Rally on the Rocks - Moab, UT 2012

Rally on the Rocks MOAB 2012
Four sweet trail rides, beautiful scenery, red Moab dirt, bloomin' cactus's, meeting lots of nice people and even a visit to a National Park to top it all off.  We had quite the vacation and the best way to spend our birthdays!!!!

We arrived late Tuesday night to the OK RV park to set up camp.  Pretty humorous, there are well over 50 RV sites, and well, 4 tent sites!!!  We were on a little island of grass at the end of a row of the huge toy haulers!!  Great campground though: showers and even a little black camp cat!!  About a one minute ride away, was the Arena where all the events were staged, vendors showed off the wares, the banquet was held and the UTVs lined up for the daily ride.




Most of the rides were were honored with a police escort through the streets of Moab  It was quite the site to see scores of UTVs all lined up parading through town!  There were only a few trails that we had to trailer to.

Kane Creek Trail
The perfect trail to begin our journey!  It had some rocky challenging areas, but beautiful scenery and the best part were the frequent water crossings.  After the first few crossings of the creek, we quickly decided that we were already dirty enough so we might as well get filthy!!! Splash!  We soaked ourselves and the RZR and then just let the dust coat us into a lovely tan of Moab red!!

There weren't a lot of kids at the event, but Jadeyn latched on to Kyle, a boy from Arizona.  Or, I should say, the boy latched on to us!

They played in the sand, and had great conversations!!

We only had one RZR 800 get stuck!  He was going over a soft incline and just spun himself a nice hole trying to get out!  A little tug of war action later and he was back in business!

I just got a new camera for my birthday, so I was a little shy on the picture taking for this first trail being paranoid about the dust.  The scenery was beautiful, slightly overcast, and the cactus were in bloom!


Fins 'n' Things
Early Thursday morning we headed out to the notorious Fins 'n' Things trail known for  slick rock and sandy hill climbs!  I didn't think anything could beat hiking the fins for the 360 degree overlook of slick rock, but riding the trial that high up was spectacular.

Slick rock inclines steeper and higher than you could imagine were pretty intimidating at first.  But once the RZRs tires touched the vertical rock, they gripped on perfectly and up we climbed!!  The same for the descents.  Hanging on the edge of the rock, clinging there waiting for the level ground to come was a little nerve racking, but we didn't have any trouble at all.  We were quite impressed.

 

Our guide was fantastic.  He lead us with confidence and before we knew it, we had completed every single one of the optional obstacles.  There were bypasses around most of them, but we didn't take them!

Riding along the fins!

We couldn't take too many pictures of the soft sand whoop-de-woos because as soon as we hit them, everyone hit the gas and FLEW through them at pretty intimidating speeds! (intimidating for me, that is!)

 360 degree view of slickrock as far as the eye can see!!

Jadeyn was so excited to find the giant rock dinosaur that we had read about.  We searched and searched and finally found it!  It was a huge brontosaurus.  See it just to the right of Kevin's head?











Arches National Park!

We had a few hours Thursday night and figured, hey! lets throw in a National Park just for fun!!  We headed to Arches for a nice leisurely hike to the fins, and then a fun Jeep trail, yes, in our Jeep!

 
 We came across a nice sized gopher snake (I think) along the trail and it was fun to follow his snake path in the sand.

  Jadeyn was determined in this next picture that he had found a place where a rattle snake had been sleeping and the circle in the sand was where the sand had buried him!

Dinosaur Footprints!!!! On a Jeep trail in Arches, we came across a section of slick rock that had real dinosaur footprints scattered over it!  They were from some kind of Therapod and were spaced apart about as far as we could jump!  It was pretty sweet to actually see them not in a museum and to be able to touch them!

7 Mile and 3D Trails
This obstacle was pretty sweet looking.  Its called The Crack and as you crawl over it, it twists your vehicle in all sorts of directions making for some pretty cool photo opportunities.  Pretty funny though, we all thought it was harder than it looked because our guide got himself stuck in his RZR 800!  Kevin made it look like a piece of cake in our RZR 4!

There were several places on this trail that felt quite 'tippy' but wouldn't be too difficult if it weren't for the slick rock plummeting pretty much straight down beside us!!

Rusher Tunnel is a favorite spot on 7 Mile.  There long tunnel where two massive rocks have fallen against each other creating a prefect triangle to walk through.  It is so long that as you start in the tunnel, you cannot see the light at the end of it and are walking blindly in the dark trying not to knock your noggin'!

Nice family picture on the ledge!!

Check out the dust!!!  RZR after RZR on the open trail really kicked up the dust.  I made us some dust buffs and we sure used them on several sections of trail!

Hell's Revenge

The final trail of our adventure!!  More slick rock and steep slopes, but by this time Kevin was pretty much an expert!  The views were incredible, the rock formations sweet and we had a blast!

Some nice steep slickrock!

Up at the top viewpoint all the vehicles perched on the rock over looking the mighty river below for lunch!

This is one of the "Hot Tubs" on Hell's Revenge.  Its a pretty tricky obstacle, but much to the RZRs dismay, we weren't allowed to attempt it while we were part of the Rally.  Bummer.  Here is a RZR 2 trying it out and needing a rope to give it just enough grip to keep from flipping as it came out.

The final obstacle on Hell's Revenge is called Tip Over Challenge and WOW was it a cool lookin' one.  The vehicles would go up in three wheels, teeter for a minute, raise up on two before settling back down!

Yeah, Jadeyn thinks he is pretty cool stuff getting to ride around in a RZR all day through such beautiful country!!  Nice feet!!