Moab Adventure May 19th-23 2015

My 7 yr son and I completed our first Moab adventure last week. It was amazing, Southern Utah is one of the coolest, if not THE coolest place I have ever explored. So much to see and do. We spent 5 days there and barely scratched the surface.

Overall our trip spanned 3200 miles, from Southern Oregon, to San Diego County CA, through Nevada, part of Arizona, into Utah, then back home to Oregon, through Utah and Nevada.

We met up with a guy from T4R who has a sweet 5th Gen in SD County and made a little caravan out to Moab. We stayed 1 night at Sand Flats, ran Fins N Things in the morning (really neat trail by the way), then headed out to the Needles District of Canyonlands. After checking in, we headed to the parking lot below Elephant Hill and aired down. I have to say that pics and videos don't do Elephant Hill justice. It was much steeper and intimidating than I had expected, but we ran it no problem. We made it to the Devils Kitchen campsite, set up camp, had a snack, and explored the area.

The next morning we head up to the Confluence Overlook, where the Green and Colorado Rivers intersect. It was amazing, such cool views and a short, but interesting hike up to the overlook. We hung around there for awhile and had lunch while enjoying the views. After running the remainder of Elephant Hill and stopping by camp for awhile, we hit the trail again and headed down towards Beef Basin to check out the Joint. The Joint was awesome! Such a cool spot to explore and all the cairns that people had made were so cool to check out. We headed back down the hill and it started to rain a bit and the wind really picked up. Luckily the rain had stopped by the time we reached the vehicles. We headed down the trail to see S.O.B. Hill and explore Beef Basin a little.

S.O.B. Hill was in pretty rough shape when we got there, but it was a fun obstacle, much tougher than the "moderate" rating our 2008 guide book gave it. We drove into Beef Basin a bit and checked out the sights.

We decided to head back to camp and figure out what we wanted to do the next day. We hung around camp and checked out our maps and the guide book. Our plans was to head back into Beef Basin and check to see the condition of Bobbys Hole because we if were going to head out that way the following day we figured we should see what shape it was in.

Back down S.O.B. Hill, then through Beef Basin to Bobbys Hole to do some scouting. We walked to the top and although steep it was in really good shape. Much better than some of the pics I had seen.

S.O.B. Hill was tougher on the return trip, I gouged a slider and dented my mid skid. Larry (the T4R dude) got a little hung up and we thought he might need a tug with the winch to get through, but he was able to free himself and make it over the obstacle. He also scraped a slider and dented the crap out of his mid skid.

Back at camp we did a little more exploring, relaxed, had dinner and settled in for the night. Holy crap did the wind pick up, it ripped the rain fly off my tent and when I tried to put it back on it hit even harder and I had to hold my tent up. When it died down and I got everything buttoned up it picked up again, but not as hard as before so I ended up being able to get some sleep. My son slept through the whole ordeal. Must be nice!

The next morning we packed up camp and headed down the trail to S.O.B. Hill again, this place was becoming old hat. lol We made it over with some minor scraping and continued through to Bobbys Hole. We met a Jeeper getting ready to hike it and scout the trail but we saved him a steep climb by letting him know we had scouted it the day before. Up the hill and over the top we went.

Beef Basin and the ruins were super cool. We made the steep climb out of the basin and followed the road back to the highway. We aired up and headed back to the visitors center to check out and get my son his JR Ranger badge which he is very proud of by the way. I also talked a woman and her son in a stock Nissan Xterra with worn tires out of an Elephant Hill Expedition. She had been arguing with one of the Rangers about how she thought her rig was up for the challenge then she saw our scratched, dusty, lifted, armored trucks and decided against it.

I'll continue with part 2 of our adventure at a later date.

 

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Really cool OP!

 

That is super awesome! Nice truck! And that Runner is sick!

 

Part 2

So we drove back towards Moab, checking out campsites as we went. We ended up choosing some dispersed camping across the highway from Area BFE. It was close to some sand dunes and other than being fairly noisy from all the dirtbikes/quads/side by sides it was a great spot.

The next morning we headed out to see Looking Glass Arch and the Anticline Overlook. The Anticline was amazing and one of the coolest views of the entire trip. On the way there we saw some cave homes and ran into a cattle round up. I never realized just how much cows crap, they seem to have a constant stream of feces falling out of them 24/7. There were a lot of calves though and they were pretty cute. They didn't seem too impressed with our trucks however and we had to do a lot of waiting while the herd passed.

On the way back from the Anticline we ran into a rainstorm and ended up stopping by Hole in the Rock to appease my son. It was actually a super cool place and I would recommend visiting the gift shop and taking the short guided tour of the old diner/house blasted out of the rock. It was pretty awesome and a pleasant surprise.

Later in the day we headed down to see the Colorado and took the road up Pucker Pass, then down to see part of White Rim, the Shafer switchbacks, and Musselman Arch. We exited through Potash Road and headed back to camp for a fire and meal before our long trip home in the morning.

 

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Cow shit... Stinky and dried on like concrete.

 

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Nice stuff. Elephant Hill is such an awesome trail.

 

Yeah! It was awesome. I have a few more pics of Elephant Hill that I will post later.

 

Great trip. We are looking forward to visiting that area