Moab Day#1

Today was our first full day in Moab, Utah. Our friends the Krotosky's and Sarah joined us on this trip. None of us had ever been to Moab so we had a hard time deciding what to do first. Well....the "guys" decided we should do the off-roading first. The Krotosky's had a RAV4 and we brought our 4runner. We picked the "easy" trails to start with - Gemini Bridges. Jen was pretty worried with the bumpy ride and having Zach in the truck...but the kid SLEPT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING! All the bouncing actually put him to sleep! Here is our favorite shot of this area:

Dustin had to "climb" his first rock...I don't think this picture does justice - it looked like a bigger step up in person!

4runner handled it pretty well

Dustin and Jeff showing they are "real" men - they drove up a rock


Gemini Bridges

After Gemini Bridges we headed to the Utah State Park called "Dead Horse Point" - $10 to get in and about 30 minutes of viewing. It was beautiful...Zachary LOVED looking around at everything...

Pretty cool "blue" lake behind us - it is actually SALT!

You can see the Colorado River

No fear

After this the boys decided it was time to "off-road" again. Dustin's boss (a seasoned adventurist!) recommended Longs Canyon...so we took the plunge. This was an AWESOME trail. It is all downhill - moving from the top of the rocks down to the bottom so you are in the "canyon". Funny story about this - there is a point on this trail that is called "Puckers Pass "...we didn't get a good shot of it - but it is basically huge boulders with lots of open space around. The Krotosky's got to the spot first and radio'd to us that it "looked like a challenge" - Jeff then proceded to go over these bolders downhill. We all freaked out! We saw his RAV4 go on two wheels - we thought he was going to flip it! But they survived - just a little undercarriage cover damage. Next - our turn. Jen starts freaking out (basically since Zach is in the truck) - then it hits her...oh Dustin did this kind of stuff in the military - he knows how to drive it! Sure enough Dustin navigated us down - the Krotosky's caught our downhill adventure on video - we will get a copy of it and post it later. When we were watching the video later that night we heard "crunching" sounds as our 4runner was on three wheels - the next day after a closer investigation we realized that we bent the brackets (underside) on the running boards on the drivers side of the 4 runner. The only way you can tell is that the running board on the drivers side is about 1 inch from the back tire where on the passenger side it is more like 2 inches. So after that "adventure" we headed back to downtown Moab for a pizza dinner and some relaxing at the hotel pool.

Downhill the whole way

WAY COOL!
More down down down
Zach at the pool learning to blow bubbles!
In the end the women veto'd any more off-roading for day#2!