Moab UT

Moab’s unique combination of beautiful red rock scenery, two national parks, and the cool waters of the Colorado River has made it one of the most sought after destinations in the southwest. Let Moab be your base camp for world famous mountain biking, hiking, four wheel driving, or river trips of any length and experience level. For a more relaxing visit just sit back and enjoy the scenery along the beautiful scenic drives in our national parks or on Moab’s three Scenic Byways. 

 Moab

We met the Kessler’s in Moab on the northern end near the Colorado River. Or a flatlander, like me, the Colorado was a river moving through a deep gorge called the Grand Canyon. But in Moab it was just on it’s way from, where else, Colorado, and served as a brown-chalk ribbon of water through what must be described and incredibly barren land. Ann managed to find accommodations for us at a camping facility along the Colorado, owned by a friend of a relative. Yes, you needed to know someone who knew someone to find a place to land for the night. Moab, I discovered, is an incredibly popular place, certainly the kick-off point to other sites in southern Utah.  (I bought some hiking shoes just before we left and saw a shoe model called the “Moab”. I told the sales clerk, “Hey, that’s where we are going tomorrow”. He looked at me with a “duh” look, like “so what”. That’s about what I was thinking too but then why did a shoe manufacturer name a model after a city? Hmm…. I soon found out.)

The map below provides a sense of location for Moab. It's "way down there" if you're from Indiana.

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You can get a larger sense of terrain perspective in this Google Earth view.
 
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We met the Kessler’s in Moab on the northern end near the Colorado River. For a flatlander, like me, the Colorado was a river moving through a deep gorge called the Grand Canyon. But in Moab it was just on it’s way from, where else, Colorado, and served as a brown-chalk ribbon of water through what must be described and incredibly barren land. Ann managed to find accommodations for us at a camping facility along the Colorado, owned by a friend of a relative. Yes, you needed to know someone who knew someone to find a place to land for the night. Moab, I discovered, is an incredibly popular place, certainly the kick-off point to other sites in southern Utah.  (I bought some hiking shoes just before we left and saw a shoe model called the “Moab”. I told the sales clerk, “Hey, that’s where we are going tomorrow”. He looked at me with a “duh” look, like “so what”. That’s about what I was thinking too but then why did a shoe manufacturer name a model after a city? Hmm…. I soon found out.)

The Moab Valley RV Resort is the small balloon (A) located next to the Colorado. A high levee, however, prevented easy viewing access to the river. The campgrounds were incredibly nice. One camper complained, however, that they had to move their tent every two nights because the sprinklers ran at night and tents (on grass) needed to relocate so all sections of the land were well watered. Well, how else will the grass be properly watered? Duh.

You can see from this 3D image that the entire area is super hilly and equally brown dirt. But it's interesting if only because of the contrast with the Midwest landscape.

Moab is a small city, by Midwest standards, about the size of Frankfort or Delphi Indiana. But it is unique. School had started so few families with children were visiting. What we discovered, however, was that most of the visitors (perhaps 80% or more) were Europeans. Yep. At dinner each night (Zax, below) we looked around our restaurant and listened to a range of languages that were mostly not English. Tour buses were everywhere too but, strangely, the town did not seem crowded. Maybe it was the ultra wide main street that was so clean. Maybe it was the fact that the town did not have a carnie atmosphere but instead seemed to focused entirely on outdoor activities. Another “duh” moment for me.

We had dinner two nights at Zax.

We went to one of the two town grocery stores to buy lunch and breakfast foods only to be swamped by customers from tour buses. Was it bad? Not really and if you had German or Dutch as a language in school you could listen in on the many conversations. But what got me were the incredible crowds in the store at different times of the day and night. Early one evening I asked a stock clerk “is it always this busy?”, meaning how late in the evening do the crowds thin out. His answer was “it’s this busy until the week before Christmas, then it slows down through February and picks up again in March.” Really? Man, I’d like to have this grocery store with this kind of volume. Turns out it was actually owned by Kroger. Another lesson in buying groceries (not too unlike Trader Joe’s on a Friday evening – but every day and evening.)