Best of the Southwest – Day 6 – Colorado River Trip and Moab

Moab, Utah is one of the world’s most enjoyable playgrounds. You can easily spend a week there. And it is a great staging area for some of America’s most spectacular national and state parks. There are great restaurants and bars; clever little museums; eclectic shops selling local and new age trinkets; and national treasures like the Moab Rock Shop, whose mercurial owner, Lin Ottinger, was one of the heroes in Edward Abbey’s infamous novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang”.

The town has always been a magnet for larger than life kooks, like Charlie Steen, the Uranium King, who made millions after World War II mining uranium from the Chinle Formation in the foothills around Moab. Charlie was so rich and eccentric that he would take his wife up in his private chopper so she could get better reception and watch her favorite TV show “I Love Lucy”, while he dropped uranium land claims wrapped in red bandannas over promising tracts of public land.

Moab is world renowned as one of the best places on earth to rent a mountain bike or an ATV and go for a slickrock ride. The town calls itself the “mountain bike capital of the world” and they have big-time ATV rallies like the Moab Jeep Safari every year. There are numerous off-road outfitters in town and an endless network of trails nearby. These bouncy activities attract thousands of people to the area and literally fuel the local economy.

The Moab Adventure Center on Main Street offers river trips, hummer safaris, mountain biking, tours of Arches National Park, zipline and ropes, flights and horseback rides, hot air balloon rides, jet boat tours, and jeep rentals.

www.moabadventurecenter.com

I had been looking forward to our sixth day in the Southwest for months. We were going to raft an outstanding 7-mile stretch of the Colorado River east of Moab, and given the triple digit weather forecast, being on the river during the hottest part of the day was undoubtedly going be an excellent game plan.

This fun-filled half-day Colorado River raft trip is for the whole family. Each raft trip covers about seven river miles with fantastic scenery, informative guides, and moderate rapids.

Rates: Adult:$54 | Youth:$44
Class: II-III
Length: – Half-day 9am, 12pm, and 2pm

Before hitting the river, we ate breakfast on the back patio of one of Moab’s most famous breakfast establishments, the Jailhouse Cafe, housed in the town’s original jail. I always stop there when I’m passing through town. It’s got it all: great location, congenial staff, fast service, and yummy eats.

After breakfast we headed over to the north end of town to NAVTEC Expeditions, the oldest and still the best river running outfitters, hands down. NAVTEC also offers outstanding 4-wheel tours.

https://navtec.com/

We piled into a big passenger van around noon and cruised up UT 128 which National Geographic rated the second most scenic drive in America (the Pacific Coast Highway is #1). The winding canyon road followed each bend in the river and for the first few miles there was a new paved bike trail at the river’s edge that looked like big fun.

The put-in for the river trip down the refreshingly chilly Colorado was at Rocky Rapid.

Our shuttle driver Dave was a former river guide who recited Edward Abbey and cowboy poetry on the drive up, and popped in along the river at various spots to sit on a rock and serenade us with his harmonica. You can’t beat NAVTEC!

I always liked to camp when I visited Moab but times change, so I asked Dave about the current camping scene. Dave explained that the Bureau of Land Management was getting much more restrictive about primitive camping around Moab, so you should stick to the campgrounds along the Colorado River on UT 128.

But in order to avoid the hideous Canyonlands by Night, the boat and truck sound and light show that runs up the canyon at sunset, you should avoid the lower camps, like where I used to stay at Goose Island, and camp instead at Big Bend Campground which is 7 miles up-canyon. Or you can camp at Lower or Upper Drinks Campground which are just before Big Bend.

The river trip took about three hours, and before we got on the river our two friendly guides prepared a tasty lunch of cold cut sandwiches, veggies, fresh fruit, chips, cookies and lemonade in the shade of a riverside pavilion.

About a mile downriver from the put-in we passed the Red Cliffs working dude ranch & winery. There were about fifty tricked-out cabins nestled along the river and the place looked packed. When I was booking our Moab motel I considered staying there but decided to get a room in town and avoid a close encounter of the DUI kind each night. Plus it was pretty expensive. But it does have a FREE movie museum and $1 wine tastings and that sounded pretty cool.

