Our favorite destination so far, with a little bit of chaos sprinkled in between.

Hey guys- Hannah here. It feels a little funny to be writing on the blog. Typically, this is Jak’s project, but he’s been pretty preoccupied with his own thing, so I figured I’d give it a shot. If there’s any destination I wanted to have the pleasure of writing about, it would be this one. I think my perspective is a little bit different than Jak’s too, but I’ll get to that later. Anyways-

Moab (I think this is how Jak typically starts these things) a tiny little tourist town situated in Northern Utah. Utah is one of my favorite states we’ve seen by far on our journey. I distinctly remember driving through it for the first time when we came and visited Mom and Dad a few years ago. See, mom and dad live just outside of St. george, Utah, on the Nevada side. The drive through Utah took my breath away.

It’s beauty is truly unmatched. So many different landscapes and environments to see, it was so nice to finally make our way up north and check out this little town we’ve heard so much about. After just leaving Durango, Colorado, we had a short trek to the next destination- a plot of BLM land about 20 minutes outside of town. It was when Jak got hit in the side of the head with a tumbleweed, it’s brittle branches shattering against the partially open window into the cab, I let out a scream. The RV swayed as Jak did his best to correct his steering after being whiplashed by a dead plant. I should’ve known then and there the events to follow would change the direction of our journey, and fundamentally who we were as individuals.

The spot itself was nothing special. Just a patch of dirt along a rutted road, with hundreds of other campers just like ours scattered about. I was worried maybe we wouldn’t find a spot here, at least not a private one we could have to ourselves. The area had lots of large parking spaces, some big enough to fit whole caravans of Class A motorhomes in a big circle. If you couldn’t tell by now, Jak and I aren’t too keen on sharing. Neither are our dogs, in fact. I was relieved when we found a private patch just big enough for our rig and smart car. We had neighbors of course, about 100 feet from us on either side. I had made multiple comments about the offleash dogs running around unattended in every direction we turned. Red flag number 2.

The next morning really kicked off how the next two weeks would go. See, I take a lot of the blame for this one. I have since learned my lesson, and I’ll tell you how I rectified it later in this blog post. It was morning, probably about 8 am when I let the girls out for a quick morning potty. Ida and Izzy aren’t particularly dog friendly- Ida is quite selective and Izzy is just overall pretty fearful. They have decent recall, but I know it’s not 100%. I didn’t know the neighbor down the hill from us had a dog. I didn’t realize that our neighbors German Shepherd would be free roaming in and out of his owners Airstream, without his owner paying attention. By the time I had noticed the Shepherd, I had started to recall the girls. I had no shoes on, and was standing on the RV steps, about 10 feet from them. It was at this moment that this shepherd had noticed me, and came trudging up the hill.

Fuck.

Ida went over first, blowing off my recall, Izzy quickly trailing behind. At this point, I was screaming Jaks name. Shepherds hackles go up, his tail is high, I blinked, and the 3 of them are fighting. So here I am, 140 pounds, barefoot in the broken slate rock, tumbling down the hill with 3 large dogs. I have Ida by the throat, trying to get her to let go of this poor dog, while Izzy is taking cheap shots from behind. At this point, the Shepherds owner has made it outside. He’s pounding on the back of Idas head, and his dog is screaming. Jak finally makes it outside, and in his rush of adrenaline, prys open Ida’s jaw with his bare hands. This gives me a chance to pull Ida back, and then the two men are trying to now break the shepherd off of Izzy. Jak again goes to pry this shepherds teeth off our own dog, and in turn takes a couple good punctures to the hand. Great.

After the dogs are separated, the Owner asks me what happened, and at this point I’m still really not sure. I tell him I’m deeply sorry, as his dog definitely got the brunt of the injuries. Or my husband did, actually, but I didn’t know that yet. I gave him my information and told him I’d pay for his vet bills. He took his dog to the vet, and I didn’t hear from him again. He left that same day.

Ida and Izzy sustained minimal injuries. Jak suffered 3 deep punctures to his dominant hand. I urged him to go to the doctor, I really did. Jak is kinda stubborn like that though. So you know what happens next. It gets infected. Quickly. Swells up like a baseball. He’s still not wanting to go to the ER. I call my aunt and ask for some advice, considering she’s an NA. She tells me I could try to do a betadine soak, but he really probably needs to see a doctor. So here I go, soaking his hand in betadine. We do that for about an hour. And then something unbelievable happens.

Jak starts complaining about not feeling well. He says he thinks he’s having a panic attack. He starts gagging. Me, thinking he’s being a bit of a baby, tell him if he’s gonna puke he needs to do it in the sink. He keeps gagging. I roll my eyes and ask him if he needs some water. He squeaks out a “I can’t-” before his eyes roll up into his head and he slumps over against the back of the couch.

