We were up early at 6:00 a.m. today thanks to Lucas. This is about an hour earlier than his current usual. So, we decided to be a bit lazy and head to McDonald's for breakfast.
After breakfast we did a little bit of shopping, and I scored some new mountain biking shoes in my (gigantic) size 43, at 40% off!! Lucas and Rob had fun in the store waiting for me.
One benefit to being up so early was having time to explore. We made the short drive to the famous Sand Flats Recreation Area. Admission is $5.00 for cars/OHVs, and $2.00 for bicycles.
The first thing I was surprised to see was a LOT of camping here. There are no services other than pit toilets, & they're first-come, first served (not to mention all full today), but how sweet it would be to camp right next to these epic off-roading and mountain bike trails?!
While our initial intent was just to drive by and scope out the trails, Lucas was asleep, so we decided to go drive a couple of them!
First off was the "Baby Lion's Back." 
Not only was this Rob's first time driving on slickrock, it's the steepest incline the Jeep has ever been on! It was a heart starter, but the Jeep handled it just fine!
I was out of the Jeep for a portion of it to take photos and videos, but was foolishly wearing my Birkenstock sandals. I had to take them off and go barefoot to be able to scale the steep portions!
Once the Jeep had completed this initiation to both slickrock and steep pitches, Rob and I were both amped up on adrenalin, so (while Lucas kept on napping) we went and did a big portion of a trail called "Fins and Things."
It was a combination of fun, easy sandy sections and technical, rocky sections like this one:
We took turns driving and had a lot of fun! The Jeep (a stock Jeep Wrangler Rubicon) handled all of it beautifully, with only a single scratch on the skid plate!
Lucas must've enjoyed all the rocking back and forth, as he had a 2.5 hour nap in the back seat during all of this adventure, his longest nap in months! He woke up when we left Sand Flats Recreation Area to drive back to the campsite for lunch.
Lucas was really enjoying blackberries today, so much so that he looked almost like a zombie after a fresh feeding! (Yes, I'm a huge Walking Dead fan.)
After lunch, we loaded the mountain bikes up and headed back up to Sand Flats to attempt the famous Slick Rock mountain bike trail.
We were so pumped after our morning off-roading experience going so well, we were very excited to try this trail, even if we are far from experts. We took turns attempting the practice loop, a shorter version of the main trail, to allow people like us to see if we have the skills, endurance and balls to do the main loop.
The slickrock was actually very grippy, especially after we lowered our tire pressure. (Note: we did the same thing to the Jeep when we arrived in Moab.)
However, I didn't make it very far because I didn't have enough nerve for some of the abrupt transitions and steep drops. And even though Rob had more technical skill than me and got a lot further before turning around, his lungs felt like they were on fire because he didn't have the cardio needed for the intense, long climbs. (Rob is the grey-shirted speck in this photo...)
So rather than kill ourselves, we left and drove over to another set of trails called "Bar M", just north of Moab. We took turns riding the "Lazy EZ" trail, which was right at our level!
While I was riding, Rob hung out with Lucas in exersaucer...
and I later drove Lucas around in the stroller, and pretended he had just completed his first single track trail.
The day finished with a fast dinner at Wendy's (we stayed out and about too late and needed to feed Lucas right away, so no time to cook). Then it was bath time for Lucas & shower time for mom and dad! Sorry, no photos of that part of the day. :P
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