Let’s go to Southern Utah – An Outdoor Paradise

After leaving Pagosa Springs, CO, we went to Moab, UT! We love Moab. It’s a massive outdoorsman’s playground.

Back in April 2021, Lindsay and I had taken a trip to Moab in our Jeep with fellow off-roaders. We hit several of the iconic offroad trails, such as Hell’s Revenge, Metal Masher, Poison Spider, and Steel Bender. If you’re not an avid off-roader but want to experience the trails, you can rent a Jeep, rent a UTV, bike them, or take one of the many excursions offered.

This trip was not about off-roading but more about experiencing Moab as a family. With such an abundance of hiking trails in and around Arches National Park and Canyon Land, we planned on doing a good amount of hiking while visiting the area.

We arrived in Moab on November 6, 2023, the weather was absolutely beautiful the entire time we were there! We stayed at Portal RV Resort, this place was pretty nice and there were 2 dog park areas to take Stella and Toby. With us being there in the off-season, there were plenty of sites available. We started our visit off with a trip to Arches National Park. Arches has over 2,000 natural red rock arches. Many of the trails are very easy but they aren’t particularly handicap accessible. Some of the iconic arches and natural wonders are:

Delicate Arch
Double O Arches
Broken Arch
Landscape Arch
North Window Arch
South Window Arch
Tower Arch
Sand Dune Arch
Double Arches
Balance Rock
And so many more!!

To start your day, you gotta swing by Moab Coffee Roasters; they have some really good coffee, espresso, and grub to get you started and keep you going throughout your day!

There are natural red rock arches all over the area as well as many other trails outside of Arches National Park that allow you to explore the Red Rock wonderland. We decided to hike a more moderately strenuous trail called Corona Arch Trail. This trail is pretty strenuous if you aren’t used to hiking or if you’re a beginner. It requires you to climb ladders, use a chain rail to help you up the steep red rock-carved steps, and many more obstacles. It was a lot of fun and the views were spectacular!

After spending a day and a half in Arches National Park and a half day on Corona Arch Trail, we needed a chill day. So we decided to take a trip to Canyon Land National Park since it’s only about 30 miles away. We didn’t do much in the way of hiking here, but there are several trails to hike, several overlooks to stop at, and much more to see and learn about. It kinda looked like a little Grand Canyon

You can’t visit Moab without stopping at the Moab Rock Shop. There are some cool fossils and many are extremely rare. Did you know that Moab, UT boasts one of the most remarkable records of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures found anywhere in the country?

At this point, we had started to think about other ways to make money while we were on the road living the RV life. There are so many ways to do this. I was still working part-time as a Remote Data Analyst/Inventory Control Support Tech for Wilson Lumber back in Huntsville, AL however, we were thinking about taking on some positions as “work campers”. This was a whole new thing for us, we started to look for several Facebook groups that are work camper groups. If you don’t know what a “Work Camper” is; it’s someone who lives the full-time RV life but works for a campground. In return, this person or couple would get various benefits such as; FHU (full hook-up site), wages, amenities, perks, etc.

As we searched through the mounds of work camp positions and their locations, we started applying to several gigs and went through about 6 or 7 virtual interviews. We ultimately accepted a gig in Pine Grove, CA where we’d start in January 2024. I would be maintenance and Lindsay would be the Activities Director and help in the front office. This allowed us to continue our travels for 2 1/2 more months before becoming stationary for a bit.

Now that we had a target date to make it to Pine Grove, CA we started to plan our route there. The route we chose ended up taking us from SW Utah to Vegas to San Diego and up the west coast of Cali. After leaving Moab we traveled to St George, UT for a week. St George was just a stop to catch up on some work, RV maintenance, truck maintenance, visit Zion National Park, and explore a few other places. To start, the RV needed a bath really bad! Honestly, it’s tough to find campgrounds that will allow you to wash your rig and the camper hadn’t had a bath since the day we bought it. Then the truck blew another turbo gasket, so I had to work on it again……… This is starting to get old, it’s starting to seem like every time we move, the truck decides to give us problems!

For a bit of reprieve from working on the truck and spending 4 hours washing the RV, we decided to take a drive to Zion National Park. Zion is a nice park but it stays packed, even in the off-season. There are several iconic hiking trails to explore but we didn’t allocate enough time to hike them. Instead, we opted for the drive-thru experience! Zion is breathtaking. There was a short hike we did take, but it wasn’t in Zion, it was East of Zion in a little town called Mt Carmel, UT. This trail is called Belly of the Dragon. When you head to the trailhead, you gotta hike down to what looks like a large drain culvert, and then you make your way through the tunnel to continue the trail. It’s kinda eerie but awesome at the same time!