M&M's

We snuck out last weekend for a day trip to Moab. We choose to try the Monitor & Merrimac trail. A bit of a strange choice since it is known for vast stretches of impassable sand. But it is still spring when the sand is slightly more solid and more importantly, Monitor & Merrimac can shares a trailhead with the Mill Canyon Dinosaur trail which our son can explore with Grandma while we play hooky from our parental duties! It has been 15 years since we last rode this one (actually the road trip we got engaged on). But most of it is the same: lots of slick rock broken up by stretches of sandy jeep road. The good news is that there is now a less sandy option to get out to the buttes.

Here's the trailhead (it looks pretty inviting to me)

Here are the actual Monitor & Merrimac buttes. For those not familiar- Monitor and Merrimac were two civil war ships (early "ironclads") that had a famous battle. The buttes are named for their similarity in silhouette.

After starting out we noticed a marked difference between the two maps we had looked at. Here Heather (our official navigator) checks references while Utah (our official motivator) checks to see what all the delay is about.

The trail has some very unusual angles of rock to ride on. Many of them we did, some we did not.

Fortunately we had some recent rain, which gave Utah lots of little swimming holes throughout the day.
All the trail signs are labeled "M&M" and coincidentally we packed new trail mix for everyone, including - you guessed it - M&M's. Cailan enjoyed them immensely.