Moab, Utah (Arches & Canyonlands National Parks)

Moab, Utah. Big Boys playground. This place is awesome!

http://dur.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171988&l=8ae48&id=61205739

Never heard of the place before we arrived, and it took a little while to get my head around it. 4 x 4s with huge tyres, proper off roaders flying down the main street. 4 x 4 trucks loaded to the hilt with mountain bikes or ATVs (quad bikes). Didn't quite get the picture til I called in the local visitors centre.

Then it became all the more clear after a hummer tour in a former US Army Hummer (with all the armour removed though...), pretty cool, loved it when he let air out of the tyres before a steep 40 degree ascent! Then pumped it back in, all at the click of a button!



Although I'd normally find it bad, I love the way it's all about decimating the enviroment in Moab, solely for the purpose of FUN! A huge hummer roaring over miles of slick rock and open desert...all of this leaving it's mark:



We stopped for sunset at the high point of the slick rock, overlooking the Colorado, the colours became more and more vivid - awesome!



Had to miss out on mountain biking Moab's Slickrock Trail (apparently the most famous mountain biking course in the world) - not that I knew this, otherwise it would have been first thing on the list. Found out too late, and as Canyonlands and Arches National Parks took up our final day decided it would still be good to see them, mainly because of views like this:



The sunset over Canyonlands, the road you can see winding into the distance we took a day later, a 31 mile dirt road, so slow I just had to jump out and run ahead of the van, opened up a mile or so at one point. But fantastic because it's so empty, a road only accessible to 4 x 4s, means that I didn't see a sole. Surely one of the world's most empty places.

Also managed to fit in Arches National Park, and that is cool:




The soft sandstone erodes with human touch, so it's no surprise the forces of nature can scuplt spectacular gaps in the rock like this, which form arches like these:



as well as balanced rocks like these, balanced a lot better than me!



I could keep adding pictures for ever to this post, but got to keep it readable. All the ones I want to add are in the album here, and is probably one of the best albums so far - so check it out! All albums have picture captions too...!

http://dur.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171988&l=8ae48&id=61205739

One last picture though, this describes Moab...it is:




WHAO!!!!