ed.g.pc: U, C, a U A (part 5)

Okay okay already. I know I haven't been too good at getting the rest of the pictures from the summer trip up here, but here's another entry... After this, I'll do one more, and be finished!

18-June-2008 - Wednesday:
Got up today, and Lynne took a break from the bike while I went riding with Kyle. We went up to the La Sals and rode down Porcupine to the river. Colorado River, that is. I used to ride with Kyle when I lived here, and he was always faster than me, and could ride stuff I could hardly walk, but now I'm definitely a better rider than I used to be.

And Kyle is twice as much better now. He's just insanely fast. Oh well... At least I'm somewhat consoled to find out that he's racing downhill races in the pro category. No pictures from the ride (too busy trying to keep up...)

After I rode, Lynne and I drove the loop road up through the La Sals. The mountains are only about 20min south of Moab, but we started by driving out the river road along the Colorado, and went up Castle Valley to the mountains. There were some pretty cool views looking back down the valley... views like this:

Castle Valley from the La Sals

There were also these fields of wild Irises up there. The pictures, of course, don't do them justice, but here's a taste of it.

Wild Irises with Castle Valley in the background

A little further along the road, we got a picture that shows a hint of Moab. The body of water that you can see down there to the left is Kens Lake just south of town, so the buildings you see behind it are the edges of Moab. Castle Valley is to the right out of the picture.

Moab from the loop road

Didn't take a whole lot of pictures today, but you get the general idea of where we were.

19-June-2008 - Thursday:
Okay, so this may have been our most active day of the entire trip... It's still 95 degrees-ish out, and so we got up early to get a ride in before the heat of day sets in. We went out to Onion Creek to do the 13/22/26/?? however many creek crossings there are (depends on who you talk to... including us). This ride is a mellow fire-road type ride that goes up this crazy beautiful red-rock canyon.

Here's one of my favorite rock formations in the area:

Man In Easy Chair Watching TV

The canyon is really pretty, and these pics won't do it justice, but here are a few anyway...

Lynne next to Onion Creek

A small chunk of an old ocean bottom just sitting on the side of the trail.

The TV watcher from the other side.

And here's Lynne heading back down into the canyon. (No really, she's in there.)

Okay, that's not really fair... here's where she is in the above picture (just a little black dot...):

Okay, so after riding Onion Creek, we got a quick bite, and then hiked up a canyon to see Morning Glory Arch (I thought it was the sixth largest span in the world, but this site has it as the fifth largest). The canyon is called Negro Bill Canyon, but, you know I'm from Santa Cruz, and I'm not sure I can even say that out loud, so we call it African-American William Canyon.

The creek coming out the canyon.

Just another picture of a very cool place.

Baby frogs!!

Looking up the canyon.

Finally! There's the arch nestled in between the canyon walls. And by the way, the world famous Slickrock trail is up on top of the sandstone beyond the arch.

A little closer view. Love the colors on the rock.

And here's one more picture with little ol' me thrown in for scale.

After seeing this arch, we hiked back down the canyon, and, just before we got out of the canyon to the car, we jumped in the creek in a nice deep spot to beat the heat for a couple minutes. We got out of the water, and walked the remaining few minutes back to the car, and by the time we got there, we were pretty much already dry.

On to the next activity of the day... a drive up to Canyonlands Island-In-The-Sky district to look out over the ... well... Canyonlands.

A quick word here about the Island in the Sky district of the Canyonlands: there's sort of three major layers to it. There's the top layer which is the Island in the Sky, and is about 6000 ft in elevation, the next layer down is about 5000 ft elevation and it called the White Rim (for a soon-to-be-obvious reason), and then there's the (Colorado) river gorge itself which is down around 4000 ft. We stayed up on the Island in the Sky the whole time.

If we wanted to go down to the next layer, however, there's a nice friendly little road called the Shafer Trail...

Here's where it starts (on the left), and sort of where it ends (on the right).

And here's what it does to get you from start to finish...

Can you imagine cutting that road into the side of the cliff in that first picture? Sheesh!

The next few pics should make it apparent as to why they call it the White Rim...

The road to the left of the canyon is the White Rim Trail that you can bike (or drive) on. That little green patch to the right is the Colorado River.

This is a two-picture panorama stitched together. It's almost 4MB, so if you're still in the dark ages of dial-up (not that anyone here knows anyone who is...), be forewarned.

You can see the White Rim Trail pretty well on this one. Also, the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers is out there towards the right side of the picture, but it's not very obvious.