So a quick recap has us heading down the road in the rain, to a point in the middle of nowhere, to meet someone we haven't talked to in almost 24 hours who is coming from even father away than we are.
The rain has been absolutely crazy at times. Dry washes are running fast. Normally dry silt trails/roads are mud bogs or grease fests. After leaving Capitol Reef we get to Hanksville and turn south. Running along I turn my 2m radio on and am amazed that I am receiving transmissions from the person we are looking to meet up with. I try responding, but he can not receive my transmissions. Come to find out that during an investigation later on, the radio had its settings changed to a monitor only setting when I loaned it to him for chasing a race in Mexico. Anyway, receiving these transmissions is very relieving. He was coming from Phoenix and now we know he made it to the area. We are still a bit over an hour out yet and I can't tell him that we are high balling it his way. Just for the hell of it I tried my phone and of course nothing worked. So we kept on boogying south and we stopped at Hite Marina overlook:
Now, if you're thinking there is no marina in the pic, you would be absolutely correct. If you look to the left of about the center of the pic, you will see a boat launch ramp that has been extended, but no longer is in a lake. The extended years of drought has removed the lake from the area and only the Colorado River still runs through the area. A little bit off the bottom of the ramp and to the left in the pic (about where the oval patch of dark green grass is now) used to be a marina where bunches of house boats were moored. Not any more....
Looking to the left of the previous pic. Most of the green used to be under water:
This area had been hit hard with rain not too long before we got there. Large chunks of cliff had been washed or broken off and now lay on the highway that has been under-cut by the swift moving currents in the pseudo-canyon you drop altitude in:
This is a major highway in the area, not some podunk back road like we usually travel on. More debris on the road: (the large white vehicle a few vehicles ahead of us was a large bus and if you look to the left of the bus you can just make out a guy in a black shirt--he was the spotter for the bus to descend the hill)
This one is kind of difficult to see, but there are several waterfalls happening in this pic. They are all the color of the cliff, so they blend in very well:
Further down:
I like this one. Just to the right of the middle of the pic is a vertical, light colored line. This is a tall waterfall as evident by the water hitting the rock below it:
We finally make it to this bridge. Neat bridge, but that's not the significance of it. This is to be the meet up point for our other vehicle:
After all the miles and tribulations, we made it!! Both of us!!
Those of you who have been following along will recognize this blue Suburban as the "other" Suburban in my life. I've been building it for the past few years. We travel regularly with its owners, my buddy Lance and his wife. They wanted to run with us on this trip, but had other obligations so we ran our trip and when they became available mid-way through our trip, we set up our "impossible meet-up" and managed to pull it off.
We exchanged greetings and checked out the bridge for a few minutes, then loaded up and headed down the road to Natural Bridges National Monument.
We went in and found a trail that led down to a really neat bridge:
The water was running red:
We hiked down under the bridge. This is looking back up at it:
More red water:
Interesting washed out hole in the wall:
Another super neat bridge:
We got out of there and headed down the road to Bluff where we had a room waiting for us in a lake that in normal situations would be a parking lot. We got some dinner down the road and started discussing our plans for the next day.