Intrepid Trail at Dead Horse Point

One last item on our list for this particular trip was a mountain bike trail, for which we choose the Intrepid Trail System at Dead Horse Point State Park.

This trail has three hiking and biking loops, from 1 to 9 miles and varying in difficulties.
The Intrepid is the first and shorter of the three for those novice riders wanting a decent ride without rattling too many teeth -i.e. me. The loops are relatively flat with about 140 ft elevation change on the longer loop, and made of sand and rock and a few sections of slickrock along the way.

I can tell you I'm not much of a mountain biker and I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

We stopped at every overlook off course (what did you expect, ha) and I assure you they are well worth it. The view is breathtaking.

Oh, by the way, it is $10 to get in Dead Horse Point State Park.

Here are the bullet points, taken from the link provided above:

• Trailhead: Dead Horse Point State Park, 32 miles west of Moab
• Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
• Length:
• Intrepid Loop: 1.1 miles
• Great Pyramid Loop: 4.2 miles
• Big Chief Loop: 9.0 miles
• Elevation @ Trailhead: 5900
• Directions: Nine miles northwest of Moab on US 191 and then 23 miles southwest on Utah 313 to the end of the highway.

Enjoying the view...

This post concludes the Utah trip. :)

Moab, Utah

It's been a bit hectic at the house lately with starting a new job, but I do intend to finish this story arch with this post and the next (about time, I know).

Ok then, Moab.

The town was nothing like we expected. We had imagined a big tourist type town, busy with cars, people, and cyclist coming to ride the canyons. Not at all.

Moab turned out to be this neat little town of about 5,000 population with a good buzz to it without being overwhelming. We cycled out from the campsite (5 miles), parked the bikes and walked around for a good chunk of the day.

A quick search will come back with tons of sites on Moab.
Here are a couple: Moab.net and DiscoverMoab.

We stopped at the Love Muffin Cafe on Main street for breakfast.

Great little coffee shop. The service was fantastic. A couple guys were keeping up with traffic behind the counter, one handing out coffee drinks at top speed and the other making sandwiches and passing out orders from the kitchen. Someone else was walking around serving orders and cleaning up. I had the bowl of quinoa with fruits breakfast. Yum!

It got very buzy very quickly. Check out these ratings from TripAdvisor.

Corona Arch Trail, part 3

This second, the Corona Arch, is only a few hundred yards further than Bowtie Arch (previous post).

The opening is 140 ft long by 105 ft high, and apparently large enough that a small airplane actually flew threw it once.

A sandstone fin eroding over time to eventually create the arch.

Notice the "small" people underneath the arch in the second images on the left.

This is the view looking out at the canyon from under the arch.

Corona Arch Trail, part 2

This first one is Bowtie (one word).

Bowtie is approximately 30 feet in diameter and formed when a pothole met a cave underneath.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia: it used to be called "Paul Bunyan's Potty," until that name was taken for another formation in the Canyonlands National Park.