From skydiving to scenic drives, Moab has something for everyone!

Depending on your adrenaline level Moab offers the right kind of adventure for you, anything from skydiving to scenic drives.

Anastasia Hufham

March 17, 2021

Photo by Joel Lipoversky, Courtesy of Chile Pepper Bike Shop.

What’s Your Adrenaline Level?

High adrenaline young couples

The most adventurous young couples visiting Moab should consider a tandem BASE jump or skydive. Flying through the air above canyons and dunes with an expert manning the parachute is a great way to get an adrenaline fix during your stay in Moab. You can purchase a video of your jump to show off to family and friends, too.

If heights aren’t your cup of tea, take advantage of your time in the mountain biking Mecca of the West. Rent first-class bikes from Moab Cyclery, Poison Spider, or Chile Pepper before attempting the Bar-M Loop, Slickrock Trail, the Whole Enchilada, or many other bike trails within an hour of downtown. Whether you’re a novice or an expert, hitting the trails in Moab is a great way to get active while exploring the area. You can also book a guided mountain biking day tour.

Moab is also renowned for world-class rock climbing. Experienced climbers can easily access Wall Street, 20 minutes from downtown, and begin climbing a wide variety of routes. Those new to the sport may enjoy a guided climbing expedition, where you can start developing skills or merely enjoy an afternoon experiencing one of Moab’s most popular activities.

Photo courtesy of Sheri Griffith River Expeditions, taken at Cataract Canyon.

Married with children

Moab is a must-visit location for families looking to experience the best of the American Southwest. Start your vacation in the Old West by horseback riding at Red Cliffs Lodge. Experienced horse hands will pair you with your steeds before you snake below red canyons next to the Colorado River, as the star of your own Western movie. After your ride, make sure to visit the Moab Museum of Film and Western Heritage, also at Red Cliffs Lodge.

If your kids are into dinosaurs, be sure to check out Moab Giants, which offers kids the ability to “stand “face-to-face with life-size recreations of dinosaurs”. Films and tours of various periods from the dinos’ 100-million-year legacy on earth are fun for the whole family.

If your family wants to get a sense of Moab’s outdoor activities without getting too technical, a guided canyoneering expedition is a great choice. Moab Canyon Tours offers many half-day canyoneering trips perfect for children and beginners — no prior experience necessary. You’ll explore remote canyons, river corridors, and petroglyphs along the way. In the evening, consider Canyonlands By Day and Night boat tours which include dinner on the Colorado river as the sun is setting.

Children and adults alike will enjoy rumbling over Moab’s petrified dunes in a Jeep or all-terrain vehicle on a guided tour of Hell’s Revenge, the most famous 4×4 trail in the area. These vehicles allow your family to see Arches National Park in a new, exciting way that is sure to keep everyone entertained. Moab boasts multiple 4×4 guide companies, but you can start your search at Moab Adventure Center.

Longer tours into more remote areas like the amazing Maze District’s Horseshoe Canyon, provides your family one the most incredible petroglyph displays in Utah at the Great Gallery. Navtec is an excellent choice for this booking tour which is quite a bit more strenuous, but certainly worth the 7-mile round-trip hike for $217 per person. Want to go for a big adventure with the family? How about 4-nights camping while spending days meandering down the Green River. Sheri Griffith River Expeditions offers an excellent option for families who want to experience three to five days, with all food and accommodations provided.

Photo courtesy of Redtail Air Adventures.

Older couples with no kids

Mature visitors will find that Moab has as much to offer older couples as it does to thrill-seekers. Hike and sight-see the less strenuous trails off the main road in Arches National Park. Many roadside attractions are less than a mile long without intense altitude changes. If you have more time, enjoy the many overlooks in Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park right off of Highway 313 ― especially at sunset.

To experience an extraordinary view of Moab (and see often inaccessible geographical features), book a private flight with Redtail Air Adventures. Your pilot will point out Upheaval Dome, the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers, Druid Arch, and much more from the sky while narrating stories of the land and its past inhabitants.

