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Pat Harrison
Drive It like you Rented It!
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Pat Harrison
Drive It like you Rented It!
The Shafer Switchbacks are an iconic area in Moab, and stock JK friendly.
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Pat Harrison
Drive It like you Rented It!
Approach and departure clearances were not quite what we were used to, but the rental Rubicon faired well in the deserts around Moab.
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Pat Harrison
Drive It like you Rented It!
The dark clear skies of the Sand Flats Recreational Area are perfect for star gazing at the end of a long day.
Story & photos by Pat Harrison
Experiencing Moab with a twist
Moab - the Mecca of off-roading. A must do for every four-wheeling nut bar rolling across the planet. Enough articles, trip reports and pictorials have been posted on the subject to fill a terabyte hard drive and here comes another… with a twist.
We’re used to driving our own JKU down with a gang of like-minded marauders intent on punishing their skid plates and getting some real live rock crawling use out of their expensive tires. There’s nothing quite like a 2,200 km road trip to put an exclamation point on the term “road trip”! It was time to try something different for a few reasons, and as it turns out, it was enough fun to share what we learned along the way, in hopes that we might encourage anyone with similar thoughts to do the same. This time around, we were going to fly down and spend the next 10-days in our favourite location trying out three different rental vehicles - all for the sake of research you understand. Our options would be a stock JKUR, a RZR 1000 and a lifted JKUR on 35’s.
First off, let me say you’re not going to be saving any money going this route so, let’s just put that to bed right away. But it may not be as bad as you thought either. For example our two flights round trip from Bellingham to Salt Lake City (SLC) were just over a grand. The four-day 4,500 km round trip drive with gas and accommodations was very similar in cost. The cool part here is the two extra days you will net by flying. I’d opt for a flight into Grand Junction, Colorado, next time, which is two hours out of Moab as opposed to SLC, which is more like four and a half. No commercial flights were available directly into the small Moab airport that we were aware of, although we were told there was such a service at one time.
We rented a JKUR from Rugged Rentals near the SLC airport and used it for the next 10-days as our main vehicle. We weren’t sure if we would be happy with it as we are used to more modded rigs, but as we soon discovered, you can experience a lot of adventures in Moab using a stock Rubicon four-door.
We started with a few road trips that were more relaxing than adventurous. The La Sal Mountain Loop, Arches National Park and Canyon Lands National Park all provided awesome vistas within easy driving distance of town. Later in the week we would step it up a bit and put the OEM suspension through its paces by logging some ”county unpaved roads” as they are referred to. These seem to include a whole lot of unpaved desert routes you wouldn’t attempt in a regular rental and a couple of them had us shifting the Rubi into 4-Low, as we may have diverted slightly when the opportunity presented itself. Speaking of which, there are an impressive number of sanctioned trails in and around Moab that are perfectly suited for stock Jeeps like the brand new JK we were using. A third of the listed and described trails are rated as easy with another third rated as moderate and they are all well worth the effort. They just hadn’t been on our radar when we were in our own Jeeps.
It’s so much fun leaving the paved road right in the middle of the Canyonlands Park to descend 250 metres down on the Shafer Switchbacks to the Mesa below, that you were just studying from the lookout points above with all the tourists. Then to bomb White Rim trail with a dust cloud giving away your location to all those same onlookers still roaming around up top.
We turned around and headed back to town over red desert clay on Potash Road, coming out at the bottom, where you could turn off to start the Poison Spider Trail. We even put the stocker to the test and climbed the baby Lions Back lump at the head of Fins ‘n Things, which it handled with ease. The approach and departure angles aren’t what I’m used to, so there was a limit to the shenanigans I could to subject our newfound daily driver to. I was just as determined to keep a lid on the costs of the rentals, as I was to explore their capabilities, so it became a balancing act with my gonads in one hand and my wallet in the other.
One thing we really appreciated with a rental was the fact that as an auto, it had remote start. There’s nothing like getting into a pre-chilled ride in 33°C temps all week long.
Coming from Vancouver where only a few stars are visible through the light pollution, the clarity and majesty of a truly dark sky is well worth the price of admission. Only a five-minute drive from town saw us up on the Sand Flats Recreational Area with the freedom panels removed. We just crawled out of the Jeep and lay on the remaining hard top to watch a show that only the desert sky can provide.
At a hundred bucks a day it ain’t a cheap game to play, but with so many places you can take a capable stock Jeep in this haven of off-roading, you’d be silly not to. And to not have a Jeep in Moab is like not having oxygen on top of Mt Everest. Your enjoyment of the experience would be severely compromised. As we’ll see in the next two articles, you don’t have to own an off-road rig to experience the thrill of slick rock and red clay desert, however you will have to be prepared to roll the vehicle damage dice and pay to play just like everyone else.