V11E1: Moab Off the Beaten Path

Hey everyone, welcome to Venture Forward, a video series about four-wheel drive adventure, overland travel, and full-time mobile living. In this episode, it's late October 2022, and we just arrived in Moab, Utah. Over the weekend, Shannon and I got breakfast in town at the Jailhouse Cafe. I had southwestern eggs benedict, and it was delicious. The Jailhouse is a popular destination downtown. It's very good, I totally recommend it. Just make sure you get there early before the crowd. While we were eating, pretty much on a whim, we decided that after breakfast, we'd take my Jeep RNG and run the trail Fins and Things. And this was Shannon's first popular recreational four-wheel drive trail, and her excitement is completely genuine throughout this video. It was a lot of fun to be there with her and sort of relive the experience of hitting Moab for the very first time. You left the normal air down tools in the van, unfortunately. I'm going to put the window down so I can see the uh... Do you want to tell me, or do you want me to tell you? No, it's all right. Okay. Entrance to Fins and Things down there. You can see there's a campsite down there. Who remembers Chris's illustration of the sway bar and the coffee? It's hard to see in the morning sun with a dirty windshield. Uh-huh. Jerk. He's doing that on purpose. Oh my gosh. Just not quite enough brake over angle for that. Yeah. I was just telling Chris that, um, it kind of blows my mind that a street-legal vehicle like a Jeep is totally fine to take on um, a trail like this. And I know it's not the hardest trail out there, and not the, or the hardest obstacles out there, right? But it's just, it's so cool. We came down this way. Okay. And then we were coming up and saw, wrong way. And then Chris was like, okay, so it's this way. Which, yes, you can see with the line. It looks much more intimidating from the Jeep. I don't know if I want inside. Oh my gosh. First gear, low range, descent control, and uh, gravity helps the steering wheel do what it needs to do. So you can just enjoy your coffee. Okay. What a cool machine this is. Descent control. Off we go. I'm having a blast. Yeah. I'm gonna scooch over. Okay. Oh. I'm not going all the way over. Morning. Oh my. Are you serious? Nothing to it. Child's play. Okay. We're here for the slick rock. The dirt is fun. But like, here's the thing about Moab, there's not a lot of other places you can go to get slick rock like this. And it's so, it's so different. I really enjoy it. A little step at the base. Okay. So cool what this can do. What is that sound? It's the, uh, descent control. It's utilizing the ABS system to pump the brakes rapidly and control speed. Chris is just telling me about how he enjoys wheeling, but at the same time. Exploration is what, uh, I, I enjoy wheeling. I love wheeling, uh, a lot, but it's like a one-time high. Whereas when you go exploring and you don't know what's around the bend on any given trail, even if it's not very technical, that's a more lasting high for me personally. He just put his coffee down. I think this is serious. That was a bad line. That was a really bad line. But look at the sun. It's not my fault. We banged the rock guards. Rocker guards? Rock guards? Yeah. Rock rails. Rock rails. Let's see if, uh, pretty hard. Let's see if those Rubicon rocker guards are, uh, still intact. Worth, worth their money. Didn't feel like it crunched anything. No, no. And the bang is the right thing, right? The crunch is the problem. And you know, it still steers. It still goes. I think she can open her door still. Well, you can see that right here. Bad line. But the, uh, the plus side is I've gained all that much more clearance underneath the front passenger side front of the rocker. It pushes it up and out of the way. So next time we pass through there, we might not even touch those same rocks. There goes nothing. I did this. It probably doesn't look like much on camera, but let me go down. Sorry. This still excites me. To me, this was a big deal. So I put my right tire on that loose rock there and just like climbed up this. Thanks love. He coached me through it. It was fun. If you don't, if you don't know, you have to get out and check it out. Let's see. If you hug the curvature of the terrain here, you can actually see, it looks like people put their driver's side and just follow the wall down, down here. You have a little bit of a descent, but with the first gear descent control on, it's going to just tip toe down. I don't think so. Because left side is going to be up. The front is going to dip a little bit on the passenger side. It's not going to be very dramatic. I'm shaking a little bit. I just did that. That's so cool. Okay, we're off back to our regular scheduled program. What'd you think? You did great. Thanks. Another cartwheel for the camera? What broken foot? Do you mind if we watch them a little bit? Oh, it's gorgeous. Hi. That was without the sun control and you notice how it kind of rushes down toward the bottom. Yeah. Taking our time through fins and things and recording video took us the better part of the day. By the time we were off the trail, the jeep was aired up. It was mid-afternoon. Still too early to go into town for dinner, so we decided to do a little bit more exploring to see what we could find. Drive to that junction, then we're done. Done. Turning back down, going into town. We're going to find a CXT and Mexican. Uh-huh. Just make a left here. Okay. I see a bathroom. This is stunning. Wow. Oh, Chris, these rocks make me nervous. You can definitely hear 4x4 traffic over that way. I'm not going close to the edge. Okay. Chris. I'm not. Okay. What do you think of this spot? It's gorgeous. Look at this. And look down here between these rocks. It's a campsite. There's a little fire circle. Oh, really? Yeah. This is an incredible Forest Service cliffside campground outside of Moab. There's a vault toilet here and some sites down the hill a little bit had picnic tables and fire rings, but along the cliff edge there's these rocky formations and stone fire rings. This is just a beautiful spot. Venture Forward is supported by OK4WheelDrive and Patreon. If you're interested in any of the places that you see in this episode and you'd like to retrace our steps, I have my detailed GPS data available to Patreon subscribers, and I also have campsites and points of interest available on the Thatch travel app for iOS and Android. I'll put links to Patreon and Thatch in the description for this video. Thank you all for watching, and I'll leave you with this vicious snowball fight. I'm going to destroy you with snowballs. Wow. Okay. Oh, ow!