What a great few days in Moab with one of my closest friends Anna Ball! Icing on the cake is that another good friend was also in Moab and we got to connect with her friends too, which was great fun. We flew in on Halloween and after checking into our AirBnB, we set out for a sunset hike at Delicate Arch. It was gorgeous!

Being Halloween night, many restaurants and bars were closed, but we did find one that seemed to be pretty lively. After a long day of travel, sitting down at the bar to drink a craft beer from the local brewery and eat a burger was just perfect. A number of residents were in costume, so that made for fun people-watching. We also took this time to turn to YouTube to learn a bit about the geological history and how the arches came to be. Talk about “information at your fingertips!”

Friday, November 1

The great thing about traveling with Anna Ball is she’s always up for a hike or two. We had a good breakfast at Love Muffin Cafe, a local spot that sources all their ingredients locally. We took this time to plan out our day, starting off at Dead Horse State Park with a series of hikes. November 1st - March 30 are permitted times to fly a drone, so I wanted to take this opportunity to practice drone photography. We used the drone to take a selfie. Not bad for an amateur!

After a few hikes (and a dead drone battery), we headed to Canyonlands National Park just up the road. It was definitely busier than Dead Horse State Park, so we were appreciative of our relative solitude and illusion of having that park all to ourselves. We visited one of the more famous arches, Mesa Arch. It was just 1/3 of a mile from the parking lot, which was fine with us considering it’s was approaching 5 pm and we were getting tired and all the canyons, buttes and arches started to look all the same. We definitely had great weather, low to mid 60s. I’m not sure how people can do this in the summer. There’s no shade here!

We went to the race expo to pick up our race packets for the Moab Trail Half Marathon (the event that brought us out to Moab) and head to the Broken Oar for the promise of their “world’s best sweet potato fries.” After hiking most of the day with only having had breakfast, we were very happy with this sit down dinner and the sweet potato fries lived up to their name.

Saturday, November 2: Moab Trail Half Marathon

This was a fun day! This was Anna Ball’s first trail half marathon, so this was “the” event of the trip. I started in the wave behind because I’m slower and the training was done purely through my imagination. But I managed to get it done by being smart to walk up the hills and run the flats, and down hills. It was so beautiful and fun to run and see all the beauty. You really can get distracted by the “effort” of the runs by taking the scenery all in!

Sunday, November 3

We woke up to cold rain. My friend Kendra and her group (Jennifer, Rebecca and Barrie) were running the half this day so I went to pick them up to take them to the start line. It’s better to be in a heated car and dropped off just moments before the race starts vs. a school bus that drops off an hour early, right!? It was really fun to see them off.

It rained most of the day, so we were actually very happy to take it slow and rest. We read, watched TV. No complaints at all.

That evening we met up with Kendra and her group to go out for drinks and pizza. It was fun to “merge” our groups and hit it off too. We had lots of common interests and the wine and conversations kept flowing. Given we were all flying out back home to “civilization” and “busy-ness” — we all agreed that we should set our alarms for 4:30 AM and set out for a sunrise hike as a send-off.

Monday, November 4

It’s small thanks to the fact we had Fall Back DST just the day prior, so the 4:30 AM wake-up could have felt more like 5:30 AM. (At least that’s what we told ourselves.) I found a hike online for Partition Arch which advised starting an hour prior to sunrise, which was 6:44 AM. Being a group of active women, we felt that we could go faster than the average person and start more like 45 minutes prior to sunrise. Which we did. When we got to the trail head, out of the 4 of us, 1 forgot their headlamp, 1 person’s headlamp was out of battery, 1 didn’t have one, leaving us with 1 person who had a headlamp to lead us the way and one iPhone flashlight. Let me tell you, it was pitch black.

As we got about halfway up the hike, the warnings we read online of “you need to do some scrambling” were in front of us. With one lamp and one iPhone flashlight, we had to really use all our senses to feel our way over the rocks and through the crevices. The quote of the day was, “at least we don’t have far to fall” (!?) But it definitely added to the fun and the comedy of the adventure we put ourselves into. When we arrived, just as the pre-dawn light was starting to light up the canyon, it was such a quiet, meditative moment as we waited for the sun to greet us for the day. In some ways, it felt like we were looking through a television screen to watch the “morning show.”

The hike down was exhilarating. We hadn’t seen any of the landscape on our way up and it was awe-inspiring. The morning light, the quiet and the solitude of being on the trail on our own was electrifying. There was such a serene and peaceful sense of watching all the colors change as the sun moved up above the horizon. We also go to see the different parts where we had to get on all fours and scramble.

It was a perfect way to end an amazing few days in Moab. Thankful for time with Anna Ball and extending our friendship circle. Look forward to the next girls trip!