(no audio) (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (relaxing music) - Some call it the adventure capital of America with sprawling red rock cliffs, sandstone arches, rivers carved through canyons, home to two of Utah's mighty five national parks and two nearby state parks.

This area is a mecca for outdoor bikers, climbers, photographers, and off-road enthusiasts.

Over the next few days, I'm gonna be showing you some of the best adventures and treasures of this great southwestern oasis.

Welcome to Moab, Utah.

(relaxing music) It's no surprise that I'm starting this episode right here at Delicate Arch, one of the most famous geologic features in the world and even plastered on Utah's license plate.

(relaxing music) The trail ticket get to Delicate Arch is just 1.5 miles traversing mostly slick rock and some incline.

The best time to see it may require you to hike in the dark, but I guarantee that watching the sky light up through this massive window is worth it.

(relaxing music) Undoubtedly, the best time to come here and see a delicate arch is at sunrise or sunset.

This is also when you're gonna find a lot of people, but let's face it, this arch, because it is one of the most famous here in the park, is busy pretty much all day.

You will have to wait in line for a photo, but I highly recommend that you do because you'll remember it forever.

Arches National Park is a wonderland of red rocks and blue sky.

Part of Utah's Mighty Five national Parks, it sits on 76,000 acres and looks more like a sculpture garden than a park protecting the largest concentration of natural stone arches in the world with more than 2,000 having been discovered to this day.

(relaxing music) For most visitors, you'll enter through Arches' main entrance station, which is located about five miles north from the town of Moab, or 25 miles south of I-70.

The first place you'll wanna stop is the Park Avenue Trailhead, which is a short hike that takes you to see some spectacular canyon walls and distant arches.

(relaxing music) From Park Avenue, there is a great trail that comes right over here to the courthouse, and one of the things you'll get to see at the end of the trail here, or the middle, depending on where you turn around, are the Three Gossips.

(relaxing music) As we continue down the road, make a right at Balanced Rock.

Now, this rock is a site to behold and it's impossible to grasp its monolithic size.

The massive sandstone boulder is perched to top a pedestal and is estimated to weigh around 3,500 tons.

That's the size of 27 blue whales.

(relaxing music) The part of the park we're in now is called The Windows.

Many people describe this as the beating heart of Arches National Park, and it's definitely one of the more popular areas.

You've got several arches like The Windows behind me, and Double Arch, which is the tallest arch here in the park, which are both really accessible to the parking lot.

So you get a lot of people coming in and out of these two areas.

These arches are also fantastic at sunrise and sunset, so they're definitely very popular for photo ops.

(relaxing music) People have a long flocked to these crazy places that seem almost otherworldly, where you can see millions of years of history by just looking at the rocks.

Now, this entire landscape was once under the oceans.

It's been burnished by wind, shaped by water, ice, snow, and it's constantly changing and evolving.

(gentle music) Right now we're heading down to Devils Garden.

This is certainly one of the most stunning areas of the park and the real grand finale here in Arches.

It has the only campground.

And on top of that, here you'll also find arches, spires, and a large concentration of narrow rock walls called fins.

Now, fins form from rainwater as it erodes parallel fractures caused by the uplift of salt deposits below the surface.

Fins eventually erode and give way to the formation of arches.

Just like the crown jewel of Devils Garden.

(gentle music) It's just starting to sprinkle here, which is cooling it down, making it very pleasant.

Right now, I'm taking you to see the longest arch in America.

This is one of the most gravity-defying things here in the park.

The trail's just one mile and it's pretty accessible for most people, even if you're not a hiker.

(gentle music) All right, welcome to Landscape Arch.

This is the longest arch in America.

While it doesn't take the cake for the longest arch in the world, that's in China, this is still pretty spectacular.

(gentle music) This park can seem extremely crowded sometimes with limited parking and really small footprint, but if you wanna leave the crowds behind, all you have to do is hike a little farther, but just remember to always stay on the trail.

(gentle music) From here, we're heading a little bit farther down the trail because I wanna show you just how much solitude you can find when you leave the main trail behind.

Right now we're heading to Double O Arch.

This adds a couple of miles to Landscape Arch but it's worth it.

(bright rhythmic music) (bright rhythmic music continues) One of the more exclusive things you can do in this park is hike the Fiery Furnace.

This is a permit-only hike.

They give out just 70 per day.

You can either go with a ranger or do self-guided, but it's gonna take us through a maze of slippery rocks through a slot canyon, and they almost encourage you to get lost.

So the current time is 8:37 in the morning, and I'm gonna start a timer here, see how long it takes us.

(bright rhythmic music) There are just a few rules when you're coming here to the Fiery Furnace, and in order to get a permit, you actually have to watch a video from the park service and then get told a couple of the rules as well.

But a couple of things to remember, not only for the slot canyon, but all of Arches National Park is to stay on the trail.

However, for this adventure, there is no trail.

You have to stay in sandy wash bottoms or on slick rock.

Now, the reason for that is because the desert environment, the soil is actually extremely fragile.

In areas where there's plants, there's something called a biological crust.

