July 4th, 2014
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| Bowie looking anywhere for shade. |
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Oh my god it’s hot!!!
We left Apple Valley, CA and the temperature was over 100
o.
By the time we reached the border of CA and
NV, it was hovering around 116
o.
After a brief stop in Las Vegas, NV for dinner with Jen’s friends, Steph
and Bryce and their new little girl, Addy, we continued on in the darkness of
the night toward Utah hoping it would be cooler at night.
Well, the good news is that it was
cooler.
The bad news is that at 1am,
when we found a nice road-side campground that we could stay at for free, it
was still 100
o outside.
It
was a pretty miserable night for us as neither of us could sleep very well in
the heat and we tossed and turned all night.
It didn’t help that there was this constant panting and rearranging that
kept coming from the foot of our bed.
Apparently, Bowie didn’t sleep well either. I think the only reason we
fell asleep was because we were so exhausted.
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| Ridgetop drive |
When we woke up later that morning, we continued our journey
into the scorching heat toward Capitol Reef National Park in Utah.
We took scenic Hwy 12 through Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument and then up to Captiol Reef NP.
Grand Staircase was really nice to drive
through. We especially liked driving along the ridgetop where we were literally
on top of
the ridge with about 3 feet on either side of the 2-lane road before
it went down a few thousand feet. After
arriving at the campground at Capitol Reef later that day, the cool breeze
blowing through the valley and the small river flowing next to the campground
thrilled us so much that we decided to stay there for three nights instead of
heading to Moab the next day, where it was still in the 100’s. So, instead we
decided to take a day trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks the next
day.
Arches NP is an awesome park to visit.
The amazing rock formations, canyons, and
scenic views are wonderful, but I must say my favorite part of the whole park
this visit was the dirt road Monica found that led us out of the park.
It was called Willow Springs Rd and we got to
really test out Grover’s ability to play on a high clearance, 4-wheel drive
road.
Several portions of the road are
on the well-known slick rock that is popular in the Moab, UT area as well as
through sandy dry washes.
So, most of
the ride was slowly driving over large rock slabs and then through a sand wash
and back up another rock slab.
All
together, we had a blast, even though there were a few moments we weren’t sure
if we going to make it through or not.
The road is maintained on one end by the National Park Service and on
the other end by the BLM.
Once we hit
BLM land, the road was graded through the rock and is in better condition as
much of that area is open to hiking and mountain bike riding.
Definitely would like to come back to this
region in the future with my mountain bike and go play in the hills.
Just too hot this trip.
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| The first obstacle. |
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| Straddling the boulders. |
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| Reaching the other side. |
From there, we headed down to Canyonlands NP. Although, is was the evening, we were able to
still see the canyon and get some pictures before it became dark.
We noticed a dirt road that led down into the
canyon that looked like it could be fun for another trip in the future.
We made it to the end of the paved main park road though and could
just make out the canyon below, but it was a bit too dark for pictures.
We headed back to Capitol Reef and finally
got home after midnight.
A very long
day, but lots of fun playing with the truck and taking pictures.
Jen, Monica & Bowie
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