There are a lot of very Moab things to do in Moab.
Hiking. Jeeping. Coating every exposed surface of your skin, vehicle, and soul in red dust. You can wake up early for Arches, stay out late for dark skies, and come back to camp exhausted in the satisfying way people do when they say had a true adventure. However, our time in the desert wasn’t spent doing any of these things.
By the time we left Utahraptor State Park, Harry’s feet had officially taken control of the itinerary. The original trip plan had already started to unravel, and our biggest question was no longer ‘What amazing thing can we do next?’ It was, “Where can we stop moving long enough for this to hopefully get better?”
Sun Outdoors Canyonlands Gateway was apparently the place. It had full hookups and enough consecutive nights of availability for us to stop pretending that just a couple of days of rest would magically fix everything. Booking a two-week stay there was an easy decision.
It wasn’t our favorite campground by any stretch of the word. We have our trailer ranking and thoughts on the campground in our Sun Outdoors Canyonlands Gateway Tow Stop page, including how tight the sites were, the pricing oddities of a “resort”, and the water situation that eventually made our kitchen sink smell like sulfur. Here, all you really need to know is this: it wasn’t dreamy desert camping, but it gave us a place to sit still.
We get fortunate a lot of times and end up having a site next to really nice people. This stop was one of those times, Bob and Inge….and Grace. And of all things, they were from Washington, too. They were both so sweet and helpful. Learning that his feet weren’t doing so great, Inge even offered to assist Harry in getting our bikes down from the truck. I wasn’t upset about it. It meant I got to hold Grace. I hope that they are still enjoying their travels and also that our paths cross again someday!
Adventure Energy, Stationary Reality
The funny thing about being forced to rest in Moab is that the whole town feels like it’s trying to tempt you into doing the opposite. Everywhere you look, people are heading out for hiking, jeep tours, biking, or whatever other dusty activity requires more functional feet than we had available. We were surrounded by adventure energy while carefully calculating how many steps Harry could take before regretting it.
He couldn’t exactly go out for any high mileage hikes or bike rides, but swimming is an outdoor activity, right? And the campground did have a pool. We figured we would at least be able to get some good laps in, but the heater for the pool wasn’t working (and was supposedly being replaced) the first few days we were there. Ugh. That was disappointing, at least for me since cold plunges aren’t exactly my thing. But, Harry realized the cold water actually made his feet feel not so sore. Who knew the “broken” pool could become a very large yet very inconvenient ice pack. Once the new heater was installed and running though, it became much more enjoyable and helped us unwind almost every day we were there.
Despite Harry’s injuries, we were able to make it into the downtown area to visit coffee shops, breweries, and even tattoo shops. We did end up spending a lot more time sitting inside the trailer though. Definitely not what we’d imagined when camping for two weeks in all the outdoorsy-ness that Moab exudes.
A Love Letter to Moab’s Food Scene (and Trailer Made Goodness, Too!)
Like I said above, big-time type adventures weren’t exactly in the cards for us, but we were still able to enjoy being in Moab. We made it to a few coffee shops, a cute cafe, the movie theatre, and a couple of breweries. We were even able to find a cute grocery store that carried some of the specialty items we need as a partially dairy free household. It’s great when communities have little co-ops like that. It makes it even easier for me to whip up some really rad Trailer Made Recipes without having to compromise on ingredients.
Dos Mas and Bonjour Bakery & Cafe were two really good little spots for sipping coffee, grabbing a bite to eat, and for us to get a little change of scenery to get some work done. We are french pressers, so that second cup comes a lot easier when someone else makes it for you.
A friend of ours, Rich, saw that we were in Moab and recommended the Love Muffin Cafe. He rarely, if ever, has steered us wrong. The cafe had some really unique muffins and breakfast and lunch eats. Pastries aren’t usually something that Harry gets to enjoy unless I’ve made them at home. Love Muffin had a vegan option that we tried. I’d have never thought of pairing peanut butter and quinoa much less turning that into a muffin, but they really made it work. And for me, I thought the breakfast muffin was to die for – bacon, maple, and blueberries – how could that ever go wrong? We also grabbed some breakfast while we were there. My Rooster burrito was really good: pork, eggs, cheddar, kimchi, and sriracha bbq sauce all wrapped up in a tasty tortilla. But it was Harry’s Shaka Bowl that stole the show. Quinoa, fried eggs, black beans, fresh spinach, and their homemade dona sauce (kind of like a jalapeño vinaigrette is how I’d describe it…bright with a touch of spice). They even made some adjustments for him to keep it dairy free.
