Vance Family Vacation 2015: Off Road, Zip Lines and Swinging Bridges

And now the posts are going to be out of order. We have been in places with really spotty internet, so I am a bit behind, so I'm going to jump around while things are fresh on my mind and try to get caught up.

First, the zip line. We booked the zip line adventure months ago and it was scheduled for our second full day in Moab, Utah with white water rafting on our first day.

The day began at 7:30 A.M. at Raven's Rim Zip Lines. We all got our speech on how to get into our gear and helmets and jumped in to the Polaris and Kawasaki UTV (ultimate terrain vehicle) This is where the off roading comes in. We have about a 20 minute ride up a crazy steep and rocky hillside to get to the first location.

Unfortunately about a quarter of the way up our vehicle broke down. It didn't exactly break down; they had put a front shock on the rear and it compressed making us drag on every rock on the trail. We had to pull over in one of the only spots on the trail to wait for a replacement vehicle...which they didn't have. Long story short, they had to cancel our tour, as well as the other group that was also signed up to go. We were each in a different vehicle with a guide, but it takes two guides for zip lining, one to send you and one to stop you at the other end, so without another way to get us all there, we had to cancel for the day.

This is what happens when you put a front shock on the rear. It compresses people! It doesn't compress people; I added that for emphasis.

I took pictures of our broken vehicle while we waited for someone to come get us. Our guide walked down to the office and the second guide shuttled down the other group while we waited.

This was our view. The broken vehicle is in the bottom of the page. The building you see in the center toward the top is the old home of Charlie Steen who is responsible for Moab being a town. He discovered uranium there in the 50's. He built a huge house overlooking Moab to show his wealth. At the time it cost 250K. There is an interesting "Mysteries at the Museum" episode about him. His house is now a restaurant called Sunset Grill, just like the Don Henley song.

One of the funniest parts about this was the group that was with us. They were from someplace not in the South, based on their dialect and attitude. One of the women kept saying, "This is going to be very bad on TripAdvisor. Very bad. It's going to hurt the owner's bottom line." She was going on and on about how they shouldn't be penalized for the problem and yada, yada, yada. So now any time anything less than perfect happens (and even when it doesn't) Peyton and Eli break out in a very Long Island accent making hilarious speeches about how they are going to write a strongly worded review on TripAdvisor. It's pretty entertaining.

We just kind of took it in stride; I mean, what good is being upset going to do? It wouldn't fix the vehicle. It wasn't going to airlift us to the top. So we had decided to just rearrange out schedule and zip another day. The same "trip adviser lady" (pretty sure that's not her name but it's what we call her now, told us that people from Tennessee were made of "very hearty stock" because we were really taking it well. Uhm...okay.

Now for the good stuff. We rescheduled for a sunset tour the next day and had a blast!

Here are the boys all geared up. Ironically, on the second tour another vehicle broke down and we had to be shuttled up one group at a time. You'd think we might reconsider the trip after two incidents, BUT NO!

Here's Peyton and our guide, Nolan. On the longest zip which is 1/4 mile long, Peyton, who is somewhat afraid of heights, zipped all the way to the end but the brakes didn't catch him and he zipped backwards in between the posts, where he was STUCK. The guide had to reattach himself and "retrieve" him. Peyton was a good sport about it and hey, he got 6 1/2 zips where everyone else got 6! (He did not threaten to write to a bad TripAdvisor review.)

As a cool bonus, there is a swinging bridge that we had to cross. It doesn't look that high up, but you can't see the huge chasm between the two rocks. there were trees growing that were so far down you couldn't see them in this picture.

Here's Doug zipping. He would sometimes go first and then video us coming in on the GoPro.

Here's Eli zipping.

This is a cool shot of Peyton. Since this is rock to rock zipping, you run off the rock to start your zip. This picture shows the rainbow behind him. It didn't rain more than a few drops, but it was an awesome rainbow.

Another shot of the rainbow and zip line on what looks to be the surface of Mars.

These are the LaSal mountains. Just gorgeous. They do still have snow on them in places.The rule of thumb in Moab is if you can see the LaSals, you have a better chance at cell service.