Moab

Red dust coats everything — your boots, your handlebars, the rim of your beer glass at the brewpub after dark. Moab sits in a valley of red Entrada sandstone where two national parks, a state park, and the Colorado River converge, and the town exists because people want to ride, climb, paddle, and scramble through all of it.

Moab in eastern Utah serves as basecamp for Arches National Park — home to more than 2,000 documented natural stone arches, more than any other place on Earth — and Canyonlands National Park to the south. The town itself sits along the Colorado River, where commercial rafting outfitters launch daily from directly below the bridge. The Slickrock Trail, a 9.6-mile loop across bare sandstone, helped define the sport of mountain biking when riders discovered that desert-varnished rock grips tyres better than dirt. Dead Horse Point State Park, minutes from town, delivers a 2,000-foot canyon panorama in a 270-degree arc. Moab runs hot — summer temperatures push past 40°C — but spring and autumn bring ideal conditions for the trails that radiate from town in every direction.