Our second day, we attempted to ride Long Canyon to Gemini Bridge, which is northeast of town.  We headed out on Hwy 279, which takes off southwest along the Colorado River.  The side of the highway is littered with rock climbers, as this is one of the best climbing hubs in town.  It’s pretty amazing to watch them!  Unfortunately, my carburetor plugged up right as we were passing the Poison Spider Mesa trailhead.  I’m on a KLX250, which is turns out, has this problem about once a year.  Brian re-jetted the bike this winter, to no avail.  We have gotten so we can fix it on the side of the road (by “we,” I mean Brian), but it takes a couple hours and a ton of work.  Brian decided it was the better part of valor to drive 30 minutes back to town and bring the truck out to load my bike up.  His brother and dad were kind enough to hang out with me on the side of the road until Brian got back an hour later with his mom in tow.  And that was the end of my riding for the weekend, unfortunately!!  Brian and his family went on to ride the loop and I headed back to town with my Mom-in-Law to have some lunch.

One of my favorite places to eat in Moab is called the Peace Tree, on Main St in the middle of town.  They have amazing, home-made smoothies with tons of fresh fruit.  I got one with orange, coconut and mango.  YUM.  This is honestly the second-best smoothie I’ve had in my life.  The best was on Kauai and it’s just hard to beat their fresh fruit.  I gotta tell ya, an ice-cold drink totally turned my day around!!  Peace Tree also has yummy fresh salads, wraps, tacos, etc.  I highly recommend a stop here if you are in town!

Just for shits and giggles, since my day was already in the crapper, I decided to get a haircut.  I have thick, long hair that gets out of hand pretty fast.  I’ve been meaning to go short for a while, so I decided, why not??  I called over the Atomic Hair, while I was finishing my smoothie.  I spoke with the owner, Robert, and he said they could squeeze me in if I could walk right over!  I’m so glad that I did!  Joli was my stylist and is a recent transplant from St. Croix.  She totally got the beachy, summery look that I wanted and did a fantastic job!  What a lovely way to spend an afternoon and turn lemons into lemonade with my very lovely Mom-in-Law.

When Brian got back from his ride, I turned him right around to go on a trail run with me.  Somehow, it just seems like a waste of a day in Moab if you don’t get at least 2 sports in!!  We headed just south of town to the Hidden Valley Trailhead, which is at the end of Rimrock Road.  I had read a trail-runners guide online and the Hidden Valley trail was rated as “easiest.”  Ummmm, yeah.  Maybe not.  It started with a pretty vertical climb of about 700 feet in 0.5 miles.  I attempted to run this first part, but it ended up being speed-hiking and scrambling over jumbled rocks.  Once we got to the top, the trail was pretty level the rest of the way (and I see where they got the “easy” rating from) but it was certainly an ass-kicker getting up there.  The trail opened up into a little valley (hence, the name!) with beautiful views of the La Sal mountains and even into Arches National Park.  Supposedly, there were some unmarked petroglyphs, but we didn’t find them.  This is a great run it turns out, and is just over 3 miles round-trip.  Just don’t expect to actually start running until the top!