Moab Madness Minus Three Plus One Adventure...

Many months ago we planned this fabulous trip to Moab with my family.  Everyone was so excited to go.  We were actually going to go with our entire family and then something suddenly came up... like nasty sickness!  Cole got terribly sick on the Monday before we left and the doctor didn't test for the swine flu but he said he could have it.  So, being that I have two pregnant sisters and an almost two year old nephew, you just don't risk it to spread that around... Norm and Cole didn't come!   Riley, my brother-in-law, had a last minute hunting trip with his Dad (who he gets to see once a year) and brother come up the same weekend so he couldn't come either... So here is our minus three.  As for the adventure part, that's another story.  My Dad, myself and our girls and my brother Kam were going down wednesday night to save some camping spots.  My Dad was driving Lindsay and Riley's truck pulling their toy hauler and Kam drove his truck pulling his toy hauler.  Kam took off to get on the road and we drove out to Lindsay's to get her trailer.  We got on the road a little later than planned but not too far behind schedule.  Things go bad at the top of Spanish Fork Canyon,  well, not quite at the top.  We are driving along noticing the beautiful leaves when we hear this terrible pop, crash, metal dragging on asphalt sound!  It was so scary, there is not an emergency lane so we are just stopped in the lane on the curvy hilly canyon road.  We try to drive and there is just horrible grinding metal sounds.  I hop out to look under the truck to see what has fallen out (the engine, the transmission, the axle?!?!?)  It was the driveline!  So, my Dad puts it in four wheel drive, and we slowly make it to the top to the pull out.  We were safe, but we have no cell phone service and we don't know what we are going to do.  There was another truck pulled over so we ventured over and they kind of had cell phone service but we could only get Lindsay, Riley and Kam's voice mail.  So my Dad left a message that we were stranded at the top of the canyon with no service and come save us.  We just sat and waited, and waited, and waited.  Can, I just say that being without cell phone service is a very eerie feeling.  What did we do just 10 year ago when not every soul on earth had one?!?!  Anyway, it was cold, we were hungry and the girls kept saying "Why won't anyone stop to help us?"  They even tried to flag some cars down but they just got a semi to honk at them.  I guess now a days people figure everyone has a phone or people are psychos so don't stop!  Luckily we grabbed some snacks from Lindsay before we left so we had some trail mix and goldfish crackers to munch on.  On most luckily, we had the trailer with a bathroom!  What would three girls do off the side of the road....  let's just say the trailer bathroom was much appreciated!  I must point out that we did have Lindsay's trailer but all our gear and food was loaded in Kam's trailer.  So, we could get in there and use the bathroom and eat the macaroni salad she had in her fridge but that was about it.  Well, after a long two hours our heroes showed up.  Riley, his brother and his Dad drive up with two trucks and one big trailer.  They unhook us, load the broken truck onto his flatbed trailer and hook the other truck to our trailer and off we went.  We finally got to Moab at about 11:30!  We were planning on getting there at 7:00!  There were no accidents, no one was hurt, and our trip wasn't ruined but it was an adventure.

We had such a fabulous time we want to go back right away and take Norm and Cole with us. We camped right at the base of the Fins n Things trail head so we did that trail many times. Some of the group did Hell's Revenge while others stayed at camp. The girls and I stayed with Lindsay and Ryder. We had been riding in the Memmotts Ranger which is very nice, but not made for tippy sketchy trail riding. We had a constant fear that we were going to tip over and we decided we didn't want to spend 3-4 hours wondering if we were going to roll down the rocks. We later experienced Moab in a true fashion in Kam and Brandy's RZR... holy cow that thing is fun. It was about a million times better than being on a roller coaster ride. It took a little coaxing to get the girls to go (since they spent the majority of the time on the Ranger ride with their eyes closed or their coats over their heads being scared to death). Once we got them in and Brandy took them for a ride we couldn't get them out. They wanted to go again and again. They kept begging for more. We also went to Arches and that was truly amazing. We did a few short hikes and drove through most of the park. The arches and caves and rock formations were breathtaking. If you can't tell from this super long email that I absolutely loved Moab then you should read it again :)