When your best friend asks if you want to go on a trip to a place you LOVE and can do two of your favorite activities why would you even hesitate? Well I sure didn't! Megan wanted to head out of town over UEA and suggested Moab because she hadn't been there before. Well as you may know, Moab is the mecca for Jeeping and also hiking. Andy and I jumped on board immediately. We were stoked! She even agreed to go jeeping with us, score!
Andy, Megan and I headed to Moab last Thursday after work. Friday we went to Arches to see if we could get in on the Fiery Furnace guided tour because it was booked online. Sure enough they only had 1 cancellation so the three of us couldn't go. Megan and I went over to the gift store and Andy came back and said score, we are in... but we are doing it on our own and they could only get us in on Sunday which actually worked out great. So we headed into Arches to look around and did a small hike around the Windows. Then we went up the Colorado river to the Moab Winery (Red Rock Cliffs Winery) for lunch. It was a beautiful area.
That evening we went back to Arches to hike to Delicate Arch for sunset. It was an awesome experience and was super popular. There were SO many photographers and foreigners i was amazed. Megan wanted to get a photo under the arch so we headed over that direction only to get yelled at by the many people waiting for the perfect picture (it would have taken less than a minute!) Andy snapped a quick photo of us as close as we could get and then we watched the sun set and the moon rise on the LaSal Mountains. It was great evening. The hike was harder than I thought but the hike down was fun with the full moon. There were people hiking up when we were on the way down with kids, in the dark - crazy! We went to Zax for dinner and margaritas and then crashed at the hotel.
Friday we met a guy from work and his friends and went jeeping on the Poison Spider Mesa, Golden Spike and Gold Bar Rim trails. It was a long day but we had a lot of fun. Andy drove most of the way but I managed to get a little drive time behind the wheel. My jeep proves to be pretty good at what she does (of course there is always room and reason for more upgrades). Moab is amazing for jeeping not only because of the great trails but the scenery is surreal. It's just a calming place to be while having a great off road adventure. We finished the night at Pasta Jays with dinner for 5.
Sunday we work up and headed back to Arches to delve into the Fiery Furnace. I'd admit, I was a little nervous about getting lost since they typically recommend a guided tour. We had a lot of fun though and we even managed to see 5 arches in there. It was an amazing area and I'm sure we only covered a small portion of the actual furnace so I'm sure someday Andy and I will be back to conquer some more when we have a full day. We headed out of Arches for home around 11.
It was a great weekend with my two best friends. What more can I ask for?
This is the picture of us next to the Arch!
This is the same photo. The one on the left is what it actually looked like. When I played around with it in LightRoom and took the shadows away to show the amount of people that were there I was amazed... and I was standing in the middle of the crowd so times that by about two.
