Nine Glorious Days in the Moab Utah Area

Greetings!

After leaving Apple Valley, Utah, we headed on the 5-hour drive northeast to Moab, Utah.  Moab is a charming city that is in close proximity to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and is known to attract adventurers and nature lovers.  As we were in this area for 9 days and visited multiple places, I will outline our itinerary in this post, along with some information and photos of our campsites, but then in 3 posts to follow, I will detail our experiences in the 3 national parks we visited - Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef - all spectacularly beautiful in their own way.

The drive to the Moab area was breathtaking, especially as we got closer to Moab.  A bulk of our journey was on Interstate 70 and the scenery was incredible with various view points and stops along the way.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon to the UtahRaptor State Park in Moab, about 15 minutes from Arches and 20 minutes from Moab.  We had a reservation here for 2 nights.  It's a brand new campground (opening May 2025) and we enjoyed our two nights here and the close proximity to Moab, Arches and Canyonlands.  It was a wide open area in the high desert with beautiful views of the pale blue mountains in the distance.

After we settled in, we headed over to the Arches National Park late Saturday afternoon and stopped by the Visitor Center and checked out the Windows area, where some of the park's four largest arches are located. We hit this area around sunset and it was beautiful.

On Sunday, we went to Canyonlands National Park and hiked a few trails then headed into Moab for lunch and some grocery shopping.  Very early Monday morning, we headed back to Canyonlands for sunrise at Mesa Arch then returned to the campsite and moved to our next campsite - Green River State Park.  Another beautiful Utah state park that was a bit further away from Arches (45 minutes) but it was also closer to Capitol Reef (90 minutes).  It worked out well as a base camp for 7 nights.  This was another pretty campsite, but much greener!  There were trees and green grass as the Campground was on the river so irrigation was very easy.

Green River is a small town that is known for its melon production.  The climate is ideal for growing watermelons, cantaloups and other melons which we thoroughly enjoyed for breakfast throughout the week (and beyond).  

This is the rest of the week - all details and photos will be outlined in the posts to follow!

Tuesday - Capitol Reef

Wednesday - Dead Horse Point State Park and the Shafer Trail in Canyonlands

Thursday - Arches National Park - Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch

Friday - reset day - laundry, errands, etc.

Saturday - Arches National Park - Park Avenue and Double Arch; followed by lunch in Moab 

Sunday - Arches National Park - Fiery Furnace

We have met some really cool people along the way - along the trails and at campgrounds.  The second night at the Green River State Park Campground, we came back from our day of exploring and noticed that our neighbors had a very large pet potbelly pig!  We have met hundreds of dogs, but have never seen a pig!  They were a super nice family - he just retired from the Air Force and he, his wife, and their 7-month old son were moving from northern Utah to Virginia and this is how they moved, along with their pig!  They were super fun to chat with and "Bacon" their pig was a hoot!  Just another random fun story of our day to day adventures . . .

Thanks for following along and keep an eye out for 3 more posts to follow very soon!  XO, Jen & Paul