In late May 2020, Kathy and I decided to road trip to Moab Utah and enjoy the spring weather there. This was the height of the initial phases of the Pandemic, and we didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be a great trip. We took my pickup truck and although it was a long 1500 mile drive, it was fairly pleasant. We stopped late the first night in Denver on a cold night to an empty Marriott.
When we got to Moab, however it was wonderful. Warm and sunny. There were large crowds of people coming into town. The only negative were the national parks were closed - but reopening on our last day.
On our first day we drove the truck out to Kane Creek canyon and up to Hurrah Pass. It’s about 17 miles out in the canyon to the trails and about 5 miles up the trail to the pass. You start out driving out of town along the Colorado River then turn into the canyon - with it’s 1000 foot vertical rock walls. It was Kathy’s first time in the area, and the views and rock formations are spectacular. It’s not too tough of an offroad drive up to the pass, a little steep and rocky in spots. I was careful not to damage the truck because we had to drive it back home again. We got some great pictures and ran the drone in the canyon.
The next day we rented a side by side - the machine we were supposed to rent was broken so they gave us a brand new Kawasaki Teryx 1000 instead. What a machine! We went back out to the Canyon and started down the Kane Creek trail. That’s where I had gotten stuck in quicksand on my motorcycle in 2013, so I wanted to show Kathy the remote area. It’s a rough trail and we quickly got into deep sand and really rough terrain, and I didn’t want to get the machine stuck out there alone - so we turned back around (by the end of the day, the stuff that turned us around would have been easy in that machine). So we took the Hurrah Pass trail and went over the pass and on to the end of the trail past Chicken Corners. It’s a long way from Hurrah Pass to Chicken corners - up and down steep terrain - over rocks creeks and washes. At the end you are up on a cliff 1200 feet above the Colorado River - Chicken Corners itself is a series of tight turns right on the edge of the cliff. It’s not that hard, but it would be terrifying for somebody afraid of heights. It’s directly across the river from Thelma and Louise Point - where they filmed the famous final scene of the movie. We had a nice lunch overlooking the river.
I was getting better and more confident driving our machine, so the return trip was a little faster and bumpier. We could drive right by the decked out Jeeps crawling over the rocks. At one point there was a Ford e350 2 wheel drive van stuck in the trail - with a bunch of other vehicles trying to pull it out - I have no idea how they got that van out that far - nor how in the world they were going to get it back - it was beyond where I would go with my 4 wheel drive truck.
When we got back to town we still had a few hours left on our rental, so I said we should go try the sand flats - which is an area of petrified sand dunes overlooking Moab. It’s famous for mountain biking and 4 wheel trails. The most famous trail is called “hells revenge” and it’s a doozy. The entrance is straight up this knife edge hill that goes into the area. Literally the first two minutes of the trail are almost terrifying. Then it gets even worse. you drive through a little sandy flat area and you come to a hill that is steeper than anything I’ve ever seen a vehicle go up. You can see the tire tracks going up, but it’s hard to believe you can do it. I put the Kawasaki in low range and hit the gas and pretty soon we were climbing at what seemed like a crazy angle - you are worried about flipping over backwards. For the next 2 hours or so it’s a series of those crazy up and down hills. Going down one is even more terrifying than going up. In some places they have some even more adventurous obstacles - with ominous names - we avoided them but watched some people at a place called Mickey’s hot tub.
As if the trail wasn’t hard enough, the last couple miles is down this remote series of rocky steps or drop offs - every one of them seems to be an obstacle that will wreck or flip your machine, and they keep coming one after another after another. It was crazy. We finally reached the end of the trail and were happy to have the machine and our bodies left in one piece. We got to the rental store with 15 minutes to spare.
The next day we took a nice drive in the truck a few miles from town to a place called onion creek. It’s another canyon trail that goes up into the mountains and crosses back and forth across a little stream several times, the trail itself was more gravel road than trail - not rocky or rough like the previous day’s trails. It’s very strange in that you would go around a corner and the terrain would change completely - totally different kinds and colors of rocks. The last bit is very steep and sandy and when you get to the top - it’s totally unexpected - you pop out into this huge flat valley which goes for miles - it literally has farms on it - with more mountains and trails in the distance. While we were trying to decide if we should continue or turn around, another couple which we saw the day before came by and told us the trail goes another 40 miles and there are all kinds of neat things to see, but they said it was a little rough for the truck. We decided to head back to the hotel.
That evening we drove out to Dead Horse pass state park. It’s on the opposite side of the river from chicken corners, on the next layer up the canyons above Thelma and Louise point and has a spectacular panoramic view. On the way back we drove down Long Canyon road - a very steep and rocky trail back down toward the river. I had ridden my motorcycle down it in 2013, and now it seemed even steeper and rougher than back then. At one point you drive under this giant boulder that has fallen over the road, and there I scraped the bottom of my truck pretty hard on a rock, but we were lucky it hit the skid plate and didn’t damage anything.
The following day we rented the Teryx again and trailered it out of town a few miles to a place called M&M which stands for Monitor and Merrimac named for two civil war ironclad boats that resemble some of the rock formations. We again had a great time. Before we even got to the trail, we came across this area of dinosaur tracks. According to the sign they were discovered in 2014 and they are one of the largest collections of dinosaur tracks in North America - there are over 400 individual tracks here from something like 30 different species. They are also 112 million years old! That’s amazing.
The trails in this area were really fun - some sandy, a couple wet and muddy spots, and long straights - they said there are 900 miles of trails in this area alone. We did about 50 miles of them. After we did the loop there we decided to drive to a place called Gemini Bridges - where there are two twin arches side by side. Apparently there are videos of people jumping between them, but that seems pretty crazy to me - if you fall it’s hundreds of feet down into rock - instant death. We finished with a trip into a place called blue canyon- which ended suddenly on a high cliff halfway up the canyon wall with only a few inches to turn around. By that point we were pretty desensitized to the heights and I was pretty good at driving the machine - so it was no real problem.
The final day was when the national parks would open again - it got very crowded in town the night before - We got up in the morning and packed up as we were going to drive back to Denver that evening. By the time we got to Arches at 9:30 am it was closed again due to too may people! So we drove about 30 miles over to Canyonlands park. It’s not quite as popular as Arches, but to me it’s more spectacular. We saw several of the various scenes and then drove back to Arches - at this point it was open again and we stopped at several of the sights over the next couple hours. The only problem was it had gotten very hot that day - 95 degrees and Kathy got pretty tired from the heat, so we couldn’t do much walking. Still it was enjoyable. That evening we drove late into the night back past Denver and the next day the long drive back to Indy. No troubles and it was a great trip.
