Skydiving in Moab!!!

Going skydiving has been on our bucket list for such a long time, so when we saw a deal for skydiving on Groupon last year, we just had to get it!!

 The deal was for Moab, Utah and our reservation was at 7:00 in the morning. We weren't sure if we were going to get a hotel room down there the night before or just drive down early that morning, but we waited too long to book a hotel so unfortunately we had to leave our house at 3:30 in the morning to go! As we were driving down, we were going through some serious lightning storms. Every 10 seconds huge lightning bolts were striking and lighting up the whole sky so we were starting to get nervous that we would drive down there and have it be cancelled. We kept driving through it anyways and got to the tiny Moab airport at like 6:15. We were exhausted so we took a nap in the car while it rained outside. Luckily for us the rain stopped about 6:45 in the morning and the clouds started to disappear. Couldn't have been more perfect.

We went into the airport and saw two young guys sleeping on these benches in the waiting room. One guy peeked open his eye asking if we were here to skydive....the other was still passed out. When we said yes, he woke up the other guy and the other guy responded with a few swear words and opened a red bull right away. I was starting to get so nervous and thinking in my head are these the people taking us skydiving?!? Andrew and I kept giving each other "the look" and I even whispered to him that if these were our instructors I don't feel safe! Once they woke up, they took us around back and we walked over to the plane. When we got there, they had some really ghetto rap music playing. At this point I almost wanted to go home. But we stuck it out and acted like we were all fine. There were 2 other people going skydiving so I felt a little better. When we got near the plane, we saw the actual people we would be jumping with. Thankfully they weren't half asleep haha. They started putting us in a harness and I was kind of confused because most pictures I had seen of people skydiving had been in  jumpsuits too, but they just put the harness on over our clothes haha. 

The instructors were purposely trying to scare us, not sure why....saying things like "if you don't arch your back when you jump then you'll die" "keep that gum in your mouth and you'll choke and die..." All very encouraging things!!!! 

Andrew was pretty calm, but I was so nervous at this point.

Couldn't believe this was the plane we were going to be jumping out of!! It looked so crappy. Even more crappy on the inside. The inside had some parts that were duct taped. We had the 2 guys go first so we could make sure it was a reliable plane haha. The instructors said that even though it looked crappy, it was a really great and smooth plane.



The other two guys got in the plane and off they went. We continued to wait nervously. We got to know the half awake guys a little better and started feeling a little more calm. We stood outside watching the other guys and saw their parachutes open and have a successful landing which made me feel better.  Finally, it was our turn. I chose to go with the guy who was trying to scare me the most, only because I had found out that he had done like 9,000 tandem jumps before so I felt the most comfortable with him. He was the one jumping out of the plane first so we had to sit right by the door of the plane. Except there was no door! I had nothing to hold on to while we were flying around looking at Moab. They told us not to hold on to the pilot, so I was holding on to Andrew's instructor! haha he kept telling me to calm down and that I'd be fine. It was so awesome up there though because we flew around Moab for like 15 minutes before jumping out. My instructor kept trying to point out the cool things below us but I just had to nod and smile because I could barely hear a word he was saying with all the wind!!

It was time to jump. I think he started getting a little frustrated with me because I couldn't relax my body. I was shaking and so nervous! I had to dangle my feet out on the ledge of the plane while he got his out. Then we just rolled out of the plane!! It was the most insane experience ever! I screamed (obviously) even though they told us to try not to because it is hard to breathe when you do that but I couldn't help it. After a bit he pulled the parachute and I was all smiles after realizing I wasn't going to die after all! He pointed out that Andrew and his instructor had pulled their parachute so I felt good knowing he was okay too. It was so fun!! He let me steer the parachute and then we landed. Check that off our bucket list!!!

I don't think I'd be the person to go all the time, but it was awesome going once! And I'd go again if we got a good deal!

When we got to the ground, they gave us our jump certificate!

After our jump standing next to one of their cool planes!

We had such a great time. So glad we finally did it! The drive home wasn't quite as fun because we were both so tired. Luckily, Andrew drove the whole way so I could sleep. We definitely recommend going skydiving at least once!