Moab is most famous for its desert scenery, but the equally beautiful landscape of the La Sal Mountains is a hidden gem. Follow the La Sal Loop into the mountains, where you can explore the alpine wilderness. The road then winds down to Castle Valley and State Road 128, where you’ll drive past Fisher Towers and the Colorado River.

This drive is the best way to see every bit that Moab has to offer. On your way, get a wine tasting at Castle Creek Winery at the Red Cliffs Lodge. They are Utah’s largest winery, with an excellent selection of award winning wines including their Outlaw Red, Petroglyph White, and full-bodied Chardonnay.

Our dining recommendations

Visit Gloria’s for top-notch vegetarian selections. Bella Thai has excellent fresh thai, while Miguel’s offers fresh hand-crafted Mexican food. Moab Sunset Grill offers amazing views with fine dining. Family-friendly and price conscious options include The Moab Grill and Moab Breweries’ burgers and onion rings. Antica Forma offers authentic wood-fired Italian pizza, and Zach’s is a great choice offering a pizza bar as well as a Coronarita ― a margarita with a Corona beer inside ― perfect after a long day of hiking and adventure.

The best on-the-go options include Milt’s Stop-And-Eat, and the Moonflower Grocery Store’s freshly made vegetarian and vegan wraps.

See you in Moab!

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Fun Guide, Go Local, Moab

Anastasia Hufham

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Inside Moab’s Political Divide: Land, Tourism, and the Future of Grand County, Utah

In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey took a job as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, just outside Moab. What he found there, and what he watched happen to it, would shape the rest of his life. Roads were being cut into the canyon country. Cars were replacing foot traffic. The National Park Service, in the name of accessibility, was engineering a kind of industrialization of the wilderness he’d come to love. Abbey wrote about it in Desert Solitaire, published in 1968, and the anger in that book wasn’t abstract. It came from watching something specific be changed by people who either didn’t understand what they had or didn’t care.

Grand County has long been the most reliably left-leaning county in the state, a fact that puts it in sharp contrast to nearly everything around it. To understand how that happened, and where things stand now, I spoke with longtime residents and politicians who’ve watched it from the inside, people who’ve served in local government and lived through the shifts firsthand.

Robert Greenberg.

Bob Greenberg came from New York in 1976, took a job at the community mental health center, and never left. He went on to chair the Grand County Democratic Party and serve on the county council. When he arrived, he said, “the Democratic Party was said to be able to meet in a phone booth” — and even then, its members were a contradictory bunch. Yellow Dog Democrats from the oil patch were fiscally conservative but surprisingly open socially, allowing different demographics to feel safe moving to the county.

“The town fathers were desperate to have new people come to town,” Greenberg recalls. “They just didn’t want the people who actually showed up. They wanted some other people.”

What followed was a demographic shift nobody planned. The people who filled the gap left by the bust were river guides, federal agency workers, artists, and eventually waves of outdoor recreationists discovering that southeastern Utah was among the most spectacular landscapes on earth. Tourism ended up being the only economic development avenue that actually worked. Manufacturing never had the labor force or market access, sewing factories came and went. The people the tourist economy attracted tended to be younger, more outdoor-oriented, and more liberal.

Kevin Walker.

Kevin Walker, a former Grand County commissioner who moved here in 1990 for the landscape, puts the county’s diversity in context. “Moab [is] a pretty diverse place since, I think, at least the 1950s with the uranium mining boom,” he says. “So it’s not a typical Southern Utah town.”

Part of what makes Grand County distinct is self-reinforcing. Federal agencies like the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM, have large presences here and pull in a different demographic than surrounding counties. People looking to live in Southern Utah with certain values gravitate toward the place where those values already have a foothold. Over time, that critical mass has made Grand County what it is politically, while neighboring counties went in very different directions.

The defining conflict in Grand County has always been over land.

In the 1970s and 80s, it was extraction versus preservation in the starkest terms. County commissioners floated toxic waste incinerators. A plan emerged to site a high-level nuclear waste repository at the entrance to Canyonlands National Park.

“It really, really galvanized environmentalists everywhere, but particularly in Grand County,” Greenberg says. Activists put up signs at the park entrance, watched them get chainsawed down, and came back with steel reinforcement. That stubborn, physical, unglamorous persistence became part of the local political character.

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