MOAB

Due to my travelling nature I am frequently asked where my favorite place is in the country. It seems that no matter where I am when I am asked this question, when I tell them that my favorite spot is in Utah, I always get looked at like I have four heads.

During my fairly turbulent adolescence one of my favorite relatives on the planet, great mentors and role model my Uncle Leo took off on a bike ride across the country with the woman who is now his wife my Aunt Janet. They rode with a bunch of people on mountain bikes and ended up in a little town in Southern Utah called Moab. They fell in love with the little town and much to my cousins dismay they decided to relocate. A couple of years later, when my parents were going through their divorce, my Uncle was in Rhode Island visiting and he invited me to travel out to Moab for the summer.

This trip couldn't have been better timing for me in my life. It came for me at a time when I really needed the attention of a adult who I could trust, a family member and I will always be grateful that I took this trip, I had never ventured out to the West. So me and my hippy Uncle hopped into his little Toyota and began and adventure across the country listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio and really spending a lot of time talking about life, things a young teenager like myself really needed during a rough part of my life.

Throughout the trip I had a micro cassette recorder and I recorded our little conversations and adventures on our journey. We stayed at Motel 6's and one night stayed ion a little town in Kansas with a population of about 600. Every hour on the hour a train road by what we jokingly referred to as "The Bates Motel" and no sooner that later we were rolling over the green wildlife laden hills of Colorado and into the red rocky canyons of Southern Utah. I had seen mountains before, but when I saw the red rocks of the desert, I was in love.

The last town we saw with "civilization" was Grand Junction, Colorado. After that it was miles and miles of nothing but nature and soon we arrived into this little town called Moab. As soon as we entered town, my uncle took me to a spring of water coming out of the red rocks where people were gathering water. He told me that those who drink from that spring would always return and return I have and always will for the rest of my life.

That summer was a great summer for me. My cousin and I were really close and I was upset that he moved away from Rhode Island so we spent time running around and playing games at the arcade. Moan is a place for outdoors men and my Uncle, a former Park Ranger at Arches National Park was the best tour guide ever.

Moabs claim to fame is it's hundreds of natural arches made out of red rock. It is absolutely amazing wandering through what is now desert and clearly seeing in the red rocks that at one time the whole thing was covered by water. We spent the summer four wheeling in my uncles truck. We would wander out into the desert and go through "chirp" piles digging for Indian artifacts and petrified wood. It seemed that every day there was something to do outdoors and I really enjoyed our hikes together through the desert and even the ones on my own.

The Colorado River runs through Moab, people gop on white water rafting tours right there and while I didn't get to go white water rafting that summer I did almost drown in the extreme currents of the icy cold river. While in Moab I was able to go visit dinosaur tracks, pan for gold and we even got a book full of ghost towns from the local library and I was able to visit a few ghostowns (a childhood dream of mine since I saw that Brady Bunch Episode). We hiked, hiked and hiked even more visiting the many sights where you can see 1000 year old Indian petropglyphs written on the desert walls. I was mesmorized by the ancient pictures of goats and herders and like many before me tried to translate what it is our ancient friends were trying to say.

Moab is an amazing little town that depends greatly on the tourist industry and while it is a sought after travel destination it has still maintained it's small town charm along with having all of the things necessary for a comfortable vacation. Slick Rock trail alone is worth the trip, its many miles of slick red rock offer beautiful views of the amazing creation that we are blessed to inhabit.

Outside of Moab there are 3 mountains which are each and oasis in the middle of the all red sand and rock of the desert. It amazed me that you could be in 100 degree weather down in the desert and climb to the top of the mountains and actually see snow. I was in awe at the fact that these mountains were not only lush and green but were actually wildlife sanctuaries where it was illegal to hunt and the amount of deer and elk that I saw was unsurpassed by anywhere else that I have ever travelled in my life.

Over the years I have always held on to the memories of that summer in Moab and am very grateful to my fathers brother and his wife for spending time with me like they did. It was truly a bright spot in tough times. I was lucky to have such great family members and while this blog is about MOAB, I could write many more blogs about some of the other amazing places and events we attended in Arizona and Colorado as well.

Moab is a place where there is dancing in the streets, where every neighbor knows each other, people grow their own fruits and veggies and dry them out on the roof. Moab's a place where you carry a gun but you don't need it for protection, where every day is a new day in a new place, it just depends which way you are looking at your compass. If you are a backpacker, hiker, rock climber, biker, white water rafter or someone into archeology I highly recommend traveling into a state that has received a bad rap by a lot of people because it is different and visit Moab. I know I always will!

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