Red Cliffs is known as John Ford Country and it was the place for movie people to stay when filming movies like movie director John Ford’s “Wagon Master”, “Rio Grande”, and “Stagecoach”, to name but a few.

And there have been many modern day movies filmed around Moab like “Indiana Jones – The Last Crusade”, “The Lone Ranger”, “City Slickers”, “Vanishing Point”, and “Thelma & Louise”. Virtually every river crossing you’ve seen in a western was the Colorado River in Professor Valley, where we were rafting.

Since my last trip down this part of the Colorado it was obvious that the non-native Eurasian Tamarisk had taken over the river banks and squeezed out the native vegetation. This is a major problem on every river in the Southwest, especially the Colorado River, because a single large tamarisk bush sucks 200 gallons of water a day and it is estimated that they collectively drain 20 percent of the Colorado River each year.

We stopped in several of the calmer stretches of the river to all jump in for a swim, and our fun-loving guide Vlad was always the first in the water.

The highlight of the river trip were the five Desert Bighorn Sheep we came upon at about the halfway point. They had come down to the river for a little drink and seemed mystified by our presence. Vlad said it was only the second time all season that he had spotted bighorn sheep.

At the takeout we were given about fifteen minutes to swim before we all piled back into the van for the ride back to town.

At the junction of UT 128 and UT 191, Dave pointed out Matrimony Spring. “That’s where Mormon kids went to fetch water and had romantic trysts which precipitated shotgun weddings eight months later. They say that if you drink from the spring with the one you love, you will soon be married; and if you drink alone, you will forever be wedded to the Canyonlands. I guess I fall into the latter category, cause I never married and I never left.”

We had heard that one of the best places to eat in town was a place on Main Street called Twisted Sistas, so after an hour at our motel pool we ventured into town to check it out. As with most places is Moab, it was hard to define the cuisine. Let’s just say that it had a nice vibe, the food was scrumptious, and it was reasonably priced. I sampled one of the locally-brewed frosty beverages called Dead Horse Amber and it was out of this world.

After dinner, we hopped in the car and headed back up UT 128 along the Colorado River. We were on a mission: to catch sunset at the Fisher Towers where there is a 3.9-mile trail that gets moderate traffic. It’s an out and back trail that is easy to follow, past rock art and enormous red sandstone pinnacles. The last major tower at the 1.5-mile mark is called The Titan. The trail then heads out onto a spectacular ridge with majestic views of the towers.

We drove about twenty miles on UT 128 and then headed up the two-mile dusty gravel road and arrived right on time, just as the sun was beginning to set and the towers were being day-glowed in red light. It was absolutely magical cathedral light on a rocky tapestry that literally throbbed with color.

Enter the drone. Up until that point, we had had the place to ourselves. There wasn’t another soul in sight, when suddenly a white SUV came barreling up the dirt road, trailing a dust storm behind it like a James Bond getaway scene. When the interlopers got to the trailhead, a family of five piled out and two guys immediately let loose their toy drone for a little aerial maneuvers around the towers. Jimmy and I were like WTF? The sacred silence of sunset was soon annihilated by the sound of angry bees.

Imagine that you were standing at twilight at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and suddenly there was this loud buzzing sound filling the spiritual air. That’s exactly what it felt like. It was pure sacrilege, and it took everything in Jimmy’s power to stop me from going right down to the parking lot and unloading on the perpetrators of such frivolous and disrespectful nonsense.

In the end, Jimmy convinced me to play nice, but when we passed the people and they greeted us with a friendly “howdy-do”, I held my breath and passed them in silence. And then we got in our car and sped away, making sure to dust them mightily.

The sun had just set and it was time to find a nice launching pad to watch the celestial star show come onto the sky stage.

About a mile down the dirt road from the trailhead we found a proper place to set up our lawn chairs, break out the beers, and await the arrival of the Milky Way. The Drone People were long forgotten. Jupiter was already shining in the sun’s fading glow while Saturn was coming up fast on the inside. Our phone app pointed out the brightest star, Regulus, “The Heart of the Lion” in the constellation Leo, as meteors and satellites lit the evening sky. We kicked back in our outdoor living room and smiled because all was now wonderfully right with the world.