A canyon country inspired bead!
A few more pictures from my trip to Moab. These are all from Canyonlands, a place I really love. The first shot is from the Green River Overlook. In my opinion Canyonlands is far more impressive than the Grand Canyon. Canyons within canyons for miles and miles!
On my first trip to Canyonlands we almost headed to the bottom of the canyon. It was Easter weekend '85, and we had only lived in Utah for a month or two, having just moved from Ohio. We left after work and arrived in Moab long after dark. We were headed up to the Canyonlands campground. Back then the park was pretty primitive, all the roads were dirt and not well marked. We made a wrong turn, and found ourselves heading downhill on what seemed to be a jeep trail. It was narrow, with rocks rising up to our right and a what appeared to be a 1000 ft cliff to the left. After driving down a bit we realized we must have been on the wrong road and decided to turn around... in our stick shift Honda, in the dark, on a one lane dirt road with 1000 ft cliff and no guard rails. I think we made about a 100 point turn... turn the wheel and pull up a few inches, back up up few inches; repeat about a 100 times making sure to stay away from the edge. It was a little more excitement than we expected on our first trip to canyon country!
I only bring this up because one of the overlooks Rose and I stopped at over looked what had to be that scary road. The picture above shows the road we accidentally headed down. Imagine turning a car around there! The next picture shows where that road headed had we continued. The road is the Schaefer Trail, an old road that ranchers used to take their cattle down to the Green River for the winter. I'd love to know how the first person managed to forge that trail!
I wish that somehow my pictures did Canyonlands justice. It seems to be impossible to capture the expansiveness, grandeur and scale of Canyonlands
3 comments:
Wow! Thanks for the "show and tell," I've never heard of Canyonlands. Something else to put on the things-to-see list.
Love, love, love the bead!!!
When I was a teenager, my dad took us down the Schaefer trail . . . . in a truck with a camper on the back of it!!!! I was in the top part over the cab, but that was so frightening I had to get down . . .
It was still scary, though, especially with the feeling that the camper raised the truck's center of gravity . . . .
Driving down a 1000 foot cliff via a switchback road, basically, and the width of the road is pretty much the only thing jutting out from the side of the cliff!
My dad is nuts. (He grew up in an area where he'd go driving in the mtns every weekend, so he did have the skillz!)
Oh, and then at the bottom, the trail is basically you drive with cairns to mark the way, very primitive. We were jouncing and bouncing along through gully washes/old riverbeds, and we had to go slow; it seemed to take forever to get back to the road!
Wowza, your Dad is brave! My big fear on those kinds of roads is what do you do if you meet someone coming in the other direction?! Driving forward near the 1000 ft cliff is one thing,I can be brave... but backing up? Yikes!!!
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