, which was 9 miles outside of Moab, 25 miles from Canyonlands and 5 miles from Arches National Park. And we could mountain bike to the Klonza Moab trail system, right from our campsite. It was the perfect location for our next adventures.
After setting up camp, our routine has been to ride through the National Park to take a look at the scenic overlook views from the truck and to get the Park brochure so we could make our hiking plans for the following day. Since routine can get boring, and this was Moab, mountain biking was first on the agenda today! There were 15 major mountain bike trail systems in our area and more if you count some of the smaller ones. The hardest part of the decision was where to start. We decided to hit a system just down the road from the campground called the Moab Brand Focus area. We enjoyed riding a trail called the ‘North 40’ that had great views of Arches NP and the snowcapped La Sal mountain range to the east. We had fun climbing and descending through the desert slick rock and red sand. The name ‘slick rock’ is a little misleading since the bike tires get great traction. In fact, you can climb steeper hills on ‘slick rock’ than you can in dirt. After a couple hours, we headed back to plan the start of our first day in Arches National Park.
On Thursday, we woke up to great weather and some of the warmest temps we have had on the trip. It was cool in the morning, but forecasted highs for later in the day were in the 80s. We decided we would drive the overlooks to check out the scenery at Arches NP. The scenery of course was incredible and we were excited to see all the different arches its famous for. So many of them can be seen from the scenic drive. We did step out to take the short hikes to Double Arch, Balanced Rock and the iconic Delicate Arch. We had a ball exploring Double Arch and climbing up to its window for some photo fun. Balanced Rock stood 128 feet tall with a 3600 ton boulder on top that looked like an epic balancing act. We loved it so much, we came back Friday night to use it as a foreground for astro photography. We stopped at the parking area for a view of Delicate Arch. The upper viewing area was closed, so we could only see it from a distance at the lower viewing area. We weren’t very impressed with this one, so we decided not to do the 3 mile hike to it the following day. I’m sure we will be sorry we skipped this one since this is the arch that is on most of the postcards, t-shirts and magnets!
After lunch we hopped on our bikes and headed out from the campsite to another trail system. We rode on the Sovereign back country dirt road to the Klonzo trail system. This area was a lot of fun. We still had the challenge of learning to ride the slick rock, but several trails like Roller Coaster and Whiptail provided super fun and flowy downhill twists and turns. Many of the down hills have turns that are just a bit close to the edge with some pretty big drops. A little scary at times. All the trails were well marked, well maintained and really fun to ride. There were even dinosaur fossilized footprints on the trail! How cool is that?! We were ridin’ with the dinos! What a memorable ride. After about 10 miles, we made it back to the campsite for a well-deserved beverage and dinner. With a good night’s rest, tomorrow we would be ready to hike Devil’s Garden to see the famed ‘Landscape’ Arch. This arch is one of the world’s longest stone spans, stretching 306 feet and 11 feet thick at its center. It is amazing what water, wind and blowing sand can do.
We got an early start on Friday for our Devil’s Garden hike. The moderately difficult paved trail lead hikers to Pine tree Arch and Tunnel Arch with Landscape Arch at the end of the pavement. Looking at some of these formations, it is hard to believe that someone didn’t have some hand in making them. The hike continued on the Primitive trail and included some minor (In Rich’s mind) scrambles up slick rock and some way-finding, in search of Navajo Arch and Partition Arch. We decided not to do the full loop in search of the other 3 arches due to time and needing to get back for Tucker. The last few days of activities caught up with us, so we decided to spend the afternoon relaxing with Tucker in the campground and taking advantage of the outdoor pool in the 90 degree temps.
One of the cool things about Arches NP is that it is designated as an International Dark Sky Park. So it’s a perfect place for astrophotography and stargazing on a moonless night. We went in on Thursday night to take night sky shots with the Courthouse Towers rock formations in the foreground. We set up at a great location on the Observation Deck and waited for the stars to fill the sky. As we watched the stars light up the sky, we suddenly saw a strange and bizarre sight. A string of what appeared to be 50 or 60 white stars, within an inch of each other, traveled across the night sky right in front of us! We had never seen anything like it and had no explanation for it. I just kept snapping pictures thinking I was watching alien space-crafts arriving on Earth. We were completely stunned for quite a while with absolutely no explanation for what it could be that we saw. It was actually rather chilling to say the least. On our way home, we searched Google to see if we could find some explanation. Sure enough, we were not the only people looking to the night sky. This same event had been spotted from LA to Las Vegas the night before. It turns out it wasn’t aliens, but Elon Musk and his Space-X rocket placing satellites into orbit for his new internet service. We were pretty relieved knowing the war of the worlds was not starting on our trip to Arches.
