I had an amazing trip to Moab, Utah earlier this summer, and shot thousands of photos. I posted a few hundred of the better ones on my SmugMug account, but I sorted these all down to a select few that in my opinion, tell the best story.
Best of Moab - 2006 (42 images on SmugMug)
The other Moab galleries (and write-ups), are quicklinked below:
After Lion’s Back, we proceeded at our pace to play around in a cool Mud Puddle that we found, and then we ran through the last half of Fins N Things. We had a relaxing day, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves .
Photos of us Fooling Around (36 images on SmugMug)
On the 5th and last day, the SCLR group and honorary member Doug Evilsizor (founder and editor of LRL Magazine) decided against doing any organized Solihul Society runs and opted to do our own thing. We started out with Adam and Joe conquering the impressive and daunting Lions Back fin. Here are the Photos:
Photos of Lions Back (42 images on SmugMug)
The evening of the fourth day in Moab was a fun night. The Rally organizers put together a Vendor show in the arena, and had a tilt ramp set up outside, and as a special treat, a beat up old car that they invited everyone to try to drive over. That was pretty fun.
Photos of Rally Activities (20 images on SmugMug)
Day 4 was the most fun for me I think. On this day I discovered that special place on this world known as the Fins N Things trail, in Sand Flats, just above and east of Moab. This is one of the most amazing places on earth to go wheeling.
Photos of Fins N Things (60 images on SmugMug)
Day 3 in Moab was the first official day of Land Rover National Rally. On this day, our SCLR group broke up, and I chose an easier trail, reputed to offer some incredible views of natural arches and such. This trail was to go through the Klondike Bluffs (an old mining area) , past some dinosaur prints, and then drop down into Arches National Park. Sounded good to me. The trail itself was easy, and fairly long. Photos are here:
Photos of Klondike Bluffs & Arches (45 images on SmugMug)
The day started quite early in the morning. The procedure was that you picked a trail based on the placard in the lead trucks window, then drove up to form a line behind it. There were about 10 or 12 different trails run every day, and officially there were 152 different Land Rovers (well, mostly Land Rovers), participating. There were a total of 5 LR3’s there, one Range Rover Sport (Adam’s), and MANY Defenders. More Defenders than I have ever seen before! There were no Freelanders, and about an equal mix of Range Rover Classics and Discovery’s. A couple P38’s, but no current (3rd Generation) Range Rovers to be found.
Our group started out on a long road trek to the trail head. We soon got to a large slab of slickrock (petrified sand, ie: sand stone), and saw quite a few very distinctive dinosaur prints in the sand stone. Very cool! Shortly after that, we came to a nice fissure in the sand stone, that provided a range of difficulty in passing through, from easy to as hard as you’d like. I opted for a medium difficulty spot, and promptly got stuck. My wheels had no purchase in the sand at the bottom of the crack, and I needed to take several approaches at it. On my fourth attempt, I found the right line and began to climb up the other side, but was given a bit of a bad Spot by a fellow LR3 driver (sorry Ray), and pushed my bumper just enough to make contact with the rock. Doh! Not a big deal, it was the same spot I dinged ages ago in Last Chance Canyon. Turned the wheels the opposite direction, and drove right out. Dave Lane in his LR3 followed in a more difficult portion, and made it look easy.
We stopped soon after at a place where you can hike a bit further on and see a magnificent overlook. A few of us made the hike, and then continued up scrambling farther into the rocks along the top of the bluffs. Very nice spot.
Continuing on, We go up and down a nice hill with some well placed rocks to navigate, and drop down into a large flat valley where we stopped to regroup. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We did get to seen an arch (Tower Arch), and cruised past the bottom of the Klondike Bluffs that we had climbed up from the other side. We marched along slowly, until we got to an awesome dry river bed. We let the first group go way ahead (like 15 minutes or so), and then Dave Lane and I put our foot down hard into the soft river bed sand and had a total BLAST racing through the banks of the old wash. It was the most fun I’d had on the trip yet. It lasted only a mile or two, but was great fun. We quickly caught up to everyone, and the second half of the group was not far behind us. We ended up in Arches National Park at Balanced Rock, and then the group headed for home. I went the other direction, and went deeper into the park and found some more off road trails, but didn’t see much else of interest, and headed on back.
