My sister and niece made arrangements to stop in Utah for three days en route back to Boston from L.A. Available time was short, so we worked hard to make the best of it.
On Monday we hiked with the dogs to Silver Lake in American Fork Canyon.
With the Wasatch mountains in the bag, it was time to shift focus to the desert. With daytime highs remarkably cool for the end of July at the low 90s, we'd spend Tuesday and Wednesday in the Moab area. Marc_C would bring his Jeep Rubicon as a second vehicle, which saved someone the discomfort of riding for hours in one of my truck's jump seats.
We left early Tuesday morning and traveled straight to Moab, save for the obligatory lunch stop at Ray's Tavern in Green River.
By early afternoon we had a shaded BLM campsite at Big Bend along the banks of the Colorado River east of Moab. With tents pitched, it was time to go exploring.
We headed up the Gemini Bridges Road. The two natural bridges themselves, situated side by side (hence the name) are difficult, if not impossible to convey in photos.
We returned to pavement to take in the view from Grandview Point within Canyonlands National Park before heading back to dirt to descend the spectacular Shafer Trail, past the point where they filmed the final scene of Thelma & Louise before returning to Moab via Potash.
Marc out did himself as usual for dinner, and this time it was chicken verde with Spanish rice and a homemade avocado and tomatillo salsa.
At dinner we decided to bump the scale of difficulty up a bit for Wednesday, so we headed further east to access the Top of the World trail off the Entrada Bluffs Road.
Guide books rate this 4x4 trail as a 4 on a scale of 1-10, which is about as high as is recommended for a stock vehicle like my Tacoma. It may warrant a slightly higher rating now after the erosion spawned by copious rainfall earlier this summer, so it was slow going, taking us 2 hours to go the 4 miles to the viewpoint at the end of the trail at 7,079 feet, but the awe-inpiring view was worth crossing every rock. That view stretches from the Colorado River across Fisher Towers to the 12,000-plus foot summits of the La Sals.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwd9Ejfgd8c[/video]
This is the crux of the Top Of The World trail, filmed on the descent by my sister who can't figure out how to make her iPhone shoot in HD.
After heading back down we made the obligatory whirlwind tour through Arches National Park before dining on a greasy burger and fries at Milt's Stop 'n Eat in Moab. We didn't roll back into Salt Lake until after midnight.
On Monday we hiked with the dogs to Silver Lake in American Fork Canyon.
With the Wasatch mountains in the bag, it was time to shift focus to the desert. With daytime highs remarkably cool for the end of July at the low 90s, we'd spend Tuesday and Wednesday in the Moab area. Marc_C would bring his Jeep Rubicon as a second vehicle, which saved someone the discomfort of riding for hours in one of my truck's jump seats.
We left early Tuesday morning and traveled straight to Moab, save for the obligatory lunch stop at Ray's Tavern in Green River.
By early afternoon we had a shaded BLM campsite at Big Bend along the banks of the Colorado River east of Moab. With tents pitched, it was time to go exploring.
We headed up the Gemini Bridges Road. The two natural bridges themselves, situated side by side (hence the name) are difficult, if not impossible to convey in photos.
We returned to pavement to take in the view from Grandview Point within Canyonlands National Park before heading back to dirt to descend the spectacular Shafer Trail, past the point where they filmed the final scene of Thelma & Louise before returning to Moab via Potash.
Marc out did himself as usual for dinner, and this time it was chicken verde with Spanish rice and a homemade avocado and tomatillo salsa.
At dinner we decided to bump the scale of difficulty up a bit for Wednesday, so we headed further east to access the Top of the World trail off the Entrada Bluffs Road.
Guide books rate this 4x4 trail as a 4 on a scale of 1-10, which is about as high as is recommended for a stock vehicle like my Tacoma. It may warrant a slightly higher rating now after the erosion spawned by copious rainfall earlier this summer, so it was slow going, taking us 2 hours to go the 4 miles to the viewpoint at the end of the trail at 7,079 feet, but the awe-inpiring view was worth crossing every rock. That view stretches from the Colorado River across Fisher Towers to the 12,000-plus foot summits of the La Sals.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwd9Ejfgd8c[/video]
This is the crux of the Top Of The World trail, filmed on the descent by my sister who can't figure out how to make her iPhone shoot in HD.
After heading back down we made the obligatory whirlwind tour through Arches National Park before dining on a greasy burger and fries at Milt's Stop 'n Eat in Moab. We didn't roll back into Salt Lake until after midnight.
