Car Appreciation Day

Warning: gratuitous use of photos ahead.

We left Denver, realized just how big the state of Colorado is, and were completely dumbstruck by the beauty (and variety) of the landscape unfolding before us. There were molded hills of smooth stone, jagged cuts through rock exposing every layer - red, tan, brown. And even within those colors, you saw the entire rainbow as you got close enough – red bushes, green shrubs, yellow grasses, blue hints in the stone face. For a long while, the highway followed the river as it wound through a cut between the cliff faces. We couldn’t help but think about the importance of mountain passes back in the day (mostly in the context of elementary school Oregon Trail games, if we're being honest). The cliffs would have been daunting (but really impossible) in a wagon. As we crossed each mountain line, we noticed another thing that hasn’t changed – each valley offered a sudden flourish of buildings, like an outpost town, ready to supply you with provisions, hardware, and a place to rest, while between them lay long stretches of raw, rocky land. Who owns all those open square miles? Another fun sighting was the "2 Kool 4 Skool" bus, which we had seen the day before parked outside Rocky Mountain National Park. We looked it up, and it turns out it's a school bus converted over the past year by a family with some serious wanderlust. 

Can you spot our pika friend enjoying the view?

A few hours and hundred miles later, we settled into our new lodging in Moab, Utah and set out to explore the small town. To say the town is geared toward tourism is an understatement, as the annual number of visitors has climbed to 3 million and the number of tourist lodgings has increased by more than 50% in the last 5 years. This, of course, is largely driven by the visitors to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.

Begrudging husband is begrudging

Interestingly enough, though, it’s also a college town, home of Utah State University Moab. College in Moab would have been a very different experience than the one I had in a New England college town-city hybrid – one spent breathing in the outdoors, perfecting mountain biking skills, and studying in the reflection of the red rocks. Which leads me to our next realization: though Josh and I plan to hike here, it seems that the cool thing to do is mountain bike. As we meandered through the small downtown and stopped for a bite to eat (at the one and only Quesadilla Mobilla), all of the buzz at surrounding tables was about wheels and miles and bike trails. Guess that's on the agenda for our next trip out here (with every place we stop, our future trip to do list grows longer).

Still, there’s plenty for the hikers. In the evening, we headed to Arches National Park to take in a couple of the more accessible viewpoints and catch the sunset. Driving into the park makes you feel like you can’t look enough directions at once. There’s too much to see, too much to miss. Eroding columns of rock look like animals, faces, or monuments depending on the angle and the lighting. We passed Park Avenue, La Sal Mountains, Courthouse Towers, and so many more whose whimsical names didn't make the map.

We stopped at Balanced Rock, a piece of stone that weighs as much as 1,300 cars and sits nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty. Formed from harder stone sitting atop an eroding layer of mudstone, Balanced Rock is doomed. 

Its smaller sidekick (the aptly named Chip off the Old Block) toppled 40 years ago and Balanced Rock's own clock has been ticking ever since. From there, we headed to The Windows, hiking the “primitive trail” around its periphery. We saw Turret Arch glowing in the light of sunset and settled in to watch our burning star fall below the horizon.

The North and South Windows

Stranger standing in Turret Arch

Of course, when we got home and met the father and son sharing our AirBnB, they told us they biked “the whole enchilada” – which turns out to be a trail called The Whole Enchilada.

Spotted: Runaway truck ramps. During a seven-mile stretch of seven-degree downhill, the highway shoulder was punctuated with regular runaway truck ramps. If your brakes overheat or fail, you pull onto the steep upward ramp until all of your kinetic energy becomes potential energy… and you can finally stop panicking.