Day 2 of our Trip to Moab, Utah for the Land Rover National Rally. The rally hasn’t started yet (Check-in is this evening), but there are hundreds of Land Rover people milling about town, so I arranged to meet up with John & George from Chicago to take us to the Top Of The World trail in their LR3. Afterwards, we checked in on Adam Spiker who is staying at the posh & very pleasant Sorrel Canyon Ranch, base camp for the Land Rover Experience event in Moab every year…
Photos of Moab, Day 2 (31 images on SmugMug)
Top of the World is an easy trail for experienced drivers. With a low rider like me, you had to pick your lines, but for the beefed up DII’s along with us, they pretty much yawned all the way through it. it’s 10 miles round trip of really rocky bumpy trail. It is physically very tiring, just because it’s so bumpy. But the views at the top are spectacular. I think we had the most fun on the last few miles of the dirt access road. We (okay, I) decided that we should run it as fast as we dared, and we dared pretty fast. Some fun corners to slide around at 60mph on the edge of a steep sandstone cliff 
We concluded Top of the World with our first coating of Moab red dust, and then drove the 25 mile road back towards town. However, we stopped along the way to pay a visit to Adam and check out his highfalooting hotel/ranch. It was pretty nice, I must admit. The back deck right on the Colorado river was suitably serene.
Today four friends and their Land Rovers from Southern California ventured out to Moab Utah for the annual Land Rover National Rally. Here are a few (very few) photos of our first part of our journey.
Photos of Day 1 (18 images on SmugMug)
Our trip was not without event. We budgeted 12 hours, it took nearly 15 I think (lost track after a while…). One of us, who shall remain unnamed, thought it would be neat to run Zero weight synthetic oil in his engine just prior to the trip (to get better gas mileage). Well, Disco II’s don’t seem to like zero weight, and the oil started to boil out of his headers before we even got out of Cajon Pass. The oil leaked out, dripped onto his O2 sensor in his exhaust manifold, and gave him an incredible array of fault lights in his truck. With a bit of ingenuity, we fashioned a cover to shield the O2 sensor, and headed east once again. After going through a few incidences like this, we finally made it to Las Vegas, where we found an JiffyLube and got his oil replaced. Onward once again. As we leave Vegas, the other DII driver announces that his exhaust is getting louder and he is losing power. It seems his exhaust manifold has cracked…. We ignore it and keep on.
We make it to Utah, but Joe’s DII is acting up again (oop’s, there’s goes the secrecy :-), so once again we find a JiffyLube, and have the differentials drained and changed. Luis’s truck is still running, so we head on out. Adam is on his 10th or 15th Monster energy drink by now…
About 2 hours later, I find myself catching up to and passing Luis without meaning to. As I get closer, I can hear his truck from quite a distance, and he is losing speed. I radio over, and he reports a bad headache and a rapidly worsening exhaust leak. We find a tiny little shop in a tiny little town in Utah called Beaver. We roll up to the shop at 4:30PM, and the garage doors are closed, but two guys come out, and apparently our sad little faces convinced them to help us. They roll up the door and our eyes sparkle in the gleaming light of one of best equipped shops I have ever seen. They had everything!. 20 minutes later, his exhaust was welded together, the bill was less than $40, and we were on our way, again…
The rest of the trip was uneventful, but the scenery through Utah is spectacular. I loved Fishlake National Forest, and the huge rift of mountains this side of Green Valley are amazing. it’s like driving through the Road Runner and Wyle E Coyote cartoonland.
We rolled into Moab about 9:30 PM, their time, and called it a day.
