Monday, July 7, 2008

Best laid plans

The plan today is to do nothing but to achieve loads. It’s an organization day. This part of the trip is going to be filled with high drama, excitement and really wild things. That sort of adrenalin takes planning. After a long visit to the Information Center we settle on an itinerary for the next few days that will include sky diving, white water rafting, 4x4 off roading, Segway touring, a river cruise, a sunset Hummer mountain climb, and of course, lots of hikes. Moab is the gateway to the Arches National Park and we’re going to make the most of it.

We’re also going to camp, which may turn out to be a bad idea because the temperature is already in the high 90s and is predicted to rise during the week. There are 2 doggy kennels in the area and we check the mutt in to the least bad of them. We’re really not happy about this; they kinda suck but with our schedule and the heat, we have no choice. The dog doesn’t seem to mind but then we once had her stomach pumped and she thought it was a hoot.

We spend a while calling all the activity companies to discover that things aren’t going to be as we’d hoped. We can’t get in to the sky diving center. The white water rafting is only grade 2 to 3, (which is about as scary as taking a bath). The Segway tour just looks dull. Still, the rest is going to be perfect.
We take a quick tour through the National Park to work out where the arches are, and then start the adrenalin: the sunset Hummer tour.

These things are amazing. The area is covered in stuff the locals call “slick rock”. Its basically sandstone and the Hummer loves it. We spend 2 hours climbing rock faces that are almost vertical on a trail called ‘Hells Revenge’ – it’s a 4.5 out of 5 on the hardness scale - climbing over boulders that are bigger than the car. The Hummer is unstoppable. Our driver, Mike seems to be on a mission to make us so scared we vomit, and we love it just like the Hum-vey does. Reaching the top of the mountain at sunset we pause for beer, cheese and pictures. And then we do the whole thing again. Only this time downhill, and in the dark. Yikees!