Celebrating Birthdays, Rappelling and Mountain Biking in Moab, Utah

One of the BFF’s turned 50 in 2020. At the time, the best we could do was celebrate by camping in the backyard. This year was different. All of us are fully vaccinated so we decided to step out and road trip to one of our all-time favorite places in the US – Moab, Utah. We loaded up the dogs, the mountain bikes and headed West. I’ve posted about Moab before HERE and HERE, but we did some new stuff I’d like to share.

1). We hired a guide and went Canyoneering. Our half-day trip was focused on a short hike and rappelling into canyons. I have a significant fear of heights so I knew this would be a stretch emotionally and physically.

They started us out on a baby 10 footer (which still scared the crap out of me), 120 foot shear drop ( I almost didn’t do it), 65 foot (ish) saunter down a wall, and a 75 foot (ish) rappel with an overhang.

All the rappels were scary to me for various reasons…death being one of them. I was also worried I was going to smash my face into the wall, or flip upside down. Little baby things like that. We all happily survived, some of us with a little piddle in our pants.

Honestly, once my feet landed on the ground after the last rappel, I was grateful for the whole experience and would totally do it again!

Scenes from the hiking bits:

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Scenes from the terrifying (at least to me) rappelling bits:

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2). The town of Moab has a great bike path system. The path was right outside our hotel, so one early morning we jumped on the bikes and headed past Arches National Park, up the hill to a mountain biking area called the Moab Brands Focus Area (um, this doesn’t even sound interesting).

There weren’t many people and lots of options for beginners, which was great for me. The Lazy/EZ loop had sooo many ‘big’ rocks, at one point I got sick of walking my bike, so I sucked it up and mowed over them (this is a Christmas miracle, BTW). The views up there were INCREDIBLE – you can see the back side of Arches National Park.

Should you be interested in exploring all the trails in the Moab area, I found a really good list of mountain biking trails with level of difficulty – you can find the list HERE.

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3). Sean insisted on a nap (who does this on vacation???), so I popped over to the Canyonlands National Park for a quick jaunt, just long enough to scope out some future adventures. I stopped to see the iconic Mesa Arch which is often the quintessential sunrise image for the parks. It was so packed, and in my opinion, quite over-rated – lots of people and an anti-climatic view (maybe it was the photographer!!).

I did manage to stumble upon the Green River Overlook which is an absolute STUNNER.

Overall, it’s a beautiful place, just ripe for adventure. I’d like to backpack in here someday.

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I can’t tell you how much fun we had. The human contact, celebrating life’s milestones and long time friendships, as well as, the physical and mental challenges we experienced were SOOOO needed. We came back feeling incredibly filled with gratitude and completely exhausted, the best kind of vacation.

“Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone” ~ Neal Donald Walsch

….i choose this….

Pam