MOAB -- If you want to see a couple of national parks, do some mountain biking, hiking, or serious rock climbing or rock crawling all in a couple of days, Moab may be the place to visit.

The smell of burning rubber and the roar of a cheering crowd are part of the annual Jeep Safari in Moab.

Tens of thousands of off-road enthusiasts descended on the area with their rigs for a nine-day festival last month. The largest crowds gather at a hill called Potato Salad to see which rigs will summit and which will plummet.

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But Moab is more than clutch kits and roll bars. It was the last stop for the Pease family from Boston. In one week, they visited all of Utah's national parks, a few state parks and wrapped it up in Moab with some rafting on the Colorado River.

Cam Pease commented on the mountains "like you would see in the movies. We tried to take pictures but they won't do it justice," he said.

If floating on water isn't for you, perhaps floating above Arches National Park in a hot air balloon is.

And of course, if it's mountain biking you're after, Moab is world-class with hundreds of miles of trails and slick rock excitement. Visitors like Kevin Morroun, a sky dive instructor from New York, easily get hooked.

"I was only supposed to be here for two days. I've been here for three weeks."

E-mail: shaws@ksl.com