Captain’s Log: lost track of all dates

Day 9: To Utah

We wanted to get an early start on the drive to Utah on Saturday, it was ganna be a long drive. So I woke up real early for sunrise. Sadly, it was cloudy. But I made French toast for all the boys to get them up nice and early. We said our goodbyes to the dunes and headed west, again.

I had the first shift and again, the scenery was incredible. Western Colorado is desert-ish, but with snow caped mountains everywhere. I drove to Durango, a really awesome small town that is right near the border to Utah. Someone else took over driving, and I crashed on the couch. It was so weird because I fell asleep in the flat open desert, when I woke up we were in some canyon, with rock walls going straight up around us, then I fell back asleep. When I woke up a second time there was snow EVERYWHERE. We were at the top of some pass back at over 10,000 feet elevation, awesome, more snow. Fell asleep again and when I woke up the third time there were green rolling hills everywhere and a river running through out… it was a weird day. I took back over driving in the after noon and drove us straight into Moab, Utah.

Moab is a small town surrounded by some of the coolest natural areas I have ever seen. There are 3 National Parks within an hour of this small town. Known for some of the best mountain biking in the area, as well as some ridiculous natural rock formations and canyons everywhere. We arrived in Moab around 6pm and headed directly to Arches National Park to go walk around and enjoy sunset up there. And all I can say about Arches is “WOW!”

When the Great Sea covered most of Eastern and Central America like a million years ago it formed out a lot of canyons and mesas, then as some water froze in the rocks it made those areas weaker so when the water resided parts of rocks collapsed creating these giant arches and pillars of rock- so flippin cool.

Even the drive to Arches and through the National Park was jaw dropping. We hiked a bit, climbed around on the rocks until we found the PERFICT place for sunset. You could see most of the park one way, the deep canyons another and then the snow capped mountains off another way. So we opened up our crazy crates popped open a beer and watched nature do its thing.

We stayed there until well pass sunset. Headed back to the bus in the parking lot, then climbed up on top of the club house to watch the stars. We haven’t spent a lot of time on top of the bus due to cold, rain and snowy weather – but Moab nights were just perfect.

We made the mistake of waiting until it was completely dark to try and find our camping spot for the night. Sean had read online about a lot of camp spots close to some rock climbing that were pretty cheap. What we didn’t know is that to get to these camp sites, you had to drive about 10 miles down a very small gravel road on the edge of a cliff- so great for the club house at night. It was intense, and scary at times. Here are some pics of what we saw the next day as we left the camp site. Maybe it was good that we couldn’t see how dangerous it was…

It was real late and completely dark before we just found some place to park. There were other cars in a small gravel lot, so we just parked. We couldn’t find a place to pay, weren’t even sure where we were. We saw to guys walking toward the latrines and we started asking them about the area and them selves. Next thing we knew they were joining us on the bus, drinking a beer hanging out. They were just graduated med students using the month break before residency to come out west to climb. They happened to be from Georgia/Tennessee area. They gave us a lot of info about Moab area and we had a grand time making more friends.

Later it was back on top of the bus to watch the stars. They were incredible. Sean had his first time to see the milky way.