Moqui Caverns: The Beautiful Sand Caves in Kanab, Utah

The place we want to share with you today goes by many names. The Moki Caverns, the Moki Sand Caves, or the Kanab Sand Caves. No matter what you want to call it, this spot is a pretty cool and super quick stop if you happen to be in the Kanab area. When we arrived at where the caves were supposed to be, we were looking on the wrong side of the road where we saw a small cave and a waterfall. The crazy thing is that it was so cold that when the water from the waterfall hit the bottom it was just turning into ice cubes. We've never seen anything quite like that before. After leaving the waterfall, we headed up to the small and not too impressive cave. But it was from the top of this cave that we spotted where we were actually supposed to go. So we headed down and made a mad dash across the street. Be careful, cars come through here super fast. Even though this is really hard to call any sort of a hike because it's only about a quarter mile round trip, you're still going to have 60 feet of elevation gain. And that comes in the form of climbing the sandstone cliffs up to the cave. Sandstone is really grippy by nature, but shoes with great traction are still a great idea here. Once you climb up to the top, it's a fairly easy walk over to the caves with the exception of a couple of off-camber spots. As we got closer, we started to be able to see into the cave a little bit more and we realized that it is going to be a lot bigger than we expected. We didn't find out until later that these caves are not naturally occurring and were in fact a mine that was in use from the 1930s to the 1940s. You may be wondering what was being mined here. Was it gold or exotic gems? But it was actually just the sand. This sand has an extremely high melting point so it was perfect to be used in making molds for casting iron. It was also used to make bulletproof glass. I'm not exactly sure why, but when the mine closed in the 1940s, it never reopened. But it left us with this really cool cave to explore. Do us a huge favor and if you decide to visit the caves, please do not carve your name into the sandstone walls like so many other knuckleheads have done. I know our viewers are better than that, but I just have to say it. After hanging out in the caves for a bit and chatting with some super cool people, we decided that it was time to head back because we wanted to stop by the museum. You were going to be hiking back the same exact way that you came in. For some reason, it might seem a little bit more exciting though. Downclimbing on sandstone can be a little bit more intimidating than climbing up. I'm not sure if it's because of your body positioning or if it's the fact that you're able to stare all the way down to the bottom rather than just staring into the side of the wall as you climb up. Just a little pro tip of climbing up or down on sandstone. If you see any loose sand or small pebbles on top, there's not going to be good traction there at all and you're going to go flying down the hill. And I'm definitely speaking from experience. After another mad dash across the highway, we drove just up the road to the Moki Cave Museum. This is another cool spot where you can see ancient artifacts, dinosaur tracks, and this natural cave that has been turned into a museum. At one point in its history, the cave was actually turned into a working bar. This would be one wild place to stop in after a long work week for a drink. If you're looking for that perfect souvenir to get the person that has everything, you can also buy them fossilized dinosaur poop here. One of the highlights to me however was their collection of rocks that actually glow under a blacklight. I've never heard of that before and it was pretty cool to see. Well that's going to do it for our tour of the Moki Caverns. If you enjoy our adventures, be sure to subscribe and hit that bell icon so you get notified when we make new videos. Check us out on Instagram at thatadventurelife underscore official. And for all the information about the sand caves as well as other awesome things to do in Utah, head on over to thatadventurelife.com