The great thing about Moab and so much of Utah is that there are so many entrepreneurial adventure guides there who are ready and willing to take people on incredible climbs, horse treks, white-water rafting, hiking, Polaris riding, and motorbiking. You name it, it's all there. It’s one of the most spectacular and unforgiving wildernesses on the planet. It’s otherworldly. You can go from incredibly remote, small slot canyons that make you feel like you're a little worm inside a huge cheese, to the huge mountains, to skiing, to paragliding, to wide open deserts, to incredible river canyons, then some of the most amazing, huge cliff faces on the planet. It's got such diversity. We're dealing with dynamic places, activities, and adventures. It's no surprise that it becomes a mecca for so many adrenaline adventure enthusiasts that come there.

What's so great about Utah is all the sandstone structures—they change colors all through the day, from the night to the early morning to that pink in the early evening. It's so beautiful. In the desert, when the dynamic heat of the day dissipates and that early-evening sun settles in, a stillness and a calm comes. That heat lifts, and it's golden hour. It's just amazing.

We've filmed there quite a bit over the years. Utah’s a great place for us to do a lot of filming because it’s good access, whether you’re coming from Canada, coming from San Francisco, LA, all the way down to Las Vegas and beyond. It becomes a nice central focal point for people to get to. 

The Natalie Portman episode fits into that mold of why we often film in Utah. It's easy to get to and she was excited to go. She's always wanted to do stuff there. She was amazing, out of her comfort zone, but what a great adventure spirit—big smile on her face, facing a few fears, never-give-up attitude. She said, "I want to bring my friends here for a weekend—I'm coming back to this place."

When we were last filming there, we had two or three days off. Days off are really needed as a crew. We're there ultimately to do our job and do the filming side of it well. It's just that everyone can never quite resist throwing in a few toys to the van that carries over all the equipment. We're not total junkie nightmares who can never sit still—we definitely rest up, as well. But also we knew this one in Utah was going to be a fun place. So we just planned another couple of days off in between. We’ve got the gear and the skills between us all to go and have loads of fun adventures when we're in these places. That really brings our days off alive.

This is a bunch of stuff that we did as a crew during those days off. But you probably don't want all of those for one day off. Otherwise, it'd be a little bit of an insane day. 

The day started off with these paramotor buddies saying, "Let's go to the lakes." I said, "Let's try it on the river in Moab. Why don't we pull out the Jet Skis and we'll just bomb up river?" They'd never really done it on the river—they always take it to these lakes. But I said, "Let's do it." It was brilliant. We took these Jet Skis and it was super fun. The Colorado River goes from really deep to two inches deep to rapids to huge areas that are just amazing stretches of calm, flowing river through these gorges. We just bombed up river, swam, and messed around. 

Then we headed to Canyonlands National Park. I'd climbed quite a bit on Tombstone Rock around there, which is an iconic one. I always thought this would be really fun to come with the Polaris RZR off-road vehicles and just bomb around here. 

I got JT Holmes—my good buddy from School Valley, from Tahoe Palisades—over. He's a professional skier and speed rider. He's now a stunt coordinator for movies and an all-around good guy, like-minded, free spirit, rule breaker, laughs at himself, loves the adventure, doesn't take anything too seriously—apart from staying alive. We've traveled a lot around the world and had many great adventures. 

He did a bit of a road trip, came and joined us for our days off. JT brought the Polaris with him on this road trip. In the afternoon, we just fired them up and drove. That was really fun. You get to cover a lot of ground. Again, in a second, you're in the middle of nowhere. But it's so fun with those vehicles because you're not on foot. It's not a survival mission where you blink and you're out of water and you're dead. You can be well equipped: GPS, water, all the stuff. We had a great afternoon.