Drink your Gatorade folks!

May 11th:

Boulder, CO > Moab, UT

That desert heat is no joke! I knew that..but apparently forgot and had the opportunity to relearn that lesson the hard way. It’s been awhile! After Boulder, we loaded up the car once again and got back on the road, this time to sunny Florida. No, just kidding. We drove to Moab, Utah to the ACT Campground. This is an awesome campground that I’ve actually stayed at before. It has hot showers, a communal kitchen, laundry, and Wi-Fi, and it’s fairly cheap for what you’re getting. The only downside is the road noise because it is right off the highway. But the location and price are great.

I also really enjoy this campground because of the community aspect, you really get the chance to meet interesting people who are also traveling around. We actually got to share dinner with a writer and his family, and on the way out he gave us one of the poetry books he had written and signed it. The book was ”From Now to You.” Super random but really fun to have the chance to meet new people on the road, and everyone is really friendly.

I was finally able to do the Delicate Arch hike in Arches. This was my 3rd time going and I had always been in the heat of summer so this hike intimidated me…and for good reason! Even in wind gusts of 30-40 miles per hour, this hike was too hot. It was only 80 that day but we started the hike when we arrived because it was getting cooler and it was only 3 miles. Mistakes! This was a decently steep hike up until the arch, once you round the corner to the arch.. hold on to your hats. It’s like you’ve entered a jet engine. The wind that blows through that area is unlike anything I’ve experienced. This makes sense though, wind carved that arch and so that area is probably always decently windy, but that day in Utah happened to be particularly windy even away from the arch. Unfortunately a combination of heat, wind, exhaustion, altitude, sunburn, and hiking put me in the ER for dehydration that night. Would not recommend- so now everyday is a battle to see who can drink the most Gatorade. I did have 3 of 4 liters of water that day but it wasn’t enough to stave off dehydration without the electrolytes- which I knew somewhere in my head but it’s been so long since I’ve been in intense heat or done 50 miles of hiking in a week that I forgot. Moral of the story- potassium and Gatorade are mission critical. The hike was beautiful though! I was actually very impressed with the arch, I feel like I had heard that it was still pretty far away even once you could see it and I thought it was bigger than it looked in pictures. I think early morning hiking is the way to go, or just avoid the high desert in the summer. Also the Moab Hospital was great, they were quick and very nice so that experience could have been much worse, especially if we were farther from a hospital.

May 12th:

Moab, Day 2.

Feeling traumatized and exhausted from my dehydration adventure, I took it easy today. We did a scenic drive of Canyonlands. Island in the Sky is only 45 minutes from Moab, which is really reasonable. We were able to do the Island in the Sky Visitor Center, Mesa Arch (.5 mile hike), Green River Overlook, and Grand View all in 3 hours. It‘s worth a trip from Moab.

That afternoon I searched for shade at the campground while my friends did the Devil’s Garden Hike in Arches. It’s an 8 mile loop (longer) or 4 miles (shorter), but you see Landscape Arch, Tower Arch, and way more. They also did the Windows, which is my favorite, 1 mile hike in Arches. I think the views from the Windows are the coolest, but I haven’t gotten to explore much of the longer hiking options because of the heat. This park would be awesome in April or Fall. Even May is too hot as evident by my photo in the hospital bed.