We made it to Moab

Moab is only a couple of hours up the road from Four Corners, so we stopped for lunch along the way. Just about 20 miles outside of Moab we ran across "The Hole in the Rock", which I recognized from somewhere or other, but nobody else did. We stopped anyways, and took a tour which turned out to be really interesting. Basically, it's a 5000 sq ft home that was carved into the side of a cliff face over the course of 20 years by Albert and Gladys Christensen. I suppose thats one way to get a house for free, but damn! It was actually very nice inside, with a comfortable year round temperature (No HVAC bill!), and a number of large well furnished rooms. They even had a bathtub with running water, and electric lighting. Outside, being a roadside attraction, there was lots of kitschy things strewn about such as a jeep made entirely of license plates. Kitsch makes Matt happy, so this was good for him.

Onward to Moab, with it's hundreds of hotels. Surely, we thought, with so many hotels and summer being over, we'd have our choice of any hotel room we wanted. Then again, maybe not. Apparently, once summer ends and all of the families and young adventure seekers have gone home it the ideal time for the geriatric crowd to move in without all them young whipper-snappers running about and making a ruckus. Thankfully, we managed to find a room at the La Quinta.

We drove around a bit to get acquainted with the town, and check out the various adventure tours available. We signed up for Whitewater on Sat, since we had picked an outfitter ahead of time. We'd also like to go Canyoneering, but had to do more research on the Internet first, so did not book anything.

Once we hit the North end of town, we decided to go take a look at "Wall St" which is a climbing wall nearby that I knew about. Once we took a look, though, we couldn't help but want to climb, and we had all of our gear nearby. We learned very quickly that trying to climb on Sandstone is NOT the same as climbing on Limestone. (Non-climbers, just trust me on this.) I managed to lead about half the route, and had to get a local to finish setting up the rest of the route for me. Annette then climbed with the rope set up, and made it all the way up with only a little cheating. We haven't seen her this elated to finish a route since we first started climbing a couple of years ago. Matt did the same, and then I climbed up to clean the route. Once we figured out the difference in technique, we realized the route was not really very difficult, just scary due to the fact that there were no ledges to stand on, and we had to rely of friction almost exclusively.

The view from the top looking down was incredible, but by the the time we cleaned the first route, the sun was setting so we packed up and headed back into town for dinner, and a well deserved sleep.