Wednesday: This was a day for nailbiting adventure! Our whole reason for coming to Moab was to meet up with Brian and Amanda to go off-roading. We did a side-x-side tour here before, and it was really fun… saying the whole time that “Brian & Amanda would love this!”. So, we let Brian pick the tour since it was their first time here. Woops! We should have known that he would pick the most extreme and challenging tour with Epic 4×4 Adventures. EEK!
We got up early and picked up Starbucks for the four of us, and met at the 4×4 location at 7:30am. Our guide for the day was Tim, and he expressed several times that this trail was for experienced off-road drivers only, and that usually they only take people on it after they’ve done another tour with the company, to assess driving skill. Kenny and Brian both convinced him that they knew how to do this. (Let’s hope so!). So off we went. These are our machines… Kawasaki KRS 1000. They are pretty new and in really good shape. These buggies are nimble, comfortable, and were great on the trail! But I tried to not let the 6 point harness and mandatory helmets scare me. 😳
This is the first tour we’ve been on that had two-way radios. Tim could talk the drivers through the trail and how to approach various obstacles. On really difficult ones, he would explain it, have us stop and watch him go through, then he would get out of his vehicle and come back to guide us through.
We made it up the first section! It was challenging and Tim was pretty impressed. It was a really beautiful morning. We were in the hills just west of Moab. That is the Colorado river below us.
It was hard to get a picture of some of the rock climbing that we were doing, to really show how steep some of it was. 2-D pictures just don’t do it justice. Amanda took this pic of us climbing. There is Tim in the lead, then us, then Brian in the green machine. It was really nice that we were the only ones on the tour!
Here’s Brian climbing up something after us.
We made it to the top, and the view was spectacular! That is Moab behind us, and way off in the distance on the left is Arches National Park.
Here’s a shot of Brian coming back down the trail. I guess the term “trail” is used loosly here!
This is really the most dangerous part of the trail. It was a little scarier coming down, because you’re looking at the river and realizing that gravity is not really your friend right now. That is Tim going down a steep spot.
And this was my view out my window after we went down that spot! YIKES!!!!
Safely back at the shop after our 3.5 hour tour, we saw this book describing the tour we just did. Holy Smokes Batman! I guess I’m glad I didn’t know all of this before we went! “Rating: Difficult and dangerous. The first mile scares the wits out of most people. You follow a narrow, tippy shelf road along a high cliff. Not for novice drivers. Not for stock SUVs, Very challenging for UTVs, Insane for ATVs.”. Alrighty then! WE DID IT!
I asked Tim if our drivers passed the Advanced Driver certification for future reference. He said that the local trails are rated 1-5 stars, and this one was a 5 star. Just tell anyone you’ve done the Moab Rim Trail, and they’ll know you can drive.
We had a blast! The driving was technical, but the buggies and drivers did awesome. The views were spectacular, and the weather was perfect.
Afterwards, we headed to the KOA, and Brian grilled up some burgers for lunch, and then we hit the pool. They have a really nice pool there!
Of course, Kenny photo bombed the newlyweds.
We said goodbye to the kids, as we will head to Colorado in the morning, and they will be making their way up toward Salt Lake City to fly home on Saturday. We sure had a blast with them!