:: future gringo :: » Moab . Utah

Moab, Utah, is about six hours west of Denver, or four hours from Salt Lake City and located 30 miles south of a desolate stretch of Interstate 70, near the Utah and Colorado borders.

We stayed at a small motel in town, the Kokopelli Lodge. A small independent place, it’s a block off highway 191 so it’s very quiet, and they have bike storage and facilities too. http://www.kokopellilodge.com/

I immediately started the first task when visiting a new town: finding a coffee shop. I found the Mondo Cafe around the corner (in the same plaza as McStiff’s bar). Mondo’s has a perfect laid back indy atmosphere, serves good sandwiches, and has plenty of reading material and friendly guests and staff.

The Moab area is know for it’s mountain biking trails, and the town is a combination of the typical tourist shops, local and chain restaurants, and several good adventure stores along the main road which can set up rafting, biking, rock climbing, or other extreme activities. We had a dinner huge burritos and southwestern fair at the Fiesta Mexicana Restaurant, and the next day breakfast before hiking was at the Moab Diner. Utah has the most restrictive liquor laws in the country, and going out for a few drinks at night turned out to be more complicated than my attempts to persuade the city council to reverse the ordinance on dancing. Restaurants only serve beer, and only with food. You can get a cocktail at a club, but only a private club. Some clubs sell temporary memberships, (basically a cover), but others make the membership more difficult, which limits their business to mostly locals. We scrapped plans for a wild night on the town, and instead watched “The Brothers Grimm” at the local Two-Plex.

Hiking Arches National Park was a neat experience, and since it was the early fall the weather was perfect.

Tourist trap in western Colorado. There are no real dinosaurs here. A “museum” gift shop should not utilize more square footage than the stuff you go there to see