Today was the day that we would leave the rocky peaks of Colorado and find ourselves surrounded by the red rocks of Utah. The change in scene was almost instant, we rounded past the Utah state sign and suddenly all we could see was red. It was fabulous and quite akin to the red rocks of Northern Australia.
We had picked Moab as a base to explore some of the national parks as it’s known as being quite the adventure hub. However when booking a campsite, we were struggling to find much available. We were a little naive in not knowing that we were in high season for the area (October) and even got turned away from Arches on our first attempt to enter the park as it was too full. We managed to book a spot on a site in town that was pretty tight but proximity to everything was great. We later learned that there was Celtic festival happening that weekend and were amused to see various Scotsmen walking around in their kilts.
After failing to find a mountain bike adventure in Colorado, and with some research online, we had our sights on picking up some bikes in Moab. I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with watching downhill mountain bike videos on the internet and many of them are filmed right here. We tried talking to a few shops in the town before we decided to hire from Bike Fiend. This bike shop was female owned and we were lucky enough to be served by the owner Christie. She was great in helping us select the right bikes and then the right trail for our ability. They run a shuttle service to the top of the trail for those who don’t have transport, which was great for us as we have no way of carrying bikes currently.
We met at the shop nice and early the next morning, excited to get back on two wheels. We’ve both mountain biked before but never together so we were excited to share the moment. Christies husband took us up to the trail and gave us heaps of information on the local area before leaving us to take on the ‘Falcon Flow’ on our own. We’d selected a pretty intermediate trail considering we both have pretty good bike handling skills but wow…we massively over estimated our skill set. The trail may ‘flow’ for the more advanced but we were a tad slower and whole lot more cautious for any flow to be taking place! The scenery was incredible though and so nice to be cycling somewhere other than Swinley forest or on the roads of Berkshire.
We cycled back into town and gave our bikes back, (after James had a quick attempt at Slick Rock, a more famous trail that Red Bull have featured before) and made our way to find a campsite nearer to Arches National Park. I’m not kidding when I say it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The Colorado river runs along one side of Arches and there are at least 5 or 6 campsites adorning the riverside. We got lucky and found what felt like the last spot available as we had at least 10 more vehicles pull in all through the afternoon and early evening, looking for somewhere. The site was pretty basic with just a pit toilet so we actually set up camp and then snuck back into our previous campsite to use their showers (needs must!) to freshen up after our bike ride
It was the next morning that we were surprised when turned away from Arches at 9am. We decided to use the time to explore some of the other parks nearby including Dead Horse State Park and Canyonlands National Park before heading back and attempting to get up for sunrise the next morning so we didn’t miss out on one of the more famous tourist destinations here. With a 5am alarm (sorry James) we made our way down and yes were able to enter Arches second time lucky. We’d picked the Delicate Arch trail to do at sunrise as it’s meant to be beautiful so with a sense of adventure setting off in the dark with our head torches on, we made our way with around 50-100 other people doing the same thing.
Luckily the trail is big enough that it felt spread out and we were like a sea of ants bobbing along with the head torches making our way up to this beautiful arch. We got there at dawn and enjoyed taking lots of pictures before a selfish couple decided to go sit in the middle of the arch for at least 20 minutes, ruining everyone else’s snaps.
We checked out a couple of the other spots in Arches before making our way to a new campground on the other side of Canyonlands National Park for an evening of chill and watching you tube videos on how to use our camera properly.