A Weekend in Moab: Everything Went Wrong, but Somehow Turned Out Perfectly
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Moab again. It was a disaster.
The Original, Well-Thought-Out Plan:
Friday:
Finish just a little bit of homework and blog in the morning then leave around 11 A.M. to drive to Utah- a drive that I have done a handful of times now without a problem.
Get there around sunset and head straight to a campsite.
Saturday:
Skydive at 11 A.M. Explore for the rest of the day, then camp at my other favorite campsite.
Sunday:
Explore in the morning, then drive home.
Monday:
Go to class like normal.
Yeah, What Actually Happened
Friday:
It was 10:30 A.M. and I was still in fact running around trying to finish *just a little bit* of homework, an entire blog post (oops), and pack.
Kyndal picked me up in her cute white truck, and we started heading for Moab. My other friend, Peyton, was supposed to come too, but she got COVID.
I managed to finish one assignment that was due, but then we fell so deep into good conversation that the blog post slipped my mind. In fact, we were so deep in conversation that it also slipped our minds to stop in Grand Junction- about 4 hours into the 6-hour drive. So we had to make a long, long stretch of endless desert road while watching the gas gauge get lower and lower. We were still 19 miles away from the nearest gas station when it hit zero, but we somehow made it.
We camped right there under the milky way that night. We layed under the stars for hours, talking about life, aliens, and everything in between.
Saturday:
The wind woke us up, and I just knew skydiving wasn’t gonna happen. But I kept justifying it in my head and really hoping that it still would.
We sat in the back of the truck, making breakfast and talking about how excited we were to skydive. We got ready, then started to head down the road, back into town.
My phone got service and buzzed with a voicemail from Skydive Moab. Canceled.
I called them back, and they said 30 MPH winds were in fact considered “too windy to jump out of a plane,” so we rescheduled for Monday since Sunday was supposed to be rainy.
We drove back up highway 313 to explore Dead Horse Point State Park and the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park for the day. I’ve been to both of these so many times now, and I am fully convinced they will never get old. The high winds were certainly no joke, but it was beautiful anyway.
We drove down to the dinosaur tracks and petroglyphs on Potash Road. From here, there is an incredible view of the Colorado River surrounded by trees covered in fall leaves. Plus, the petroglyphs and dino foot prints are sick.
In the parking lot of the petroglyphs, we decided we wanted to camp at Gemini Bridges- an area my sister told me about and I tried to camp there with my other friend in the spring but we nearly got the car stuck. But that’s a story for later.
The drive in was equally beautiful and gnarly. The road led high above Moab with a view that looked like mars- just miles of red rocks and sand below us. Then it eventually veered off and suddenly it felt like we were driving on mars. The whole road was gnarly but Kyndal’s cute little truck and years of off-roading experience got us there in one piece.
This area is dispersed camping- so there were a few numbered sites spread out (with very strict rules to only camp in these sites), but there was no camp host to monitor them, or established restrooms or fire pits like an actual campground.
We finally saw a sign marking a campsite, so we followed the arrow but saw it was already taken. There was no tent set up, and we didn’t see any people there, but there was a car parked. So we turned back and headed to the next one.
It was still really windy there with rain in the forecast, so we set up the tent as quickly as we could, paying the most attention I ever have in my life to the set up of the rain fly and the stakes in the ground.
Another truck pulled up to our site, then turned around, just as we did with the first site. Then about 15 minutes later, a guy came up on his bike. He came to introduce himself and ask how long we were supposed to stay. The guy was called Alex, and our campsite was his and his buddy’s sentimental spot from years of camping in Moab. His friend wasn’t coming until tomorrow night and we were planning on leaving in the morning so it all worked out perfectly. Alex was really nice, and he left with a, “if you need anything, just holler. I’m in the next site over!”
Just a little bit later, I was incredibly grateful for that interaction, especially for the sentence at the end there.
We were sitting in the back of the truck, making dinner and watching the dark clouds roll over and it became obvious the rain forecast was not a joke after all. In this tucked-away desert spot surrounded by towering rock walls, everything echoed and it was hard to tell where sounds were coming from and how close they were.
But in some direction, we heard gunshots and then saw a flashlight in the trees off to the right of us. I don’t know if we even said anything, we just looked at each other and scrambled to get in the car. We sat there for a few, trying to see anything else off to the right, and telling each other that the sweet guy on the bike totally has us safe so there was nothing to worry about. After a little while, we decided we were fine- it is legal to shoot guns on BLM and many people do. Plus it was probably just a car backfiring, a mallet hitting a tent stake, or someone chopping wood.
So we ventured back outside… then felt the first raindrops.
Within a couple of minutes, those first few raindrops turned into an absolute downpour and we ran into the tent.
That night we fell asleep to the sound of gunshots (definitely, definitely gunshots), rain coming through slits in the rainfly, and wind so strong it would shake the tent and then blow beneath the tent.
