Moab Jeep Trip

For our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife Jamie wanted to have both families come over and have Thanksgiving dinner at our house. The dinner went pretty well (somehow we managed to stuff all those people into the living room of our townhome…) but after it was all said and done we decided we needed to take a break and what better way then to pack up and head to Moab for the weekend?

We spent the day after Thanksgiving with Jamie’s dad until around 3 PM when he had to head to the airport to catch a flight home. We packed up and were on the road by 3:30. We weren’t in a hurry to arrive since we already had hotel reservations so we made a pit stop in Price on the way down to grab a geocache and some dinner. By the time we hit Green River it was completely dark outside which added an extra element of difficulty to finding a few geocaches on the side of the road (though the stars were beautiful). We pulled into Moab around 8:30-9 and checked into the hotel.

The following day we packed up the Jeep and hit the road headed for Elephant Hill. This trail is probably my favorite I’ve been able to run thus far, the scenery was amazing and even though the trail wasn’t the most challenging trail it still provided some great photo opportunities.

The following day we decided to give Onion Creek a try followed by Rose Garden Hill. Onion Creek is a very mild trail that has numerous water crossings (we counted 25~ by the time we finished) and it was a nice way to start the day. Near the end of Onion Creek we took the turn for Rose Garden Hill. The trail starts off easy enough and from the guide we had picked up we weren’t expecting anything on the challenging side. This all changed once we arrived at the main obstical from which the trail gets its name. We started up the rocky hill and were near the top when we ran into a 4 foot ledge. Try as I might I wasn’t able to get the Jeep up the ledge (no lockers), once the front tires were up they’d just spin. As we decided to bag it we looked back and noticed a group of Jeeps had gathered at the bottom of the hill. Once we turned around and reached the bottom again we chatted for a bit and then they decided to take a crack at it. These guys were very impressive and after awhile they all made it up and offered to provide their Jeeps as anchor points so I could winch onto them and pull myself up. After debating about it I decided to go for it and with their help managed to get up and over. The rest of the trail was pretty timid compaired to what we had just managed to accomplish but it had excellent views. Near the end we wanted to try Top Of The World but we were running out of daylight so we decided to save it for our next trip down.

On our way back we decided to make a quick pit stop just over the border to Colorado and grab a geocache to add the state to our “cached in” list.

Overall it was a great trip and we can’t wait to get back!

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