Moab – March 7-9 2008 – Day 1

This spring, end of March, the week before the Easter Jeep Safari, Jason, Jed, Jed’s co-worker Delbert and I made a jaunt out to Moab. Fuel has been high, so Jed offered to drive his Dodge with the Cummins Diesel, and take his toy hauler. We had more machines than the toy hauler could handle, so we used Jason’s small trailer as well.

We started out Friday morning, and headed west over the mountains. It’s about a 6 hour drive from Loveland to Moab. We took the back way in from I-25, and decided to hit the Top of the World trail before we even went to the campground. We unloaded our bikes and everyone jumped on.

One thing to note about this trip, Jason was riding his Suzuki 500 4×4, Jed was riding his Polaris 600 4×4, Delbert was riding his Bombardier Outlander Max (a HUGE machine) and I was riding my 1988 Yamaha Warrior 350 2×4. Needless to say I was both underpowered, and trying to take what is mostly a sport machine over some of the roughest trails there are.

So, we started on on Top of the World, and I was struggling a little. About halfway up the trail I realized that my bike worked much better if I could keep up a consistent speed. While the 4×4 machines were able to crawl over obstacles, I had to hit the rough terrain with more velocity for everything to work well. Once I figured that out, I took the lead, and was the first one to the end of the trail. The view from the top was amazing, and while the trail doesn’t end abruptly, it can kind of sneak up on you and be a little surprising.

After achieving the summit, and enjoying the view, we turned around and headed back. It was still daylight, so we took another trail that led down by the river. We followed this for a couple miles, and finally just stopped and watched the sunset.

We got back to the truck about the time it started getting dark. Since this was March, it was still a bit cool out, but not too bad. We loaded everything up and headed in to the campground. Once we found our camp spot, we went to the Moab Diner and grabbed some dinner, came back to the campground and turned in anticipating a big day on Saturday.

Be sure to look at the photo gallery of our trip to Moab

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