Moab -
April 2009
We
decided it
was time for a road trip and took spring break off to drive down and
see
Jon and Jennifer. They've been living in Moab for a couple
years
now working seasonally for the park service and Jon is also
volunteering
with the Grand County Sheriff Search and Rescue unit and just passed
his last EMT test. Needless to say
they know the parks around Moab pretty well and make great guides.
I hate to fly, not out of fear, I just don't like to deal with
airports / airlines and being packed on cheap cattle flights so our
general rule for travel is; if it takes less than 20 hours to go by car
we prefer to drive.
We left Whidbey on Saturday morning, stopped for dinner in Boise at the Goodwood Barbecue Company and spent the
night in Twin Falls Idaho. We arrived in Moab late afternoon on Sunday. The
drive down was beautiful - clear weather and no traffic, pretty relaxing actually
and watching all the open space fly by really helps zap your head and gets us both in vacation mode.
Mile post 87 - I-84 Idaho
Soldier Pass - Utah
Day 1 -
Fiery Furnace
Fiery
Furnace is
in Arches National park.
There are two ways to hike here: Pick
up a permit - limited number available each day, or do a ranger led
hike. Typically the ranger led hikes are booked two to four
days
ahead. Jennifer has a staff permit and can take guests in any
time. She leads this hike all summer so knows the routes
through
this area pretty well and has alternate routes not on the usual tour.
The
hike starts out pretty easy but ends up
being a
scramble through a maze of narrow sandstone "fins"... It pretty
much all up, down,
sideways plus some squeezing and crawling through narrow passageways...
You use your hands a lot. This four four mile loop seems more
like ten by the time you finish...
Surprise
Arch

After
a
quick drive across the park later in the afternoon we capped
the
day off with a quick 2 mile hike up to Delicate Arch...

Day 2 - Newspaper Rock & Canyonlands National Park
Just a quick stop off the side of the road on the way to Canyonlands
National Park - Newspaper Rock is a petroglyph panel etched in
sandstone that depicts nearly 2000 years of human activity in this
area. There are no known methods for dating rock art and scholars are
still undecided on interpreting the meaning and have yet to decipher
them...
Then on to the Squaw Flats Trail head and a hike up one Canyon, over
the top and back down another intersecting canyon for an 8 mile loop...




Jon entering "the crack"
Finished
the day with a side trip to more rock art - An unmarked location just
outside the park.
>> Continue to Page 2 - Day 3 and 4 > >
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