Moonflower Community Cooperative, the local food Co-Op, was really a diamond in the desert. They had some really delish ready-made deli salads and some specialty grocery items and ingredients that made making meals feel less like we were in survival mode and more like we were on a tiny vacation inside the bigger trip interruption.
And then there was Ye Ol’ Geezer Meat Shop. It may have done more for Harry’s morale than any other campground amenity out there. We snagged a nice ribeye steak, a couple of duck breasts, some thick cut pork chops (his favorite) and a few bone marrow bones for broiling (I’ve been wanting to do that since he introduced me to the delicacy!).
Y’all know how much I love to cook, hence the Trailer Made Recipes section of our blog (look for some yummy updates to that area soon). Anyway, between the food co-op and the butcher, I was able to make a few fun dinners for us that I think made Harry forget his foot woes for at least a couple of hours anyway. Harry really wanted the ribeye that we picked up at Ye Ol’ Geezer, but I wasn’t really feeling a heavy cut of meat, so while I made myself a nice little “girl dinner” of cheese, crackers, stuffed grape leaves, smoked trout, and some wine, I seared his ribeye in the cast iron with some ghee, garlic, and fresh rosemary.
While I know he enjoyed his steak dinner, I think the one that would have made him propose if we weren’t already married was the seared duck breast with vegan butternut squash ravioli coated in a brown-butter sage sauce.
We made it to Moab Brewery during our stay at Utahraptor State Park, but during this stop, we got a chance to check out Proper Brewing. They had some really great beers that were super refreshing on a hot day. We already had plans to make dinner at home, but we were both thinking a couple of snacks would be a good idea. Harry tried their vegan chili, and I was intrigued by their poutine. While no one has ever held a candle to the poutine they serve at the Elk and Oarsman in Banff, with the cheese curds, bacon, brown gravy, herbed cream cheese, green onion, and parmesan all drowning some really crispy fries, Proper made a really good, unique effort.
Amaze, Amaze, Amaze: A Movie and a “Window Tour” of Arches National Park
A tradition we started awhile back is finding out if any of the little towns where we stay have a movie theatre – old school style is best, but honestly, we love movies, so any theatre works! Moab had Slickrock Cinemas 3 that had that mid-80s mall cinema feel that we like. I’ve been obsessed with Project Hail Mary since we saw it the first time. We’re listening to the audiobook together, and I’m reading the book on my phone. Harry easily gave in to my want (need?) to see it again. There’s movie popcorn, so it was an easy sell to be honest. Some people go to Moab to conquer trails, I went and watched Grace and Rocky save stars again.
Our last full day at the campground got us out of the house for more than just a coffeeshop workday. We finally made it to Arches National Park, just not in the way we might have done under different circumstances. Thankfully, the park is very drivable without missing out on many of the arch structures it boasts. I’m glad we finally made it so I could mark it off on our National Parks list and put the sticker on my water bottle. And, it was just as stunning in person as the pictures we’ve seen for years.
Unplanned Souveniers
The biggest surprise of this stop was probably my visits to Moab Tattoo. I take getting a tattoo fairly seriously since they are pretty permanent features on my skin. I always want them to mean something special. Not that popping into a tattoo shop at 21 to drunkenly ask for a butterfly on your ankle isn’t “special”, but, to each their own. All of mine mean something to me and the not one, but TWO that I got while we were in Moab were no exceptions. They also were definitely not on the list of travel-planning checklist items, nor were they why we stayed in Moab. But, they ended up being two of the things that made it feel less like a detour stay and more like an actual chapter of the trip as a whole. A weird chapter, sure. But still a good part of our story.
Staying Long Enough to Keep Going
By the end of the two weeks, we really hadn’t done Moab the way people usually “do Moab.” We didn’t go on epic hikes like we’d planned. We didn’t rent a Jeep or side-by-side to climb high rocks to amazing views. We didn’t ride the miles long bike trails. What we did do was deal with cramped RV sites, a pool that needed repairs, and water that made our kitchen sink smell like something had gone terribly wrong in the plumbing universe. These negatives aside, we also enjoyed some really wonderful trailer made meals, found a few favorite coffee and brunch spots, watched a movie in a little, local theater, took a scenic drive through Arches, I got a couple of amazing tattoos, and best of all, we gave Harry’s feet the one thing they had been loudly requesting all along: time to heal.
We left Sun Outdoors, realizing the stop hadn’t been the Moab Grand Adventure we had envisioned, but it was the place that allowed us to stay long enough to keep going.
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