Cornering Consciousness

The greatest casualty of my divorce some fifteen years ago is the time I wouldn't get to spend with my son and daughter. Now they're adults, a metamorphosis that happened somewhere along the way to my mid-life, and having thus arrived, those years missed taunt the days we have left to pack them up with places, experiences and memories. That's not to say we didn't make much of the State mandated Wednesday night and every other weekend, but I'm convinced that any Utah Divorce Court judge has no goddamn idea what it means to be legally reduced to a quarter-time parent. Say what you want about being there, but to date and through no fault of my own, I've been robbed of a little over six thousand bedtime stories. Times two. And while that's not the purest impetus for our adventures, it has something to do with finding the time to be together, outside, on the water, in a kayak, up the mountain, behind the wheel, on the trail. For the last weekend of July, ...

Showing up in Moab at the start of the Jeep Jamboree in a Hummer H3 is excruciatingly similar to showing up at a Harley Rally with a Blackbird. Reconnecting with an old friend was the inspiration behind this trip, along with the potential to explore the iconic tracks of the area, but they were all closed unless you happened to be part of the Jamboree. We were not. And that was probably a good thing. We slabbed to Moab on a Friday and were duly awed by the last quarter of the trip, that part of I-70 that cuts through the seemingly uninundated parts of the La Sal National Forrest area and the tip of the San Rafael Swell. We'll be back to explore their vacant backroads. We were disturbed a bit though, not by the beautiful vistas, but by the H3 that would slam in and out of neutral whenever I opened the throttle at freeway speeds. The slamming subsided along 191 as we made the descent into Moab. Camping along the Colorado was the appeal for us, so we took 128 east and wound our...

Cornering Consciousness is a record of our travels, but it's also the point of our adventures - elevate our consciousness , take in the moments on the land, the water, the trails and the highway. We've gone through a few vehicles along the way - kayaks, motorcycles, mountain and road bikes, an old Miata, a Yukon, a tricked-out third generation Montero , and a Hummer H3 , but for the time being we've settled into a purpose-built generation 2.5 Mitsubishi Montero  with the Winter Package for overlanding. Check out our two-wheeled adventures at UTADV . The corners  range from off-road , four-wheel drive adventuring , to mountain bike trails , lakes and the Pacific Ocean ; from the Pacific Coast Highway to what we've dubbed the Grand Staircase Highway , from St. George to San Simeon , from Monument Valley to the  Valley of Fire to Yosemite to  Zion National Park , and dozens of secret spots in between. We're hoping you might find some inspiration from the...

Our neighboring town of Virgin is home to the greatest mountain biking trails in the world and that's not just hyperbole, Red Bull will back me up on this one. Posted is a sampling from the JEM trail system in that area.