Saturday morning we got up at 4:45am to head into Canyonlands , with Tucker, to take sunrise photos of the iconic Mesa Arch. Getting to Mesa Arch is a very short hike off the main road. Little did we know how popular this sunrise event really was! We arrived at Mesa Arch to see about hundred other people with the same idea. We were able to find a good spot to capture the event, even with the crowd. I set up the camera and waited for the sun to rise and light up the arch. And we waited. Unfortunately, clouds obscured the sunrise, so the spectacular show was a bit of a dud, but we did get to meet a lot of fun people. It was still a nice morning and we did get some good pictures even without a great sunrise.
The rest of the morning was spent driving the Scenic overlook road through the park. Canyonlands has three sections to it, but we focused our time and attention on the Island in the Sky area. The views and canyon landscapes were pretty cool. Having seen and hiked the Grand Canyon, it is difficult to be overly impressed other canyons. But I have to say, there were views that were difficult to describe with words that rivaled the mighty Grand Canyon. By the time we got back to the campground, we were exhausted from our late night of astrophotography and our early sunrise wake-up. After a few hour nap, we were reenergized for an afternoon of mountain biking at Dead Horse Point State Park.
Dead Horse Point State park had amazing Overlook views of the Shafer Canyon which is also part of Canyonlands. After driving the overlook and stepping out to take in the Grandview and snap some pics, we headed over to the Intrepid MTB Trail system. We really enjoyed these canyon rim trails. The La Sal mountains towered in the background to the east as the Shafer Canyon views steeply dropped to the south. What a beautiful place to enjoy nature. We rode almost 9 miles of breathtaking scenery and technical and fun trail riding before deciding to call it a day and head back to the camp to rest up for the big day. On Mother’s Day we were riding one of the primer mountain bike trails in the world. Slick Rock!
I had a great start to Mother’s Day. Rich made me coffee and breakfast, I talked with Taylor, and Tucker bought me a great new Zion NP biking jersey for my ride on the famous Slick Rock Trail that is visited by 100,000 people each year from all over the world. It is a trail like no other. The trail carries riders over 12 miles of rugged and rolling petrified sand dunes. Plenty of steep dips, turns and climbs, just like a roller coaster, but with hard rock all around you. The trail is for expert riders but there are plenty of people on it that want to test their skills and their nerve. We decided to try the 2.3 mile practice loop first to see if we were up to this challenge. It’s not any easier than the main trail, but let’s riders get a feel for the experience without venturing too far from the trailhead.
The practice loop was a great place to get the flavor of this type of riding. The uphills were incredibly steep and would not have been possible without the traction of the rock. There were places that if you were not careful could result in 300-400 foot drops. But if you followed the white painted dashes on rock surface that marked the trail, and ride smart, this is a really amazingly incredible challenge and a ride we just couldn’t miss.
After we got our jitters out on the practice loop, we headed to the main trail. We had a lot of fun being challenged following the white painted dashes as we rode up and down across the sandstone desert. When we climbed to the top of one hill and started to head down a steep windy portion of the trail, we stopped to allow dirt-bikers to pass us. As we were contemplating whether this section would be too challenging for us, with a downhill, 180 degree turn and a major drop off on the edge, we watched dirt-bikers to do first. When the first rider couldn’t negotiate the turn and wiped out, we decided this might be a little over our heads and it was best to turn back. After Rich helped the riders get their bikes back up the hill, we decided to follow their lead and head back to the trail head. On the way we decided to take one more lap around the practice loop before packing it in. Overall, we rode about 5 miles of this iconic trail and really held our own. This was definitely an incredible opportunity. It is not an exaggeration to say you could spend a month here and not get to everything. Tomorrow we leave UT and head to Colorado to see family and enjoy more adventures.
