Red Rock, Red Necks

Winter Semester was very busy this year so Andrea and I decided to take a quick vacation for ourselves just after we finished our finals. We had a short weekend between finals and when I started Spring classes and we decided on going to Moab for two days since #1 - I am in love with Moab and #2 - Andrea had never been to Southern Utah before. It also happens to be only a 3 hour drive from Provo so that was convenient as well. We decided to "camp" at an RV park that my brothers and I had to resort to staying at a few years back that actually has turned out to be our favorite place to stay at when we visit Moab. They have relatively cheap camping plots in the middle of a huge RV park so it's not exactly out in the wild but it comes with incredible scenery, running water, grill, patio, and showers (all that no one uses because they already have these in their giant bus-sized RV's). Before getting to Moab though, we made a quick stop at Goblin Valley. Andrea loves the movie "Galaxy Quest" that had a scene filmed in Goblin Valley. I don't think they could have picked a better spot to use as an alien planet because it looks so other-worldly there. It's such a unique spot and we highly recommend visiting it at least once. Both Andrea and I have always loved climbing and exploring so we knew this would be a fun place to go. We spent hours there exploring the rock formations and trying to find our way to the top of the cliffs that are on the far side of the valley. We finally were able to find a way to the top and were surprised to see that the strange rock formations kept going on for miles behind the cliffs. We'll definitely be back to do some more exploring there later.

We made it to Moab in the evening and set up our tent and began cooking our brats on the grill. Like I said, it was probably not even close to camping but it worked for us at the time. We got up early to visit Arches National Park so we could see as much as we could in one day. We were sad to find out that the basic fee you pay to get in is good for a full week and we could have seen a few things the evening before but at least we know for the future. Seeing all of Arches in a day is impossible but we made sure to see the main sights. The drive through the park alone was beautiful but we also wanted to do a few hikes. We first made the short hike up the mountain to Delicate Arch which is the iconic arch of the park. It was very busy but eventually we got our turn to stand under the arch for a quick picture. It was a beautiful day and the arch always amazes me! Also I personally think that the chipmunks up there survive purely off of donations from hikers and just hibernate during winter when there are less visitors. It was insane how many fat chipmunks were running around eating their little hearts out. Anyway, that's beside the point because no one visits arches to just see welfare chipmunks. We had heard that one of the better hikes inside the park was Devil's Garden at the very farthest end of the park so we went there next. It was our favorite hike of the day! It took us about four hours and we were able to see several unique arches throughout the hike. The hike starts out on a dirt trail and then turns into a ungroomed trail loop when you get to the large Landscape Arch. The loop was fun as it took us over rock formations and into surprisingly green valleys in the middle of the orange and red rock. There was a fun part where we were hiking in soft red sand the whole time and Andrea took the opportunity to walk barefoot for a bit. The only downside was that we had both forgotten to put on sunscreen and we got baked during the long hike. We knew we were getting fried and made sure to purchase a large bottle of aloe vera on our way back to Provo. With our bodies fried and our legs tired we called it a day, but we loved our visit to Moab and hope to go back again while we're still in Utah.