So as of the last installment, we were holed up in a motel with a very viscous parking lot. We had an idea that after we met up, the next day we would head into an area not too far away and run some trails to visit some sites along the way. Having just dealt with wet Utah dirt/mud/red moly grease masquerading as dirt, I was not really liking the idea of traveling on anything other than pavement anywhere near where we are. My buddy was still thinking it would work, but eventually agreed with my assessment and another plan had to be hatched. I'm not sure where it came from, but he got the crazy idea to call the Canyonlands National Park, Islands in the Sky visitor center and inquire about weather conditions in the area. Well, come to find out, all the weather that we dealt with the past couple days had missed that end of Canyonlands completely. They had gotten some light rain a couple days ago, but nothing worth worrying about. Ok, so then he inquired as to whether they had any camping permits available for the White Rim Trail. Interestingly, some of the permit holders had heard of the rain in the area and cancelled their permits so they actually had a couple permits available. Amazing. Usually, White Rim Trail (WRT) camping permits are sold out several months in advance and here we are calling the same day and finding they are available. Wow. We'll take two. Unfortunately, the only way to get the passes is in person. No reserving them over the phone, online, nothing. They did say we could go the, IIRC, USGS field office in Moab and get some there which is probably 45min to an hour closer than the Islands in the Sky visitor center. We are nowhere near Moab at the moment and the permits are first come, first served. We've got some boogying to do, NOW. So we start boogying. We pass this old cool looking gas station and I think I take a picture of it every time:
We make it to Moab and get the permits, grab some fuel and head up to Canyonlands. We check into the visitor center and then hit the road to the WRT. It's a short jaunt, we reach it, air down and we are on our way.
Starting down Schafer trail toward the WRT. An amazing chunk of rock sluffed off the cliff sometime in history but left a really amazing scar:
Schafer Trail is really pretty amazing in and of itself. It is a shelf road hanging on the side of a sheer cliff. This is a link to Google Maps satellite view. If you move it around and zoom in a bit, you'll see blurry looking areas below the trail. They are blurry because they are vertical and difficult to focus on from outer space.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Is....8209613?hl=en
Ok, so from this point on, it was really difficult picking which pictures to post up from the literally thousands I took. Most are just generic scenery, but some may have some reason behind their capture. Anyway, on to the scenery..
I think they're following me:
We found a trail that we could follow down and reach the Colorado River. We came upon a flooded area of the trail and not wanting to deal with shoveling a truck out, I decided to park and hike around it:
Upon reaching the river we found it to be running very high and fast with tons of flotsam and jetsam in the water from the storms:
The monolith on the right is called the old woman and the wash tub (or something like that):
A lizard dragging its tail makes a neat track in the sand:
Two examples of the Suburbansaurus specimen in their natural environment:
Some neat erosion to the rock:
So we made it to our campsite, got set up and settled in for a very bug-filled evening. The sun going down treated us to some spectacular views and colors:
So that's it for today. Stay tuned to see if we meet someone famous on the trail and unintentionally engage in a race with a guy on a bicycle. We may not do that, but we might....you never know...