Moab-Canyonlands and Arches

Monday 10/23: Wow! What a drive from Zion to Moab. Oh my goodness. Certain parts of it felt like the Appalachians and were green and the road followed a really meandering stream. And then all of a sudden, I hit MARS! It is SO barren and crazy! I passed “salt wash” areas where you can see how the rocks were at the bottom of an ocean at one point. I can’t even believe how OLD these rocks are. I am mesmerized by the layers and colors, it’s incredible.
So eventually, I arrived in Moab, Utah and went to a hostel that I was going to stay in. Good lord, no. I arrived and there were some other people there who were coughing and looked ill! Yuck. I freaked out a little bit and felt completely trapped, as I had already paid for the night and had no other plan. I took a DEEP breath and googled campsites, immediately. In some amazing stroke of luck, I found that there are actually a TON of cheap campsites in the area just down the road, across the Colorado river from Arches National Park. I immediately headed down there and found a great little campsite, much to my incredible relief. I then headed to downtown Moab for some well-deserved stress-eating of Mexican food.
Moab is adorable. It is about the size of Boone, NC and has cute little downtown shops and restaurants. The whole town is built on these outdoor-enthusiasts, as it is a huge mountain biking hub. Plus, it’s super close to Canyonlands and Arches, along with TONS of National Forests and National Monuments. So, all of it creates a very interesting crowd of lots of Subaru owners with bikes and outdoor gear.
After having the best Mexican ever at Miguel’s, I headed back to my campsite. My neighbors were setting up their dinner and I asked about nighttime temperatures which luckily opened up a friendship! They’re an adorable couple named Ellen and Evan from Denver, and for once in my age bracket! We hung out all night at their campfire and laughed a LOT. I am super excited to possibly see them again next week when I’m in Denver. They’re great.
Once again, it’s just amazing how just when you need it, things pop up. I needed somewhere to stay, I got a great campsite on the river. I needed some FRIENDS! I got ‘em! It has been such a cool experiment with being patient (which I am NOT!) and allowing things some time to show up. I really hope to practice a bit more patience in regular life. I don’t know if you know it, but some of my co-workers know me as the “gunslinger” as I am a litttttttle impulsive and quick to choose. Which is not ALL bad, but often gets me into trouble.

Tuesday 10/24: I woke up Tuesday and was so excited to explore. The campsite I’m in is amongst towering deep red cliffs and the beautifully green Colorado river. After pulling in here, I KNEW the rest of the land was going to be amazing. I drove up to Canyonlands, Island in the Sky, for the day. I hiked around, saw these deeply carved canyons from rivers and wind. It’s absolutely amazing what water can do! The Colorado and Green rivers combine in Canyonlands, so there is a really cool meet-up of the waters that you can view from above. It makes me really want to canoe on the rivers, I bet the views from down there are SO cool.
I hiked around different trails and ate lunch up there. I then headed back towards town because I wanted to explore a bit more around the Colorado Riverway. There are PERFECT bike paths that you can ride on to everywhere, so I’ve been scoping that out. As I was leaving Canyonlands, I saw a familiar face in a car driving into the park. It turned out that I was right, it was a friend Erich from Asheville who is around the area with his girlfriend. Amazing, right? There is horrible cell-service (a major theme of the trip!) throughout the area, so we still haven’t been able to catch up together. Isn’t that funny? Hopefully later this week, we will.
I came back to the campsite around 5-ish and sat down by the river to enjoy the sunset. A woman showed up to take photos and we got to talking about the area. Her name was Barb and she was so encouraging of my trip. It was cracking me up. She gave me some good New Mexico pointers, but really just said she felt proud of me for doing the trip. She left this morning and blew me a goodbye kiss. Haha.
It is a very interesting thing to be a solo-female camper, people really are blown away. I kind of get it, but honestly it’s not that hard to do this trip. It’s been fun and interesting, but never unsafe. I am a little bummed that more women don’t do solo trips, I think it could really add confidence to our lady population! Barb and I talked about how not only are there few solo-women out here, but most women with husbands or long-term boyfriends are less likely to do solo trips. I let her know that I have a VERY supportive boyfriend at home who thinks it’s cool that I’m doing this. So maybe we also need more encouragement from our partners to get on solo trips. It’s very important to figure things out independently so that I can hopefully be a better person at the end of it all.

