Moab Travel Guide

Moab is a wonderful place. It is about 10 minutes drive to Arches National Park (NP) and about 30 minutes drive to Canyonland NP. Stores along the highway are very yuppie liked and people-friendly. There are two large grocery stores which serve the population there and cities nearby. The tap water taste funny; so, buy gallon of distilled water from them.

It was originally the Elk Ridge Mission, settled by Mormon colonists back in the 1800's. They gave it the name "Moab" from the Old Testament. It was a sleepy little town until the 1950's, when the uranium boom hit the area, and the town exploded with growth and prosperity. Everything evaporated in the 1980's, and Moab was then pretty much a ghost town, with many businesses shuttered and many houses vacant.

But then this thing called mountain biking took hold, and the desert southwest became hip, and now you can't buy a house for less than $100,000, and the developments keep popping up everywhere. Moab is now a tourist and recreation mecca like Taos, Santa Fe, Park City, Telluride, Flagstaff, etc. It's where the well-to-do and the artistic want to be, and they flock there by the thousands.

The town's location explains part of the draw. The red rock scenery visible right from downtown is stunning. No surprise that many movies have been filmed here and in the area, including "Thelma and Louise". Nearby national parks and forest service lands provide hundreds of thousands of acres of public land for outdoor recreation.