For Spring Break this year, my family rented an RV and traveled to Utah to visit several national parks. My goal was to still be able to run while we were traveling and I hoped to be able to find some cool trails. The first stop was Dead Horse Point State Park, near Moab, Utah. Our RV pulled into a “parking spot,” at the campground, and we started to unload. I quickly changed into my running clothes and began to search for a trail. It didn’t take long before I found a 2.5 mile path that went out to a lookout point and came back. My dad, my mom and I set out, unsure of what the trail would be like. It was incredible. The sun was setting and the light reflected off the canyons perfectly, giving them a reddish glow. We ran on some soft sand, and then large slabs of rocks. The trail was a huge mass of land, marked with rock piles called cairns. If it weren’t for these rocks, I would have had no idea where to go and even with them, we got lost several times. We climbed up rock steps and jumped over bushes as we tried to get to the lookout. At one point, we stopped, just so we could look over the edge and marvel at how far up we were. It was unbelievable that there would be a trail that ran this close to the edge of the cliff. There were no railings or warning signs preventing you from getting close to the edge. We ran on, occasionally looking down at the Colorado River and the beautiful rock formations below.
This was the most amazing place I have ever run. It was trail running at its finest and I had never experienced anything quite like it. It was windy, but I ran comfortably on the trail, enjoying the fading sun reflecting off the rocks that I stepped over. As we neared the end of the he trail it merged with the road and led straight up to a platform where a large group of tourists were looking over the edge of the canyon. It was a cool view, but nothing compared to what you saw while running. While running, there was no barrier that prevented you from getting close to the edge; you could see whatever you wanted from wherever you wanted. It was freedom. By the time we reached the lookout, it was too dark to run back, so my cousins drove us back on the paved path, which ran parallel to the trail. I was sad that I couldn’t run back, but grateful for the rest, since it had been a hard journey up. That night I thought about running the trail again in the morning. I have never looked forward to a run as much as I did that night. I knew that the next day, I would get to run the trail one more time before we moved on to the next campsite.
Dead Horse Point is the coolest place I have ever run!
