It's about 5pm Friday and I've made camp just outside Canyonlands National Park, having experienced a great hike in Natural Bridges from Sipapu to Kachina and a chat with a Kiwi couple who have been driving around in an RV for the last 5 weeks.
So far I've come about 40 miles of the 70 I will have to do on dirt roads to get to the Canyonlands Visitor's Center. The truck is already incredibly dusty inside and out.
With the exception of the occasional fly, the cooling metal of the truck and a gentle breeze on my face, it is ABSOLUTELY silent. A small bird just flying by sounds loud. It's so silent it seems as though I've gone temporarily deaf. I've descended about 3000' in the last hour coming over the mountain range but my ears have already adjusted. It's amazing and truly rare in the wilderness to hear nothing. I sit intensely still for a few minutes just feeling nature until the distinctive souind of dirt bikes breaks the peace. They go by, up the hill, and once again silence. Maybe it's something about the shape of this particular mesa because the sound of those dirt bikes disappeared very quickly. I feel the warmth of the sun on my back and a chill on my sandalled feet as the 58F weather dictates. It will be much colder as soon as the sun goes down, in about an hour. I'll eat before then and rug up in the back to read until bedtime.
It's pretty much a dawn to dusk lifestyle, repleat with all the experiences that provides - gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, much activity during the day and long sleeps as winter encroaches on the sun. I'm running out of time before snow season arrives in this part of the country. After New Mexico, it'll probably be a quicker trip home, although I'm still hopeful for that ski bunny who wants to take me in the for the winter :-)
The time here has flown by. Michigan back in June seems like eons ago and Kentucky with Frank & Deanna my first night seems dreamlike. Today has been full of spleandor, not the least of which was the drive from Natural Bridges to here, through Bear Ears and Gooseneck - great names. Thank God I have the ability to make this trip and appreciate the beauty and serenity it has offered.
Wow, Saturday has been a long day. Expecting the last 30 miles to the Visitors Center to be relatively quick, per my map program, I was somewhat surprised to find the road getting progressively worse as I arrived at Canyonlands South entrance. No ranger station, no gate, just a sign saying, "High Clearance 4x4 Only - Drive at own risk". Normally that would signal some fun but right now I have a motorcycle and carrier that makes the back of my truck 400lbs heavier and 3' longer than normal - not a good combination for hard core offroading. The road which I came to discover is rated as one of the most difficult in the Moab area, is know as Elephant Hill. It is incredibly steep, narrow, rocky and has multiple switchbacks that require 4 or 5 point turns. Needless to say I dragged my carrier many times, to the point where I snapped one ratchet strap, bent another badly and mangled or broke many of the bolts holding the carrier together. I also discovered later that somewhere along the trail I squished my exhaust pipe flat at the end. All that was just going UP the hill, I still had to come down.
Not prepared to destroy anything more, the small plateau at the top of Elephant Hill provided the opportunity to remove the bike and carrier and with some concerted effort get the 80lb carrier and all the cans - water and 2 fuel - into the back of the truck. The drive down the other side then became uneventful. A short hike back to the top to get the bike and it also made it down the hill without issue. Another hour or so and it was all back together at the bottom, ready to head on into Moab, still 100 miles away. Thankfully I had a couch host, Darrin, already lined up in Moab and the rest of the evening was comparatively simple.
The moral of the story - don't believe your GPS when it tells you the quickest way from A to B is via a dirt road.
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