For our big 2023 adventure we headed to majestic, Moab, Utah!
It took us three days to make our way to Moab with our last night of the journey being spent at Cheyenne Mountain State Park outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Colorado we traveled on Highway 128 into Moab. This beautiful winding road parallels the Colorado River and offers some beautiful scenery.
At the intersection of highway 128 and highway 191 we stopped at Lions Park. This park offers ample parking, public restrooms and water if you're dry camping, an amphitheater, hiking and biking trails and a beautiful bridge that crosses the Colorado River connecting the area to Arches National Park. At this location we got a birds eye view of the Colorado River swollen from snow melt from the Rocky Mountains. Attached to the bridge were the most amazing sculptures representing the elements. Here we got a sneak peek of the beauty that Moab offers!
For this trip we pulled our travel trailer and stayed at Sun Outdoors Canyonland Gateway RV Resort & Campground located about 12 miles north west of Moab. We'll be adding a video review this rv resort in the near future so don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss out.
Once we got our campsite setup we began to smell propane and realized that our propane regulator was leaking. We checked with the resort office and they suggested we visit Farm & City Feed & RV Supply located on the south side of Moab. We drove out to the business and they had exactly what we needed to fix our problem. Thank you Farm & City Feed & RV Supply for saving the day!
After repairing our propane tanks we hit highway 313 outside of Moab and made our way to Dead Horse Point State Park stopping along the way to take in the sights. Areas of interest along highway 313 include the Intestine Man Petroglyphs, Monitor & Merrimac View Area and the Plateau View Point.
After driving about 30 miles outside of Moab we arrived at Dead Horse PointState Park. Unlike national parks, state parks allow dogs on leashes so our little dog got to do a little hiking and picnicking with us!
The legend of Dead Horse Point states that in the late 1800’s the point was used as a corral for wild mustangs roaming the mesa top. Cowboys herded them across the narrow neck of land and onto the point. The neck was then fenced off with branches and brush. 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.
After a fun afternoon at Dead Horse Point State Park we still had time to continue on to CanyonlandsNational Park which is located just about 10 miles from Dead Horse. As we reached the Island in the Sky Visitors Center the terrain of the area seemed to change and we were wondering just where were the canyons of Canyonlands? Just a little further down Grand Viewpoint Road we found them! Exploring this park felt a little hurried since it was already late afternoon but we both felt like we were still getting to see all the major sights the park had to offer. Also, national parks do not allow dogs, even on leashes, so we chose to take in the Canyonland views from the windows of our air conditioned truck along side our little pup.
With a little more daylight remaining we headed back to our trailer for a quick dinner and then drove out to Pot Ash Road, or Highway 279, which hugs the Colorado River. This is a very popular road and on it we saw rock climbers and petroglyphs just right off the road. We drove down a little farther down Potash Road to the Poison Spider Trailhead and hiked up to the Highway 279 petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.
After a good night's sleep it was time to continue our adventure. Popular national parks, like Arches, have a reservation system for arrival so we made our reservation for 11:00 am which gave us enough time to travel from our campsite back into Moab for breakfast at Doughbird. Doughbird is located on Main Street in Moab and is famous for their “cronut.” We had no idea what a cronut was until we visited Moab but soon found out that this was a delicious cross between a donut and a croissant. We chose two: the Samoa, which tasted just like the Girl Scout cookie, and a salted caramel. After leaving Doughbirds we did a little souvenir shopping before heading to the Arches National Park entrance.
After showing our park pass and reservation we made a quick pit stop at the Arches welcome center to use the restrooms and shop for a little travel trailer sticker bling. From the welcome center we drove up Arches Scenic Drive stopping at an overlook which looked down on highway 191. The informational sign explained that area below the park and was part of the Moab fault line.
From this interpretive sign we headed deeper into the park stopping to take in the beautiful scenery of the Park Ave Viewpoint. The next viewpoints we stopped at were the La Sal Mountains and Courthouse Towers. From here we could see a few crazy people repelling off one of the largest formations.
We got super excited when we got a close up view of some of the arches and decided to hike to the Windows arches. Unfortunately the parking lot was too full so we made our way over to Double Arch and hiked up to it to get the best views. Here, we met a nice couple from Salt Lake City and chatted with them during our hike down.
There was just so much to see in Arches that we felt we really needed two days to explore the area thoroughly. We finished up our drive through Arches and then headed back to our trailer for another quick meal and to begin packing down our campsite.
With just a little bit of day light still left we decided we had one more adventure left in us so we hopped back in the truck and drove out to the swollen Colorado River on Highway 128. From here we got in some epic drone shots before the sun went down and our time in Moab came to an end.
If you'd like to follow more of our adventures visit our YouTube Channel and see our latest video on Moab, Utah!
