Utah - Maob-ulous

Always up for an adventure (in case you're wondering, I like to travel), it didn't take much to for Jenni to convince me to spend Memorial Day weekend in Moab, Utah. You might be asking yourself, why Utah? or better yet, why Moab? or even where's Moab? Well, for me, it was the location suggested and planned out by Jenni. For her, who ever really knows...

We flew in to Salt Lake City on Friday night and spent the night a few blocks away from the Mormon Temple in downtown SLC. In order to feel like spending the night in SLC was worth our time, we did a Temple drive-by in the morning before embarking on our 4 hour drive to Moab in the south eastern part of the state.

We headed straight to Canyonlands National Park. First stop was the visitor center where Jenni found out what we should see and I learned the difference between a mesa and a butte. Since I'm sure you all are dying to know, I'll fill you in... a mesa is wider than it is tall and a butte is taller than it is wide. I taught Jenni my new factoid and then persisted to test her on this throughout the weekend (I'm hoping she'll forgive me for this soon).

How do I describe Canyonlands? Well there are a lot of canyons filled with... mesas and buttes. We drove around and did a few short hikes to see all the sites that Canyonlands had to offer. Apparently, the guides in the visitor center suggested the same itinerary to just about everyone that asked because we saw the same people at every stop.

On Sunday, Jenni and I tried our hands at mountain biking. While I do in fact own a mountain bike, it has never been ridden on a mountain... or even off road. The one and only time I went mountain biking (about 12 years ago) I can't say I really enjoyed it all that much so I have to admit that I was a bit nervous. My anxiety increased when we met up with the rest of the group and I was the only one with essentially no mountain biking experience. When Jack (a 65 year old retired doctor) started making his bike bounce as if on a trampoline, I was about ready to turn around and head back to the hotel. However, once we got going, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was enjoying myself. This is not to say that I wasn't afraid for my life everytime a rock stood in the route, but I did think about actually taking my own bike off road (maybe). The hardest thing was just watching where I was going because the scenery was so beautiful that you could easily find your eyes and mind wandering. Fortunately, our guide, Brian, gave us ample time to stop and take pictures.

Monday morning we decided to start the day with a hearty breakfast before heading to Arches National Park. Unfortunately we chose poorly. We went to a coffee shop that served bland, dry bagels (me) and chocolate oatmeal (Jenni). It was really the lure of the chocolate oatmeal that made Jenni want to go there but it turns out that it is just really dry oatmeal mixed with chocolate syrup. I think Jenni would agree that it was not the highlight of the trip. But it did give us the energy we needed for a couple of hikes to see some of the most spectacular naturally occurring arches we've ever seen. I think we were both disappointed when it was time to head back to Salt Lake City for our return flight home.