Still Asleep Still Dreaming

I don’t know what it was, maybe it was that I was able to fit in a weeks worth of activities into the day the day before, but today I just took it easy. I had been riding hard and off on adventures left and right and work was starting to catch up to me. I went to a café to have some breakfast and catch up with some work emails, and calls. My host needed to work this day so I took advantage to use it to catch up.

I could not help but treat my host Tiara with at least a nice dinner later that night for all the amazing things we had done so far. We went for a sun set dinner at Sunset Grill. The restaurant is situated on a cliff overlooking the town down in the valley and has a perfect view of the setting sun that disappears passed the canyon walls. The grill used to be the home of Charlie Steen. Steen was a geologist prospector who went from rags to riches after finding Uranium in Moab. There are very many interesting reads on him and are worth the time to look into. After dinner my iron horse Cindy took us around town on a short ride. I love evening/night rides, the temperatures are cooler, and the mood is more relaxed. People had still been on the streets walking the sidewalks and visiting open shops and looking through the windows of the closed ones putting it on the to-do list for tomorrow.

 The next day it was back at it full force with a day filled with activities, sun, and sweat. The first one on the list was bouldering at Big Bend. The 3 of us Musketeers packed light, as bouldering requires almost no gear at all, and after some breakfast were climbing in no time. We drove up along the Colorado River, once again surrounded by the towering red canyon walls. There was a section of canyon that had some of the walls break off in large boulders and rolled down to the edge of the road. The approach is short and there are 71 official routes ranging from V1-V12 ratings. Bouldering is such an intense exercise and perfect in climbing strength training and technique improvement. You will often times find yourself hanging horizontally holding all of your weight with just your finger tips and toes. It is definitely a full body workout and an extremely fun one at that. If you haven’t yet tried it you must! We climbed for a few hours and before we new it the sun was directly above us beating down hot and heavy on us. After a bunch of routes, blisters, scrapes, and scratches we called it a day and headed back towards the opposite side of town.

We had worked up quite the sweat and a dip in the lake was lifesaver. Yes a lake, in the middle of the desert, with a really cool waterfall just upstream from it. Being that we were in a mini monster truck we rode over to the opposite side of the lake away from the tourists and pulled in backwards leaving the tailgate hanging over the turquoise water. It was just what the doctor ordered, and the initial jump in was cool but oh so pleasant. We would take dips, come out for some sun and dry out in a moments notice in the dry desert air. This would repeat about 5-6 times until we felt like our core temperatures had returned back to normal.

Feeling completely refreshed we headed back towards the entrance to the lake and rode uphill a ways to a trail that would lead to the waterfall. A short hike through the desert brush, sand, and boulders and the small stream gave way to a waterfall that dropped about 30’ into a small pool. I was eager to climb in and get beneath the falls. Gravity worked its magic and when standing beneath the falls the falling water nearly forced you to your knees. The sound of water smashing up against your skull is indescribable and against the rest of your body feels like a deep tissue massage. We continued upstream to the origin of the water. There had been a pipe that appeared from the rock that was spewing out clean water from the mountain several miles away. The water comes from melting snow and the occasional cloud that dumps water on the mountain before reaching Moab. The hike had us rise in elevation and again the valley between the two canyon walls lay before us. “What a huge amazing playground” I thought to myself as I looked out at my surroundings before heading back to the truck.

I had been smiling throughout the whole trip, but the moment I started to pull into Moab I had goose bumps and a smile that had permanently placed itself on my face. I made the decision to make this a regular visit location of mine; in fact after Oregon this was now my favorite place. That night I contemplated whether or not to leave the next day. To comfortably make it back to Atlanta I would have needed to leave. Before falling asleep I chose to sacrifice comfort for one more day in my Dream called Moab and with that I closed my eyes looking forward to the next day rather than dreading it.