a trip to soggy moab

Amid the wet weather from Hurricane Rosa, we headed down to Moab for a long weekend.  We left on Friday, passing by snow-topped Timpanogos and the big burn scar in Spanish Fork Canyon, and watched the temperature drop to 37 F at Soldier Summit.  Skies cleared for a bit when we got further south but by mid-afternoon it was clouding up again.  After some discussion, we rejected a MTB ride in favor of a couple of beers at Woody's before checking in at the Kokopelli Lodge motel.  Several office dogs were in residence - Pearl, Jackson, Jasper, Lumen and baby Ladybug, with her very sharp puppy teeth.  We managed to get out of there, somehow without adopting anyone, got settled into our room and then hightailed to Zax's sports bar to watch the Yankees vs. the Red Sox, sitting next to a diehard Sox fan who had recently transplanted to Moab from New Hampshire, New England accent intact.

 The last sunshine for literally days

We got up at 7:15 a.m. Saturday and put both MTBing and hiking gear in the truck so we would be ready for anything.  Outerbike was in town and set up at the MOAB Brand Trails parking lot so we drove a little further on down the road, parking at a lot at the intersection of 191 and 313, then riding the paved bike path back up to the MOAB Brand Trails.  We did Rusty Spur and the Bar M loop - encountering next to nobody - then cruised through the Outerbike encampment.  H checked the weather app on his phone: thunderstorms in the area at 10:45 a.m.  It was 10:15 so we did another lap of Rusty Spur, then went back on the bike path to the truck.

Jackson, Jasper and bitey little Ladybug

Back at the truck, it wasn't raining right away but it was cloudy and cold (54 F) and I had forgotten to pack long pants.  We had a quick beer, deciding not to linger too long as we watched the darkening clouds.  We drove back to town around 11:30 a.m. as the rain began; it would still be raining that night when we went to bed.  We hung around the motel for the afternoon - with temperatures in the low 50s and steady rain, it wasn't even good weather to walk around town. 

Quick! Before it rains!

We went to Woody's around 4 for beers, watching the Baylor vs. K-State college football game with an actual Baylor fan (a contract electrician in town for a job), then around 5:30 we tried to get into 98 Center for dinner.  The place was already packed, the soggy weather no doubt having driven erstwhile adventurers in town and into the restaurants early, so we went back to the bar at Zax's for veggie pizza and five and a half innings of the Yankees vs. Red Sox.  It was still raining when we walked back to the motel so we finished watching the game and called it a day.  Surely it would be drier on Sunday - whoever heard of it raining so much in the desert?

Woody's