Arches National Park, Moab, Utah

So my little sister came to visit me for her spring break and we did plenty of awesome things and had plenty of awesome adventures but the craziest adventure that we had was our trip to MOAB.

For those of you who don't know, Moab, Utah is home to many national parks including Arches National park and is like the mountain biking capital of the USA. It's a huge red desert with crazy cowboy-like scenery, flat-top mountain-high rock formations, and... tumble weeds! It's a land of jack-rabbits, horned lizards, and buzzards. The place is pretty much a different world.


So Brigid and I woke up mad early and started our drive. I couldn't handle some of that desert landscape. There is something about traveling through a place you have never been to before but especially something about traveling through a place when you have never even seen or experienced anything like it before. I felt like I was entering an old wild-west movie set. It seemed like any minute a group of bandits on black and brown horses were going to ride alongside my subaru station wagon and try to rob us. It's beautiful out there.

















When we finally got to the city of Moab we did our best to follow the directions that I printed out to Arches National Park. Our plan was to spend the whole day there and then camp somewhere out in the desert that night. Our directions took us through this dirt road and so I thought, hey.. maybe? I followed it because it seemed like an ok road, there were signs and all and we kept passing people camping out and what not. It was ON the directions. Next thing I knew I was driving on rock and down these little hills and what not and I wasn't sure if I could get back.....


THIS is where we ended up! You can see how steep it is! We had to get over rock ledges!

But...with a little persuasion and a little insanity I managed to get my Sube to climb up these rocks and, well, scrape like the dickens. For a second there I thought we were stuck forever. Stupid city girls out in the desert...haha

So we turned around and got out of that mess. Eventually we found the entrance to Arches. While waiting in line to get park info we got ATTACKED BY TUMBLEWEEDS. This was hilarious because, until then, every time we saw a tumble weed we'd be like "look a tumble weed! Good luck!". We quickly changed our opinions of tumble weeds after we got attacked. There must have been 60 tumble weeds all blowing at once and hitting everything in site. We're not talking small tumble weeds here, folk... we're talking tumble weeds as tall as our car. I had heard rumers of tumble weeds breaking people's headlights and stuff but never believed it. I'm a believer now. No damage was done to my car thank God but we did get a good laugh out of watching cyclist DIVE out of the way and put their hands over their heads as the plants rolled by. Welcome to the desert, right?










Once in Arches, we had a great time. The temperature started out being pretty hot like a little over 80... but it kept threatening to rain. As the day went on it got pretty cloudy and then colder and colder. We didn't let that stop us though. On we went.









































































Once we had enough and left, we ate in town at a mexican restaurant, which was awesome, and then went to this CRAZY little fossil shop.






















After our long day in Moab we headed out to find a place to camp. It was already really dark and getting colder and colder so we decided to just drive back instead. (We weren't exactly the most prepared to camp anyway haha). I figured that we are only about 4 hours from SLC so I can just make it back and if I don't then we can just crash in the car or something. No worries.

So we start to drive and it starts to snow. Yes, it STARTED SNOWING. The snow actually got SO BAD that we had to pull over because we couldn't see a THING. WHITE-OUT in the desert... no joke. I was amazed. After trying over and over to push through it we finally decided that it would be best if we just stopped once and for all and slept in the car. We did this and then woke up a few hours later. There was a foot and a half of snow all over the place.

The rest of the drive home was totally different. It was like we were driving through a whole different state or county. Everything that was desert, red, and scalding hot was now tundra, white and freezing. Amazing.






When we got back we were exhausted but also exhilarated. It was an amazing trip to say the LEAST.

We could be closer than you know,
Chelsea