Vacation in Moab, or Why you haven't seen any woodworking posts

In case you're wondering why I haven't been in the shop lately I'm on vacation in Moab, Utah with Pam and my brother and his family.

One of the beauties of Moab is Arches National Park, Delicate Arch that you see here is on the Utah lisence plates.

Sunday we hiked (climbed) up to Delicate Arch, its listed as a strenuous hike, no kidding. It was 100 degrees here in the valley but up on the LaSal Mountains you can still see the snow covered peaks.

My family early on in the hike when we still weren't beaten down by the sun, the nice part for us coming from the coastal south is that there is only 7% humidity here, at home its more like 100 degrees and 90% humidity.

Monday was the great Moab Jeep Adventure for my brother, his daughter and me. We rented a modified Jeep and took it through Kane Creek Canyon, a trip of 13 miles and 5 hours. You can see why here. Our journey started on a dirt road and digressed from there. We went down into the canyon and followed Kane Creek crossing it 67 times according to the guide book, I didn't count, but I'd say they were close.

This was our view from the start of the trail, we went all the way through that canyon. Following a very narrow trail that was at times well marked and at times confusing. It was sand trails, creek beds, and crossings punctuated by rocky trails strewn with boulders.

This is the view up on of the "trails" we had to climb, it was like this all the way out of the canyon.

My brother and I both used to have Jeeps and have experience off road driving, but this part of the trail tested up both. I don't think my neice was too excited about the ride after the first couple of hours but she was a good sport about it.





The guy that rented up the Jeep told us that the company sells them after a few seasons, ours was a 2006 with only 20,000 miles, thats 20,000 HARD miles. I don't think I'd buy one after the rattling they go through.

After making it out of the canyon and back to Moab for a little rest and to spray the mud off the Jeep we went to the other side of town and tried out some slickrock jeeping on sandstone fins. Here we are on a trail called "Fins and Things", this is the easiest of three descents we had to choose from on this fin. Stay tuned for another update later in the week.