Moab--Land of the Towering Red Rocks

So it begins:

The exciting portion of spring break consisted of two days. I was extremely productive all of the other days and it wasn't much fun at all, but those two days I relaxed and had a wonderful time in my favorite place!

So the plan was to leave by 9 so that we could get things done and perhaps go on a hike before it became too dark. As anyone who knows my family will tell you, we are chronically late. So 9 turned into about 1. But we still made it out the door! We were only staying for one night, so there wasn't anything real packing involved, but nonetheless we took several hours preparing.

We spent the two and a half hour ride talking and singing and talking. I love my mom. :) We also spent some time laughing, and a lot of time reminiscing.

Once we made it to Moab we sent ourselves on a mission. Every other time we have gone there have been huge groups and all of us just want to get to the hotel, eat, and crash. And we've never had the patience to check out different hotels to see if there was something better than the place we have stayed for the past several years. So we checked out hotels. For hours. We drove up and down main looking at everything. We skipped some and went in to look at others, we chose our favorites and took in every consideration. My dad requires lots of parking so we can park the truck and trailer. Everyone likes a pool, and Amy wants a sunny one for tanning. We want an executive suite so that we can house the whole family, and my dad likes a separate room. They have to serve breakfast, and preferably the pool hours should be late. We looked at if they had hot tubs, how private the pool was, how comfortable beds were, how clean.... It was a very long day. and by the end I confused all of them and couldn't remember a thing. But I can now say that I know everything about the hotels in Moab. EVERYTHING.

We chose one for the night that we liked, although it couldn't be used for our Annual Spring Break Trips (Not good parking). We relaxed for a minute and then found a place to eat. We settled with Zax, a yummy pizza place and I got all you can eat pizza and salad--very delicious. We spent some time at the hot tub and talked to some college kids on their spring break. And then we hooked up my laptop and watched "You've Got Mail" while we fell asleep. It was a full day, but wonderful. :)

The next day we actually did some hiking. We decided to hike our favorite trail named Corona Arch, which is outside of Arches. It's a pretty good hike, and it's lots of fun to do. There are a few cables put in to help stabilize you in a few places and some steps cut out to help you walk up. So it makes you feel very adventurous, scaling slickrock and pulling on ropes. I'm too chicken to do all the real stuff. :)

I realized on this hike just how badly I've been affected by dad's accident last year. Moab is my favorite place, but it has been tainted slightly by a bad memory. I've healed from it, but I will be forever cautious because of it. While hiking this trail there are some semi-scary parts and I was awakened to the fact that if I fell or slipped here, I would die. There is a pretty good 100 foot drop once you get on top of the shelf, although the ledge takes 30 feet to round off. We were really safe, but the fact that absolutely anything can happen, frightened me. I became fully aware of how high it is, and all of the other times I didn't notice at all and was completely carefree. A lot can happen in a year.

Corona Arch

But we made it! And had lots of fun and good times!

One thing on my mom's bucket list was to see Dead Horse Point, a State Park that is about a half hour drive out of Moab. We'd attempted once, but it was simply too long a drive for our tired bodies. This visit, however, found us with a lot of time on our hands and so we decided to make the trip, and it was so worth it! You drive for such a long time and it looks like you are going nowhere and the towering mesas you are expecting are invisible. In fact you are driving on top of the mesa and all the sudden you can see for miles and miles and can see the Colorado River, the LaSal Mountains and beyond.

It's so gorgeous, even on a cloudy overcast day like this one. The distance from the top where you are standing to the level of the Colorado River is 2,000 feet. 2,000 feet! It's so amazing! It was gorgeous beyond belief! The winding river, the miles of red rock and mesas...

When I was looking I also got a taste of what it would be like to be a cowboy. Can you imagine living in the old west where the nearest town is a mile away, and everyone rides, trades, and sells horses? Can you imagine being the cowboy to discover this place? It has been completely untouched by time, and what I see now is just the same as what they saw then.

Nature is so peaceful. No cars, honking horns, yelling people. No laptops, movies, ipods. Just water, trees, and dirt. It's simple, and beautiful, and wonderful.

The Legend of Dead Horse Point:

Dead Horse Point is a peninsula of rock atop sheer sandstone cliffs. The peninsula is connected to the mesa by a narrow strip of land called the neck. There are many stories about how this high promontory of land received its name.

According to one legend, around the turn of the century the point was used as a corral for wild mustangs roaming the mesa top. Cowboys rounded up these horses, herded them across the narrow neck of land and onto the point. The neck, which is only 30-yards-wide, was then fenced off with branches and brush. This created a natural corral surrounded by precipitous cliffs straight down on all sides, affording no escape. Cowboys then chose the horses they wanted and let the culls or broomtails go free. One time, for some unknown reason, horses were left corralled on the waterless point where they died of thirst within view of the Colorado River, 2,000 feet below.