We can now add Moab to the growing list of pretty cool places we didn’t spend nearly enough time in. Our Moab experience consisted of pulling into the Spanish Trails RV Resort around midnight, waking up on the later side to have a leisurely breakfast, fixing our fresh water tank leak, and driving through downtown on the way to Arches National park.
NOTE: We took way more pictures then what’s featured in this blog post, so make sure to check out the link to the Google Photos album at the bottom of this post if looking at pictures is what you’re here for
The good news is that we did actually fix our fresh water tank leak. Turns out the intake hose had a decent size hole which caused water to come out on top of the tank every time we filled it. And of course, RVs being designed the way they are, our fresh water tank was right next to our electrical systems, which was all located under our bed, so this was a high priority fix for us. Fortunately the hole was close to the end of the hose and there was enough slack that we were able to cut out the bad part and reattach the hose to the tank. But enough about boring RV repairs.
As we drove through town we were reminded about all the things we weren’t going to be doing. It seemed like every other business was advertising some sort of outdoor adventure – off road jeep tours, rafting, skydiving (not that we’d ever be doing that one), and biking. The town itself also seemed like it would have been fun to explore on foot. But our plan for the day was to head to nearby Arches National park, explore that, and head off to our next stop with enough time to put us there at a reasonable hour (some time before midnight). It’s our plan to come back when we won’t have to worry about work and school so we’ll have more time to enjoy what the area has to offer.
Our plan to tackle Arches was to drive the 18 mile long “Scenic Drive”, stopping at the various attractions on the way. Unfortunately Arches (like most national parks) is not very pet friendly. Dogs are only allowed in the parking lots, not on any trails, so this ruled out family hikes. Because we are intimately familiar with Boomer’s penchant for complete and utter destruction when confined to enclosed spaces (such as an RV) if he knows we’re nearby, this meant that we had to have someone in the RV with him whenever we stopped to explore anything beyond the parking lots. One lucky break for us was that even though it was a weekend, the park was not nearly as busy as normal. Probably a combination of it being Halloween and the off season.
Other than driving along Scenic Drive we didn’t have much of a game plan, but that worked out just fine (by the way, this is a recurring theme to our whole RV adventure). The scenery in the park was amazing, maybe not as awe inspiring as that first glimpse of the Grand Canyon, but we’d never seen the variety of geological formations like we experienced at Arches. Ginormous sheer walls, stone towers, precariously balanced boulders, sweeping vistas with snow covered mountains in the background, and of course the iconic arches that give the park its name, it was all quite a sight to take in.
We ended up stopping at five or so parking lots to check out some of the big name sights of the park. Most of those involved short walks of a mile or less to check out the arch, boulder, or whatever the geological phenomenon was. The end result for those walks was never a disappointment. In addition to the official stops there were a large number of pull outs along the road which proved great for quick photo ops and Boomer pee breaks. Because the park wasn’t too busy we were able to park at each of the stops we wanted to, which I’m guessing would be impossible in an RV during peak season. In the end, it took us about 5 hours to complete the 18 mile drive, which felt just about right.
We didn’t have anything booked for our next stop, which was going to be somewhere in the Salt Lake City area but we were eyeing a nice looking state park just outside of Park City which was operating on a first come first served basis at this point in the year. Once again we’d be pulling in around mid-night so we were really hoping we’d get a spot.
