Moab, Utah

Apparently we left Yellowstone a day early – we should have double-checked the schedule before but oh well, it all worked out well as we were able to get tickets for the highly coveted Fiery Furnace hike at Arches National Park. If we had left the day after, we would have been out of luck.

Partition Arch

Moab is an interesting town with a population of 5000. It is a tourist town with lots of outdoor activities. The day time average temperature has been hovering around 35C-39C. You will need to drink 4L of water per day, whether you are thirsty or not. This is to prevent dehydration or heat stroke. The air here is dry – so dry that I have a hard time removing my contact lenses at the end of the day. The air-conditioning in the 5th wheel has been running all day and night to keep it nice and cool. On the first day we made the mistake of turning it off while we were out exploring – it took forever to cool it down again. In the evenings, we would get really strong winds followed by lightning and rain. Fortunately this weather never interfered with our daytime activities.

Besides visiting the National Parks in the Moab region, a popular activity here is 4×4 or mountain biking in the Sand Flats Recreation area – famous for its slick rock. We joined a tour where Jeff and I drove our own UTV (side-by-side ATV). So the girls were on one UTV and the boys went on another UTV. We had so much FUN! It was a quite scary at first, especially when we were driving up the steep incline on slick rock. You think that the tires are going to slip from right under you… fortunately that was not the case, the rocks are not slick at all, in fact quite grippy. They call it slick rock from back in the days when the horses would slip because of the horseshoes, the term stuck on. We have some cool dash-cam footage of the UTV adventure but the videos do not do it any justice, you don’t get a very good perspective of how steep the trail is. And they don’t call the trail Hell’s Revenge for no reason!

The boys in a UTV

In the Sand Flats Recreation area overlooking the Colorado River

We did the obligatory hikes in Arches National Park and saw many.. you got it, arches. Driving through the park is a surreal experience, you feel so tiny driving by these colossal red stone formations. Many of the formations are named… quite simply, nothing scientific, no fancy latin root word. For example, Owl Rock, Balancing Rock, Ham leg rock.. you get the idea 🙂

Landscape Arch

The best hike in Arches is the ranger-led hike to Fiery Furnace. This activity is usually sold out months in advance, but because of the road construction in the park, they only sell the tickets up to 7 days in advance at the Visitor Center, which fortunately worked out for us. Fiery Furnace is a beautiful yet confusing place. It is very easy to get lost and a GPS will not help you as it is very difficult to get a satellite signal from all those towering sandstone walls. In fact our ranger has been lost in the area on 3 previous occasions. The number of people allowed in Fiery Furnace is very limited – it is a sensitive environment that the Park is protecting. In fact many of the hand rails and signs from the 1960s have been removed in an effort to return to its natural state.

Fiery Furnace

Hiking through Fiery Furnace was extremely enjoyable. You are away from the crowds and you see arches and formations not many people do. We did interesting things, crawling through a crack, a reverse crab-walked down a steep edge, traverse side to side facing the wall and then flipped around to traverse side to side where our bodies were only perhaps a foot from the ground, that was quite interesting! We learned so much from the ranger – about the environment, the plants and animals in the area and even about himself.

Inside Fiery Furnace

Twin Arch. Also known as Skull Arch if you look at it upside down

Many people try to catch a sunrise or sunset while here in Moab. Star gazing is another popular activity but we’re just not night owls so we never really got into it. According the the person at the Visitor Center, he said Deadhorse Point has the best sunrise in the US, better than Hawaii. So, at 5am we set off for Deadhorse Point…. what a name right?! When we arrived, the area was still lit by the full moon and it was quite nice to take in this view without the hordes of tourists. Soon the Sun started to rise and we could see the band of orange and red sky behind the clouds.

Sunrise at Deadhorse Point

Deadhorse Point

After Deadhorse Point, we made our way to explore Canyonlands National Park. There is a place called Mesa Arch which according to guidebooks is where you catch the best sunrise.

Mesa Arch, just after sunrise

After spending quite a number of days in the Moab area, we are ready to make our way to the next stop – Monument Valley. It’s going to be another scorcher there!