For the past several days we have been camped beside the Colorado River in a beautiful canyon about half an hour outside of Moab, Utah. It's BLM land, but it costs $15 a night - if you want to camp here, head from Moab to Arches and take the first right immediately after the old defunct chairlift, and follow that road several miles until you get to Big Bend. If you don't get here early enough to secure a site (as we did our first night) there is overflow camping across the road but it is crowded and exposed. By contrast, our camp is very private and generally awesome - we've put up the hammock under the shade of two oak trees, and we're visited constantly by small lizards, all kinds of singing birds, wild turkeys, butterflies. Three terrifyingly massive black widow spiders live in crevasses in the picnic table, but they only come out at night - we've affectionately called them Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi and Kes. Two robins have their nest (which they vigorously defend every morning from raids by other birds) above our tent. We watch the stars at night.
Arches National Park is tremendously beautiful and quite interesting - check out the pictures below for a better sense of it than my words can convey. As the name suggests, Arches is replete with huge stone arches carved out over the eons by the elements. It has loads of beautiful hiking paths of varying difficulties (and unfortunately loads of tourists as well, but if you get there early or you go off on less common trails you can avoid most of the crowds). On our first night we met a Hawaiian helicopter pilot named Josh at the overflow site, and we hiked with him most of the day after. Cool guy.
Canyonlands is, as its name suggests, is full of gargantuan canyons and cliffsides which are impressive to behold. You can see canyons within canyons with even smaller canyons inside them... it's almost fractal. It's farther away than Arches from Moab but well worth the trip, and has far fewer visitors. We also visited Valley of the Gods and Natural bridges, which are both great but only if you have the time and the stomach for the drive there - it requires a steep ascent of over 1,000 feet over narrow dirt road switchbacks, which afford you some amazing views of the valley below.
Moab is a pretty cool city. We liked it much more than Sedona and Kanab because it felt intelligent and fun without being pretentious or trying too hard. We stayed in the area for about a week. There was a jeep rally there which was fun to watch - jeeps jeeps jeeps everywhere. Lost River Coffee makes a great americano, and the natural food store across the street actually has great food at reasonable prices.
Arches National Park is tremendously beautiful and quite interesting - check out the pictures below for a better sense of it than my words can convey. As the name suggests, Arches is replete with huge stone arches carved out over the eons by the elements. It has loads of beautiful hiking paths of varying difficulties (and unfortunately loads of tourists as well, but if you get there early or you go off on less common trails you can avoid most of the crowds). On our first night we met a Hawaiian helicopter pilot named Josh at the overflow site, and we hiked with him most of the day after. Cool guy.
Canyonlands is, as its name suggests, is full of gargantuan canyons and cliffsides which are impressive to behold. You can see canyons within canyons with even smaller canyons inside them... it's almost fractal. It's farther away than Arches from Moab but well worth the trip, and has far fewer visitors. We also visited Valley of the Gods and Natural bridges, which are both great but only if you have the time and the stomach for the drive there - it requires a steep ascent of over 1,000 feet over narrow dirt road switchbacks, which afford you some amazing views of the valley below.
Moab is a pretty cool city. We liked it much more than Sedona and Kanab because it felt intelligent and fun without being pretentious or trying too hard. We stayed in the area for about a week. There was a jeep rally there which was fun to watch - jeeps jeeps jeeps everywhere. Lost River Coffee makes a great americano, and the natural food store across the street actually has great food at reasonable prices.