Adventures in Moab

This is the land of outdoor adventure and we are fitting in nicely. Everybody is so incredibly friendly and we have so much in common with everyone we meet. Karlo and I were made to be in a place like this.

On our first day I got up long before the sun came up. This always happens when I travel West and it simply killed me that I was up, wide awake and pacing around the hotel room, with no plans to go out and shoot at sunrise. My problem was that I didn't have any idea where to go. It's not as easy as . . . say being in Maine. All you need to do there is open a map and head for water with Easterly exposure. But here you're surrounded my huge rock formations or mountains and sunrise and sunset are a bit more tricky. Add to that the problem of this place being enormous. You may look at a map and decide that a park is close by, only to find out it's a 60 mile drive. Nothing is really 'close' here. So I decided to save myself a whole lot of frustration and just forgo the picture taking in favor of lounging around the room. I have to keep reminding myself that this trip is NOT about the photos.

After a leisurely breakfast we headed to Canyonlands National Park. The cool (or maybe I should say scary) part is that the drive to this park was the same bike route we would take the following day. The one that requires us to pedal up hill for the first 25 miles. Holy Lord, after we drove it in the car I was terrified and ready to just pack up and go home. "Hills" out here and "hills" at home are two totally different beasts. It would be a miracle if I could make this ride, especially considering it was the first of the season. God help me.


We spent all morning in the park taking nice easy hikes and snapping some photos along the way. None of the pictures were all that great as every photographer knows that taking pictures in the middle of the day is a no-no. But I didn't really have many other choices.

At one point we were hiking up some sort of slick rock butte. I didn't realize how technically tricky it would be to get up and down. The rock was just bald and super slippery where there was the slightest bit of sand on it. I was panicking over the fact that I was carrying my brand new camera. I didn't care about hurting myself falling (maybe it would get me out of biking) but I didn't want to break the new camera. I got 90% of the way up when I flat out refused to go any further. Now I had to figure out how the heck to get down. It wasn't pretty. I had to resort to scrambling on all fours and shimming down on my butt. Yeah, I'm not too fond of the Moab "slick rock" and there's no way in heck you would catch me mountain biking on it.


The day was really nice and leisurely. We visited a second park called Dead Horse Point. The name wasn't too appealing, but the views were amazing. We couldn't stay out too long because we needed to get to the bike shop to pick up our bikes. So much for sunset pictures, but this trip is not about the photos (helps to keep reminding myself of that!)


Two hours seemed to disappear. Time always gets warped in bike shops and travels at twice the speed it normally does. After spending over an hour in the shop we had to go back to the hotel to set the bikes up - put our own seats and pedals on and get everything all customized us for our bodies. Karlo set my seat height and handlebar pitch and sent me out in the parking for a test drive. I rode for 15 seconds and came back to tell him that we have a serious problem. I instantly fell in love with this seriously expensive carbon fiber frame bike. It was so sweet and I dreaded going home to the bike that I once loved. It was just not going to compare to this baby. Suddenly I was so excited to ride the next day I couldn't wait . . .