And this crust is actually made up of all kinds of different organisms, fungi, insects, and bacteria that has helped to create this thick crust that allows plants and trees to take hold of the sandy soil and it also helps with reducing erosion and controlling floods.

So when people step off the trail and onto this biological crust, it actually damages it, and that can actually create more sand dunes, and ruin this environment because this crust takes hundreds, if not thousands of years to form.

So it's really important that you stay in these designated areas.

Don't step on the sand dunes or any of that sensitive crust.

(bright rhythmic music) Okay, I don't think my backpack's gonna fit there, this lemon squeezer, I have no idea if this is the right way but I'm gonna check it out.

(bright rhythmic music) (bright rhythmic music continues) Definitely not the way.

(chuckles) Well, I seem to be lost.

(chuckles) What they recommend that you do when you're lost is to backtrack to the last place you knew where you were and start over.

So, back we go.

Well, here I am again where I began.

So, oops, walked in a circle.

(laughs) (relaxing music) (relaxing music continues) (relaxing music continues) Well, that was certainly a practice in patience.

I went 5.3 miles.

It's supposed to be two miles, and it took me just less than three hours, but we finally made it back to the parking lot.

This is definitely an adventure.

(bright lively music) One might think that you can only see arches within the national parks here, and luckily that's just not true.

There are actually several really fantastic arches outside of the park boundaries and within Moab.

Right now, I'm taking you to Corona Arch, which the trail starts right along the Colorado River here just a few minutes from downtown across from the Gold Bar Campground here on BLM Land.

And the trail itself is about a mile and a half each way.

Takes you up about 400 feet of incline and then to a beautiful arch.

(bright lively music) (bright lively music continues) It is absolutely beautiful up here and there's nobody else here.

There's a couple people starting to come up right now, but I've had this entire place to myself for about the last 20 minutes, which makes it even more fantastic.

This trail is also really fun.

There's a little section with some cables and one little ladder.

It is on some kind of tilted grade, so if you have difficulty with that kind of stuff, you might wanna skip this, but you could probably come up until about the chain section to be able to see this from afar.

Now, a little fun fact about Corona Arch is that up until about 10 years ago, you used to get a lot of climbers in this area.

You know, Utah is one of kind of the meccas of America for rock climbing, and you used to get a lot of people that actually swung on this arch.

They would climb up it and then, you know, just swing off and have a blast.

So definitely one of kind of the adventure areas of Moab.

They don't allow that anymore but you can definitely look up some old, fun videos from this area.

(relaxing music) Let's get one thing straight, Moab is the desert.

And much of the year, it is pretty hot here.

Now a lot of the hotels have swimming pools, but if you want another way to cool off, you can come to one of nature's water parks, which is along the Mill Creek Waterfall Trail.

(water rushing) You definitely won't wanna forget your bathing suit for this trail.

Pretty much at any point, you can stop, come walk in the , and kick your shoes off.

It's great for families as well as you can kind of meander as far as you want up this water.

If you wanna do a really short walk, you can do that, but if you wanna explore farther up to see some more of the pools and have a little bit of alone time along the shores of the river, you can certainly do that too.

(water trickling) (bright relaxing music) (bright relaxing music continues) That felt fantastic.

Nice and clean and cool.

That water was just wonderful.

Definitely a great stop here in Moab.

(gentle music) After finding some fun near downtown Moab, I headed to a nearby state park for a unique twist on a hike.

(gentle music) Welcome to the Valley of the Goblins.

We are here in Goblin Valley State Park to go canyoneering.

This is definitely one of the adventure activities that I think screams Utah.

There are so many slot canyons here, so much sandstone, and it is a great place to get off the normal hiking trail and get off into some of these canyons.

I'm doing it with a guide today, and we're gonna be doing some rappelling, some scrambling, and some squeezing through little narrow passages.

This is an absolutely beautiful state park, just about two hours from Moab and highly recommend coming here.

Definitely a unique landscape that looks so much like Mars.

(calm music) (calm music continues) The Goblin Valley was shaped over millions of years by wind, water, and erosion.

It's full of mushroom-shaped hoodoos referred to locally as goblins, and my experience here began with a short hike through the hoodoos and a quick lesson on repelling before heading to the goblins' lair.

(gentle music) (calm music) (calm music continues) - [Guide] Woohoo!

- Woo!

(calm music) This adventure town has so much to offer, National Parks, the Colorado River, off-road fun.

We're heading next to Canyonlands National Park, which is just up the road and has even more spectacular things to do.

Canyonlands is separated into three pretty distinct zones.

You have the Island in the Sky, which is the most visited because it's the closest to Moab.

Then you have Southwest of Moab, the Needles District.

And the Needles District is this really beautiful section with really long hikes and some really fantastic four by four roads.

Then you have The Maze and The Maze is kind of the western side of the park, and has some really remote four by four roads, and all these twists and turns of remote canyons and things to explore.

But you also really need to be experienced in off-road driving and know what you're getting into when you go to that section of the park.

So the area that we're heading into is called the Island in the Sky, and this is this really long, tall, broad mesa that sits at about 6,000 feet in elevation and at sunrise and sunset the views from this mesa are just absolutely spectacular of the valley floor below.