At 2 AM, the wind finally broke off one of the corners of the rain fly, leaving the rest of it blowing in the wind just moments away from entirely flying away, and rain falling straight on us. Kyndal just said, “how fast do you think we can pack everything into the truck?”
So in the pouring rain, we packed up the tent, stuffed everything in the car, then slept in the front seats of her truck.
Sunday:
On Sunday we woke up and never moved from the front seats. We just started driving out.
The uneven 4-wheel drive road was filled out with puddles now. The sky was grey like the mornings you wake up to a cozy rainy day.
We went into town to turn in a couple of assignments since we extended our trip by a day. Turns out everyone in Moab was hiding from the rain in the coffee shops and there weren’t any seats left, so we sat in her car.
Then we headed for the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.
It only took us about 15 minutes of the drive south to realize we were very lucky with our rain the night before. There was snow on the ground out there.
The hour-and-a-half drive turned into 2 and a half, between car troubles, stopping for cows on the road, and an entirely unexpected snowstorm.
But we made it. By the time we got to our first stop in the park, the skies were mostly blue and we were beyond psyched to see everything. At our second stop, the sky was dark again. For our third stop, we drove down this quick 4-wheel drive trail, and on the way back, it was snowing again.
By the time we got back to the main road in the park, it was snowing so hard we could no longer see the Needles in the distance.
The snow stuck with us until we were almost back in Moab. It was just raining there, but there was snow on the ground from earlier too. With snow covering the spot we were intending to camp at, and snow in the forecast that night, we decided to look at hotels just in case they had anything cheap still available.
We found a good deal and booked it. With the load off our chest of trying to find a place to camp tonight and getting there before the sun was down, we decided to explore one last place before heading to the hotel.
We went to Mill Creek- just a 15-minute drive out of town and one of my favorite little spots in Moab. The dirt road going in was a mess because of the rain. When we got there we stepped out of the car and started heading towards the creek, but ended up just standing in the middle of this field while being drenched in this half-rain, half-hail combination falling from the sky. The wind was blowing in every direction it seemed, and we just looked at each other and started cracking up, realizing how much of a beautiful mess this trip has been.
The second we stepped foot in the hotel, we felt way out of place and wondered how we got such a good deal. It was a nice hotel, and we looked like a couple of wet sewer rats that snuck in off the street.
We would both be the first to admit that we wussed out from camping, but have zero regrets about it. We laughed in excitement and disbelief as we walked around the room and saw a shower, and beds to sleep in, and looked at the snow through the window instead of camping under it.
There was no microwave, so we used the Jet Boil to make our instant mac and cheese. So there we were, in a nice hotel, wearing fancy hotel robes, using a camping stove to make instant mac and cheese.
We went in the hot tub, showered, then passed out.
Monday
On Monday we jumped out of the sky.
We woke up and it was Kyndal’s 19th birthday. I can’t think of a better way to start off your last year of being a teenager than waking up in Moab and then jumping out of an airplane.
And that’s exactly what we did.
I can’t even tell you how excited I was. From the second we got in the car to drive to the airport, til we were back on i70 East, I don’t think I ever stopped smiling.
Everyone at Skydive Moab was so nice and so cool. They helped us put on our fly suits and harnesses, then before we knew it we were stepping on a teeny tiny plane.
Two benches lined either side of the plane, and we all sat facing forward. I heard someone say, “halfway there,” as I was staring out the window as we got higher and higher over Moab.
The door opened, I looked over and saw the first guy jump.
Then my best friend is sitting there on the edge of a plane, and within a moment she was falling from the sky.
Then it was my turn. I never got nervous, and I think it’s because I never had a moment to think about it. I was strapped to the instructor behind me and suddenly he had scooted us up to the edge. My feet were dangling off over 13,000 feet of nothing.
Then we fell.
We rolled out sideways at first, but then I was flying with my arms out and stomach to the ground. We were falling so fast, I couldn’t get a breath in. There were zero thoughts in my head or worries in the world, just freefalling over one of my favorite places in the world.
Then he pulled the parachute and we were just floating over Moab. We still had over 3,000 feet to fall, but after that initial jump, it felt like we weren’t moving at all, just floating.
I got to pull the parachute, and we landed by sliding in on our butts.
The second he released me, I ran to hug Kynny. I don’t think we can ever top falling out of the sky together, but we will never stop trying.
The drive home was low-key a mess too, but after that once-in-a-lifetime moment, we couldn’t be bothered to care. It snowed off and on many times, we had more car troubles, and got stuck in hefty traffic, but we made it.
Tuesday
Then we went back to normal life.
I was exhausted with a million things to catch up on, but above all that, I was so grateful for the experiences I had that weekend.
It was just one of those weekends where everything went wrong but it all worked out how it was supposed to. Skydiving got canceled on Saturday, so Kynny got to wake up and skydive on her birthday. It snowed, so unexpectedly, and I think that’s possibly the coolest way to experience the first snow of the year. The whole trip was hilarious and I wouldn’t change any of it even if I could.