Shit.

I am calm at first. I lightly shake him and start saying his name. After about 10 seconds, my shakes get more and more violent. My voice goes from a firm soft to a deep panic. I am screaming by 30 seconds. His lips are turning blue. At this point, I don’t even know how long it’s been now, I am beating on his chest. I was about to drag him to the ground and start CPR, when he suddenly flutters his eyes open and gasps for air. At this point he is sitting up, he’s PROFUSELY sweating, and his pupils are so large I can’t see the brown of his irises. “What happened?” “You fainted. Get dressed I gotta take you to the ER.” I call my aunt again, in all the commotion, because honestly I didn’t really even understand what had just happened. My aunt is panicked. She tells me she’s worried he’s had a reaction to the betadine. She tells me to immediately hang up and call 911. Get an ambulance. An ambulance????? I’m 27 miles away from town down a rutted dirt road. Jak is telling me his vision is blurry again. Oh my god. Okay 911 here we go.

The ambulance got there pretty quickly. Dispatch had told me to keep Jak seated and give him a cool towel on the back of his neck. We sat outside of the rig and waited for the ambulance to find our coordinates. They were a great team of people. Jak got the works. An EKG and all his vitals tested multiple times. The verdict? A panic attack. They called it a vasovagal response. He was also incredibly dehydrated, and his blood pressure was a little low. He hadn’t had anything but an iced coffee that day. The good thing about the EMTs coming, is that it pushed Jak to finally go in and get his hand looked at. Once the EMTs had determined his was stable, I drove him to the Urgent care. They got us in quickly, gave Jak a proper antiseptic soak, and some antibiotics. His blood pressure was still low when the nurse tested his vitals, and she urged him to drink a butt ton more water.

Phew! The ugly and bad is over. Now we can get to the GOOD that surrounded us in Moab. Because despite the dog bite and fainting spell, we both agree Moab has been our favorite place we’ve visited. Our favorite being the time we spent in Arches National Park.

We did two hikes in arches on two different days. The first one was Devils Garden loop. An 8 mile primitive hike, this was by far one of the most intense hikes Jak and I have ever done. It was a good thing we had been hiking regularly over a year at this point, because this hike was incredibly challenging. We got to see some amazing arches though, as well as lots of cool spires and fins. It has been my favorite hike by far since we started RVing. Maybe even my favorite of all time.

Our second hike in Arches was later in the week, when we went to see the famous Delicate arch. It was a cool 3.5 mile hike. Not too difficult for us, and because we went in the morning, it wasn’t particularly crowded.

We also really enjoyed taking the girls to a local hike, since they aren’t allowed in the National Parks. I had done some research and found a 2 mile hike that led you to a see of dinosaur tracks, stamped into the slick rock. The information board explained that the area we were standing been used to be a sea shore, and that the prints we were standing in were from the local carnivores of the area. It has just rained the day before, so we got really lucky that the prints were filled with water, making them very easy to see. We were the only people one this hike, which was also great, as I stress about taking Ida and Izzy anywhere an offleash dog could be.

Another amazing aspect of Moab is that we were pretty close to home base, where Mom and dad and Big brother Alex live. We invited Alex and Sam to come up and spend the weekend with us, where they happily obliged. We decided to go on a rafting trip while they were here, as Sam had never been rafting, and we were definitely gonna raft the Colorado River while in Moab. The rafting trip was really fun, and we ended the day with a campfire and Ghibli movie on the projector. It was nice to get to spend a little time with family, knowing we’d be taking off for the East Coast soon.

The last stop I had to make sure we hit was Canyonlands National park. Although we didn’t have a lot of time left, I had to make sure I checked it off my national park list. We decided to go at Sunset, and we picked yet another arch – mesa arch – to marvel at.

Truly a sight to see, and we got very lucky to be the only ones to enjoy it at sunset. This area is jammed packed in the mornings, crowded with photographers and tourists wanting to see how the light seeps into the arch. We found sunset just as beautiful, and of course, the solace was worth it.

As we sat under that mesa we reminisced on our time in Moab. We spoke about our health, death, life, and everything in-between. Jaks fainting spell had really shaken him, and he has since become a little obsessive over drinking water. I’ve never seen him drink so much water in the 8 years we’ve been together. I even started drinking more. This trip really showed us how important it is to take care of ourselves and eachother. We’ve been way better about our health habits since leaving Moab. We aren’t 15 anymore. Excited for what lies ahead in Wyoming (and if you haven’t read that blog post yet, buckle up buttercup) we set off the next morning for Jackson Hole.

Loving the adventure? Consider buying us a coffee. It helps us buy muzzles for our misbehaved puppies, pay the urgent care bills, and keep us going to the next state. Consider checking out my art website, too, so you can get some pretty work for your home. Take care.