Day 24 - Hiking and 4-Wheeling in Canyonlands

Rick got off to an early start this morning, delivering Will to Moab International Airport (ha ha).  This is the dinkiest airport I have ever seen!  I wish that Rick had taken a picture, as you can literally walk on to the tarmac from the parking lot.  


Upon returning to the campground, Rick motivated the troops (me and Joan), and we headed off for Canyonlands.  After a brief detour to the Arches Visitors Center so Joan could become an official Junior Ranger of that park

we continued down the road to the highway for Canyonlands.  We took another brief detour on that highway to find a letterbox....very buggy but well worth the cool stamp inside.


Finally, we arrived at the Canyonlands Visitors Center to plan our day.  We took a nice 2-mile hike to a Grand View Point Overlook.  Initially, Joan was not too crazy about the hike, but we found fun ways to make the hike more enjoyable (who could see the next cairn first, counting cairns, rock hopping to avoid walking on any soil, etc.)  By the time we got there, I think that she was glad that we made the hike.  

The view was fantastic.  Joan is also getting more courageous about climbing on the rocks (which makes Dad very nervous).


After lunch and some other overlooks, we went 4-wheeling!  Rick found out that Shafer Trail would take us down into the canyon and back into Moab, so that sounded like it made sense.  Ten minutes into the trip....we were not so sure.  

What a descent!  Rick said that this was probably the scariest drive he has ever done.  Oh, how I wish that Will could have been here.....he would have really enjoyed it.   The road was so narrow....we hoped that no one would be coming the other direction, as there is no room to pass most of the time.  (Some of the switchbacks were so tight that we had to back up three times to get around them.)  Luckily when we did encounter a car coming the other direction, it was at a wider spot....thank goodness.  

When we got to the bottom, we headed to Gooseneck Overlook, which gave us a great view of the Colorado River.  We felt pretty good, now that we were down in the canyon, off of the crazy switchback road that got us there.  But our elation was premature......the next 30+ miles were unpaved, boulder-infested, and anxiety-ridden!  And we thought the road we took back from Bandelier was bad!


Three hours later, we were back in civilization......we even were treated to some amazing petroglyphs at the end of our journey.


Tomorrow.....off to Mesa Verde!