Wednesday 10/25: Per usual, I drank some delicious coffee this morning before heading to the Needles area of Canyonlands. I have some seriously rigid morning routines, most of which revolve around my coffee-making and car organizing. At this point in the trip, I have been sleeping VERY comfortably in the car for a while. I got tired of putting up a wet, cold tent. But if I stay for a while in a specific place, I put out the tent as it gives me the most space. But, I really do get a great night’s sleep in my car or the tent. I just have to rearrange certain things so that we all fit.
So, I drove to Needles not really knowing how far or long the drive actually was. Goodness, it’s pretty far out there. I wasn’t expecting it. If you go, make sure you fill up on gas! The leaves are changing around here, so it’s unbelievably beautiful. There is a lot of cattle ranching going on down there, so it was really a cool sight of valleys and these gorgeous red cliffs above. I stopped at Newspaper Rock which had amazing petroglyphs from about 2,000 years ago. They’re not exactly sure what they mean or say, but said it could be doodles about hunting. Isn’t that so cool? I stopped there for a while, just looking at every single picture and imagining who drew it. It’s just incredible to have this slice of history just sitting right there next to you. Apparently, the canyons around here are filled with petroglyphs.
I drove into the park and did a few little hikes, but unless you’re willing to go off road, there’s not all that much to do from the typical roads down there. I’m just a little gun-shy right now with the gravel/graded roads after the North Kaibab section. I think I’ll stick to the regular roads for right now. But, all that being said, I am hoping that once my friend Katie joins me, she’ll want to go backcountry camping in the Needles section. It blows the other section away, it’s absolutely amazing. So, we’ll see!

Thursday 10/26:
This was my last day by myself for a long time! I'll have friends along the rest of the way until after Texas! I did a lot of walking along the Moab Canyon trail that goes from Moab to Arches National Park. I stopped along the way and hiked up to some rocks overlooking Moab. There were petroglyphs all over the rocks up there. It's amazing to think that there are these ancient pieces of art sitting right above the town.
I went to the library, did some homework, and ate Mexican food for dinner! I just had a quiet day and even watched a movie in my car that evening! It was SUPER windy, so very nice to be inside the car rather than out in a tent.

Friday 10/27:
I have been looking forward to this morning for a long time because Katie Linamen was joining me in Moab for the weekend. Katie and I met in college and lived together for a couple years in Asheville after college. She's pure fun and joy, and I love getting to adventure with her out here. She's been living in Boulder but recently moved to Utah for a wilderness therapy job.
Katie showed up around 11am and we hiked out to Delicate Arch and got a little plan together for where to camp out for that evening. Arches is under some serious road construction, so there isn't much camping in the park this year. But we got some great intel from a park ranger about BLM land just outside of Delicate Arch. So we hiked for the day, packed up our backpacks, and walked out to camp on the BLM land! We scrambled up rocks around sunset and cooked dinner. It was a fantastic evening, Some of the mountains around there are turqoise! It's so cool, the rocks are bright turquoise. A park ranger explained that it's a change from the iron in the rock, so it's just really cool to see. We had a good campfire and headed to bed.

Saturday 10/28:
Katie and I were drinking coffee in the morning when a car came charging down the 4wd road near our camp. Katie stood up and yelled, "Hey! Hilary!" and it turns out that she had texted our friend where we were, but didn't expect her to make it out from Boulder. Hilary actually traveled to Costa Rica with Katie and I about 5 years ago, and I haven't seen her since!
We weren't quite sure what we wanted to do that day, so Hilary suggested we go off-roading in her 4-runner and find a place to camp from there. We had a BLAST! It was so different from what I imagined Katie and I would be doing, and it was incredible. We crawled up rocks in Hilary's car and went places that we wouldn't otherwise be able to get to! It was hilarious. We would get out, go on beautiful hikes throughout Arches, and then hop back in the car and fly down these crazy roads.

Sunday 10/29:
We slowly made our plan for the day and got organized. We chose a cool trail to drive out and headed towards Chicken Corners (??) and these wind caves. We took a little detour when we saw a random sign for "Base Camp" in the middle of nowhere. Out came a guy with a huge tortoise for a pet who runs a little adventure lodge in the middle of nowhere. It was hilarious. The tortoise was 16 years old and he is going to live 100-150 years! We talked a lot about tortoises with this guy and then slowly backed away and got out of there. We arrived in the windcaves and scoped it out. They're these beautiful, round, smooth boulders that you can climb up and down and all throughout. I am not sure why they're called "wind caves", but maybe it's because of all of those

holes creating sound when the wind blows? I'm not sure. But it was really remote and beautiful out there. We found a little campsite, cooked some delicious dinner, had a good campfire, and went to bed!