Now, most people are gonna get up to the Island in the Sky by taking the paved road, which goes from Moab and takes about 30 to 45 minutes to get up to the top of the mesa.

But we're not going on the pavement today, we're on the dirt.

So, we're actually heading up to this area on one of the famous dirt roads here in the park called the Shafer Trail.

So, this road has this big, long trail of switchbacks and steep drop-offs, and we're gonna be going from the bottom of the valley floor all the way up to the rim on it.

And this also connects to one of the other famous roads here in the park, which is called the White Rim Road.

And this is a permit-only road where either motorcycles can drive on it or vehicles or bicycles, and you can camp along it.

Most people take at least one night, if not a couple of nights to do this trail and I'm not gonna be doing that in totality but I did pick up a permit because there's one place along the White Rim Road that I wanna show you.

(uptempo music) We are just about to hit the border of Canyonlands along Potash Road, which turns into the Shafer Trail.

This is where all the regular cars need to turn around because this is four-wheel drive only, you definitely need high clearance, and this is where you're going to see some of this absolute unique and spectacular scenery of this park.

(uptempo music) (uptempo music continues) (uptempo music continues) (uptempo music continues) Along this drive there are a couple of places you'll wanna stop and pull over, and take a look at the scenery.

Right now I'm at Thelma and Louise Point.

This is not only where they shot some of "Thelma and Louise" but they've shot dozens, if not hundreds of other commercials here and movies.

(uptempo music) (uptempo music continues) (uptempo music continues) We've just left the Shafer Trail for a few minutes and turned onto a White Rim Road because there is one place that I really wanted to show you.

It's a really unique arch called Musselman Arch.

It's just about 15 minutes into the road and along the way, we're gonna go on some really narrow sections with some pretty sheer drop-offs, so hold onto your seats.

(uptempo music) (uptempo music continues) After walking across this arch, I hopped back in my Jeep and retraced my tire tracks to the beginning of the Shafer Trail.

Now it was time to leave the valley floor and head up the steep grades and switchbacks to the rim of the Island in the Sky.

(uptempo country music) This is where the driving should get much more interesting.

(uptempo country music) (uptempo country music continues) (uptempo country music continues) Okay, the road is getting much more steep and much more narrow.

(uptempo country music) (uptempo country music continues) (uptempo country music continues) Well, that ends the Shafer Trail.

We are just hitting the pavement again.

I am gonna head over to the visitor center and get my junior ranger badge, and then I'm gonna show you some of my favorite overlooks in this part of the park.

(uptempo country music) (uptempo country music continues) So many of the visitors to national parks will just see the overlooks and here in Canyonlands, they are spectacular.

It just blows your mind looking out over these overlooks and seeing the geologic history millions of years in the making.

But there's a lot more to this park and one of the reasons that it's protected outside of the stunning landscapes is actually for its cultural significance.

There is a lot of Native American history here, and right now, I'm gonna take you to one of the really important archeological sites here in the park.

(uptempo country music) (calm Native American Music) (calm Native American Music continues) (calm Native American Music continues) (bright Native American Music) Walking to this archeological site for me was like becoming a character in one of the history books I've read about the ancient dwellers of the Southwest.

Pioneers described times where native peoples would all but disappear into the cliffs and never be seen again.

And they were able to do this on small footpaths that were almost invisible to the untrained eye, just like the one we're walking on now.

Just look at this landscape.

The trail seems to dead end straight ahead but when we turn around and look up an entirely new path opens opening an ancient window into a world that was hidden from plain sight.

(calm Native American Music) (calm Native American Music continues) (calm Native American Music continues) This is one of the most unbelievable places I've ever experienced.

This is a False Kiva behind me.

This is actually a class two archeological site, and I don't know who the dwellers of this were.

Was it the Anasazi or maybe the Navajo, or one of the other ancient indigenous tribes that roamed throughout this area that we now know as Southern Utah?

Whoever it was, they certainly chose an absolutely amazing spot.

I can just picture them sitting here watching the sunset or the sunrise and just watching over the landscape that they thought was theirs.

I'm a big reader and a lot of the books that I read are about adventure, but also mixed with some of our ancient history.

And I've read a lot about the Anasazi and the secret little walkways that they have that lead up to these cliffs edges that you could almost completely walk by and miss if you didn't know it was there.

And that's exactly what this trail was.

It skirts right along the edge of the cliff here and brings us up here to one of the most beautiful, bizarre, and otherworldly places I've ever seen.

(calm Native American Music) (calm Native American Music continues) (no audio) (gentle country music) (gentle country music continues) Wow-e, I honestly didn't think the views could get any more spectacular, but just look at this.

We are standing up here on top of the Mesa in Canyon lands.

What a beautiful place to end this video.

Southern Utah has brought so much adventure, so much wild and bizarre beauty, some of the strangest landscapes that you'll find in America surrounded by public lands with so many miles to explore on foot, on bike, in your car.

Just so many options for anyone coming to this area to be able to experience something so awe-inspiring.

I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you all in the next episode.

As always, I'm Alice Ford.

Never stop exploring.

(gentle country music) (gentle country music continues) (gentle country music continues) (gentle country music continues)