Moab, Baby!

Once again the Price family took our annual pilgrimage to the mecca of Moab, Utah. Neil's family goes there to ride their dirt bikes and four-wheelers every spring and/or fall. Usually the boys in the family go one season, and then everyone goes together the next time. It's been over a year since the whole family has gone, so everyone was pumped and ready to go last weekend. This is not just a simple, "hey, let's go camping in Moab" kind of trip. Ohhhhhhh, no. Neil's family goes all out whenever they do anything, and Moab would definitely be the last exception to that rule. Neil's little brother, Marc, worships red dirt and slick rock, and Moab has to be big, big, BIG. This year we drove down four trucks, a car, three trailers, nine four-wheelers, five motorbikes, eleven adults, eight kids, and six dogs (Sorry- no room for the partridge, or his tree). We took off on Wednesday after Neil got off work and I finished at a primary activity, and we finally pulled into the favorite camping area at 3:00 am. Thanks to many obviously rainy days previously, the road to drive down to the sand dunes was washed out, so we had to camp up on a plateau. Thursday was a hang-out day. Mom Price hauled up several bucketfuls of sand from the wash to make a sand pile for the kids to play in, which they and their socks just soaked right up. They had a kid-sized motorbike and four-wheeler there for the kids to ride, and they putted around on those all day. Dad Price had to get helmets for all the kids, and my nephew, Eli, wore his helmet every day, all day, barely taking it off to eat or sleep. He wanted to be ready in case anyone needed him to go on a ride with them. Neil and his dad and brother Wade took Kortney and Taylor on a little ride, and when they got back, I noticed that Kortney had an unfixable, gaping hole in the seat of her pants. How in the world did that happen? Only with her dad, of course. I guess they were climbing up some steep slick rock, and Neil let the girls slide down behind him in a train, to keep them from falling as they slid down. He tripped and stumbled, and the girls went shooting down the rock behind him, but he caught them and they never realized they were even in danger. Kortney's pants (and panties, I later found out) took the beating and got torn to shreds. Good thing that was the closest call of the trip. And good thing I was only there to hear about it after the fact! The next day was the "big ride". Neil's dad is famous for turning a "three-hour" tour into six. I was a little skeptical of how easy he made the day's ride sound. I had been on this same ride, to Prichett Arch (for any who may know Moab), years before, when we didn't have any kids, and I, being the very inexperienced rider that I am, didn't remember it being a simple walk in the park. What was it going to be like this time with three small kids? We had to haul all the bikes from our campsite through the town to the other side of Moab, park, unload, lock the big dogs up in the kennels and trailers, and ride all the four-wheelers down a dirt road to the arch. That's when I found out that it was 17 miles-- one way. I rode one of the most sturdy, automatic four-wheelers (since I can't do a clutch), and took Emmrie in a front pack with me, and had my oldest neice, Madelyn, hanging on behind me. I couldn't even wear my helmet because the chin of it would've hit Emmrie in the head, so I just wore the gigantic bug-eye-looking goggles. Neil rode with Taylor in front of him, and Kortney behind. Everyone else was pretty much loaded down, too. They even packed their three chihuahuas among them. Slap leather jackets and saddle bags on us and we would've looked like the oddest biker gang you've ever seen. We stopped for lunch, climbed some slick rock, and noticed that it was starting to get windy. More than halfway down the trail, the terrain got more rocky and steep, thanks to all the rain that washed out chunks of the road. Neil noticed that his four-wheeler's clutch was getting worse, and the girls had both fallen asleep on his arms in front of him. We were holding up the rear (a.k.a. I was the slowest, so Neil stayed back with me), and when I looked back to see how he was doing with the snoozers, I saw him stop and throw his hands up in the air to say, "I'm done." I was, too. I was just glad not to be the one to give in first. We stopped in some shade until Marc came back to check on us. He took Madelyn with him and we turned around to drive back to the trucks while everyone else continued on to the beautiful arch, which was definitely worth the ride. We were slow-going all the way back. Neil had switched me Taylor for Emmrie, and Taylor screamed the whole way back because she wanted to be with Dad. Kortney had fallen asleep on him again, so she was laying on his arm, which made driving with the bad clutch even harder. I still have a bruise on my chest from Taylor's huge bobble-head helmet smacking me on every bump. Four hours after starting out, we finally made it back to the trucks, let the big dogs out to run for a minute, got the girls into their carseats, and drove down the trail to meet everyone on their way back. It was getting dark, cold, and windy. When we met up with them, my sister-in-law, Maria, was grateful to release her tense grip behind Wade and ride in the truck the rest of the way with her 4-month-old and her chihuahua. Her older kids rode in the back, and the other two chihuahuas jumped in with us where they were nice and warm. I think I'd like to invest in a jeep for our next trip to Moab. We made it back that night to our camp without any broken bones or broken-down rigs, so it was a good ride. And what would you do if you were camping the weekend Halo 3 came out? Bring it along, of course! Rhonda's husband, Jon, came down Friday after work, and brought his Xbox, Halo 3, and his projector, and they hooked it up with a generator so the boys could play Halo all night up against the side of one of the trailers. Now that's camping with all the amenities! So back to our wonderful plateau campsite. It was a great spot with a spectacular 360 degree view-- until Saturday, when it was so windy that we had to wear our riding goggles outside, anything lighter than a camping chair disappeared, and sand and dirt came at us like shrapnel from every direction. The guys went out on their own motorcycle ride, and while they were gone, the wind died down enough for the kids to go play in the sandy wash for about 30 minutes. When I looked out to check on them, I saw them all scaling the cliff. Mom, Maria and I all ran out of the camper, yelling for them to get down right now! But, of course, I had to snap some photos while I was running out there. They got down without any harm, and then the wind picked back up to practically hurricane speed. We decided that we couldn't camp there any longer, so as soon as the guys got back, all wet and muddy, we broke camp and drove closer to town. And of course, no Moab trip is ever complete without something completely random and unexpected happening. While we were caravanning into town, Neil was pulling one of the toy-haulers behind us, and a huge semi decided to race us for the lead as the lanes merged, and scraped the trailer with his mirror. It freaked me out to see such a huge thing up too close. Thankfully nothing worse happened. Okay, that was probably the closest call of the trip. We were all okay, and after we talked to the cops for about two hours, we drove on without a single ticket ever being issued. No campspot we found was less windy than the spot we left, so we spent the evening dinking around in the little shops in Moab, and finally decided to get a hotel for the night. It was so nice to have a shower and to shake the sand out of our sleeping bags. We drove home the next day, and of course we had to stop at the new (well, not so new anymore) Cabella's in Lehi. We cooked a BBQ in their parking lot, and had to go browse around inside. They have a huge aquarium of lake and stream fish, which the girls loved to watch, and we showed them all the stuffed big game animals they had displayed throughout the store. It really was amazing. We could've spent the whole day (and some money) there, but it was Sunday, so, being the faithful sabbath observers that we were that day, we drove on. We got home late that night, and Neil crashed before his head even hit the pillow. After five loads of laundry and about two shovels-full of red dirt swept out of the truck and garage, we are ready to begin another countdown to next year's exciting adventure!