Work Trip?

The first weekend of June I ended up going down to Moab for work. At my work we have a summer program for undergrad student's. They come to Utah for the summer and work in the labs to get experience . they also take a class about GRE's and have to do poster presentations at the end of the summer. Since a lot of the students have never been to Utah before we take them to a few places to show them around and to help them get to know the other students in the program. One of the trips that we do is down to Moab. This year my boss asked me to come along and help with driving as well and keeping things organized while we were down there. I have to say that is was a pretty good trip all things considered.

We left on Friday morning and drove down to Moab. Once we got there we checked into the camp ground and got things all set up. I had to help some of the students set up there tent and that was entertaining. I was lucky enough to stay in a cabin so at least i did not have to set up my own. Once we had gotten all of the stuff set up went got back in the vans and headed over to Arches National Park. When we got there we went straight to Delicate Arch (which is really supposed to named Landscape Arch, but some photographer screwed it up and they never changed it.) and hiked our way up. It was really windy and by the time we were only half way through it also started to rain. We did make it to the top though. Once we got up there it was so windy that i thought we were going to get blown off. You had to sit down because you could not keep your balance standing. I also think that i ate about a bucket full of sand along the way and sitting up there. All of our students loved it though and were trying to take as many pictures as they could without losing anything.

Once we got back down we went straight to dinner at a place called Zax's. It was really good and they have the biggest desserts, six of us split one of them. After dinner we just went back to the campground and played games at the playground. It was highly entertaining.

Saturday morning we got up and got ready to go river rafting. I had never been before and was excited to go. The river rafting guides came and picked us up in a bus and drove up the road to where we would start. Once we got there they handed out the vests and gave us all the details about how we could die while rafting. It was quite inspiring. needless to say, we were told to listen to our guides and be careful, but to still have fun. We split up into groups based on who wanted to be in what boat. I choose to be in the paddle boat.

We then spent the morning and afternoon river rafting down the Colorado. It was very fun and i would love to do it again. Of course, i think it was even funner because my boat started all of the water fights. not that we won any of them, but we sure had fun starting them.


If you have not been river rafting i would suggest that you put it on your list of things to do one day. After rafting we went back to the campground and cleaned up. Then we just went down to main street and walked through town and looked at all of the shops. It was fun to go and see how they still all have the same little t-shirts and trinkets that you can buy that they had years ago. It made me laugh. After that we went to dinner at the Moab Brewery. The food was really good and the desert was even better. Then once again we just went back to the campground and messed around until we decided that we should go to bed.

On Sunday we got up and packed up camp. Once we were all ready to go we split up into vans by who wanted to do what. One van was going straight home, one was going hiking, and the others were going to go see some sights and then head home. I ended up in one of the sight seeing vans. It was actually really fun and we went to some places that i had not been to before. First we went to go see some dinosaur tracks. Now, these just made me laugh. first of all... who gets to decide that the indent in the rock is a dinosaur track? Second, It took us a while to find them and they were even marked, so how did someone else find them in the first place? And third, there were only four of them and they weren't that impressive. It was fun though and we made it entertaining.


After the tracks we went to see some petroglyphs up Sego Canyon. These were actually really cool and fun to see. We did decide that some of them look like alien drawings though.


After the petroglyphs we went further up the canyon in search of the ghost town. We didn't really find it, because we took a wrong turn, but we found some really cool old mine shafts and houses. they were kind of creepy though and i wouldn't go inside.





After the adventure of the mine shaft we just headed home. It was a fun trip and i am glad that i got to go to Moab again. It is a very neat place and fun to explore.