what a nice day out there

After the frigid week we had, Utah has been in a high pressure situation for a while.  We thought we'd take advantage of the lack of precipitation and head to Moab for a quick weekend away.  Technically it's a long drive (around four hours) but mentally we have it broken down into four chunks - SLC to Spanish Fork; the twisty bits through Spanish Fork Canyon, over Soldier Summit and down through Price Canyon; Helper to Green River; and Green River to Moab - and for some reason that makes the trip go by fairly quickly.  Luckily, we were able to go down Friday late afternoon, so that gave us all of Saturday and part of Sunday to play.

H on Rusty Spur

Even with the sun and clear skies, it does take a little while for temperatures to warm up this time of year.  Both weekend days were in the low 60s with barely any wind - simply glorious.  We did wait until about 10:30 a.m. to go MTBing on Saturday, however, and when we got to the Moab Brand Trails parking lot, we were completely surprised to see so many vehicles there: at least thirty, as many as we've seen probably since May.  It seems we weren't the only people wanting to enjoy the nice weather.

Psyched to explore this

Somehow, despite the number of vehicles (either pick-up trucks, Sprinter vans or Subarus) we saw very few people out on the trails.  We did Rusty Spur to the climb up to the Bar M loop, then did an out and back on the jeep road portion of Bar B to check out the back entrance to Arches National Park (which we will be exploring on foot later this winter).  Back at the Bar M, we detoured on the Circle O trail, which is fast becoming one of my favorites.  It's all slickrock and I can ride much of it.  It's really fun (despite the serious look on my face in the photo below).

SO focused (trying not to fall over)

After the Circle O, we continued on the Bar M loop, then took a short connector road to the Pipeline road back to the parking lot.  From there, we went around again, this time on Lazy EZ ("neither all that lazy nor all that easy," per the sign - slightly technical one-way single track) across the front of the facing ridge, then around on Bar M to the parking lot cutoff.  It ended up being about eighteen miles; I hadn't been on my MTB for weeks and my legs were tired.

Firepit

It was so pleasant that we stayed in the parking lot for a while with our beers, watching the riders and hikers and dogs and kids all around us, until we needed to head back to let a patient Milton out.  That evening, as you can see below, he wasn't too sure about the firepit.  We liked it though.

Milton is unconvinced

Ride stats: 18/53 miles; 2:26 hours; 7.8 avg. m.p.h.