Retracing the Bike Adventure, Part 2: John Brown Canyon and into Moab

See Part 1 of this adventure here. 

I thought that this rock formation in the canyon looked a lot like the now-fallen Old Man of the Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

After our lunch at the Gateway Canyons Resort in Gateway, Colorado, we started up John Brown Canyon. I had heard so much about this part of the mountain biking trip, and everything I heard was true. It was grueling, it was all uphill, and it was exhausting. And this was taking the ride in the comfy passenger seat of our Prius, and I didn't even have to drive!

This was the view at the top, or what I thought was the top of the road. As Beez pointed out, though, the road just never stopped going up, up, and up some more. 

Dinosaur tracks from an unmarked trail off to the side

This is the little car that could.

This shot is to give you the sense of the immense drop-off on the side of the road. I couldn't get my foot to go out any closer to the edge. 

I hope that this shot gives a better idea of the drop at this point. 

Looking down toward Monument Valley, Utah.

I have no photos for the next part of the journey, but it is certainly engraved in my memory. The road finally started going down but, if anything, it was far worse than going up. Picture a very narrow and twisty dirt road, covered with slippery gravel and broken rocks, with our Toyota inching along through the blind curves. To our right the road was overhung by those red cliffs that break off in car- and house-sized chunks. On the left side of the car, the cliffs fell off for what looked (to me) like thousands of feet. I couldn't see the bottom.

By the time I was thinking that perhaps we should turn back, there was no longer any place to turn around. I wondered what would happen if we went over the edge and later read about a hiker in the canyon who found a smashed truck and the body of a man who had been missing for 26 years (that story can be seen here). 

We eventually found ourselves winding through fantastically-shaped red rocks on the outskirts of Moab. Moab was the end-point of the big bike ride, and I shared some of the mixed feelings of regret and relief the bike riders must have felt at the end of their grueling journey. The 215 miles of trails they had traveled were amazingly beautiful and crushingly challenging for them. I have a huge appreciation for their accomplishment!

We spent a relaxing evening in town, had breakfast at the Moab Diner ("the best green chile in Utah", and it was!), then headed out on the road for home.

Good-bye to Moab

The last of the red cliffs of Utah

Approaching New Mexico, and a new landscape appears

Another blurry photo taken on the fly

Road Trip, Part 7: Back to New Mexico!

Let's get this road trip finished up! After we left Green River, Utah (Crossroads of the West) we headed down through some beautiful country: Red rocks, and even some arches. 

In southern Colorado, there was a cattle herd traffic jam. I took a video because I was trying to capture the sounds of the herd, but you can mainly hear Beez and me chuckling. The cowgirl (the one with the dog) said "Thank y'all" to us for waiting for them to get situated, but we owed the thanks to her and her wonderful herd, heading down the mountain.

                  

And then, suddenly, we were heading down ourselves. From a high of 10,800 feet, we could see down into good old New Mexico. It had been a wonderful trip, but it was so good to be home again!

Road Trip, Part 3: From Provo, Utah to Richland, Washington

Modern day "prairie schooners" make their way easily up and down hills and through mountain passes

I didn't take many photos as we made our way from Provo to Washington state, going across a little corner of Idaho and another little corner of Oregon, but I did notice every single speck of water. Back home in the desert of New Mexico, in the middle of a drought, we dash out after every tiny rainfall to take pictures of the teeniest puddles (New Mexican Facebook friends, you know who you are! We all do it).

These two water photos are all I have to show our progress for this part of our road trip. However, I was constantly aware that some of the routes we traveled were along the historic Oregon Trail. As we tired from a long day in the car, I couldn't help but think of those long-ago covered wagon travelers, inching across the map toward a new life in an unknown and strange land.

As a child, I was always fascinated by the idea of a family packing a Conestoga wagon and heading west. In our neighborhood in San Francisco I got my friends to play covered wagon; one child would sit on a gate pretending to be the driver holding the reins of the pretend oxen; the other kids would sit behind and would be the family.

Here is a photo of the interior of one of the wagons that might have traveled the Oregon Trail. I've borrowed it from the website for the National Oregon/California Trail Center at Montpelier, Idaho. According to the Center, a wagon needed to be strong enough to carry a load and passengers for the five month journey, yet light enough not to exhaust the oxen pulling it. The wagons had no springs: I thought about that as we comfortably and safely drove over smoothly paved highways, up and down mountains, and over rivers.

According to the Wikipedia article on the Oregon Trail, the main Oregon Trail was 2000 miles long, an east-west large-wheeled wagon route that ran through the present-day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. Again, from the Wikipedia article: From the early to mid-1830s and particularly through the epoch years 1846–1869, the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and businessmen and their families. 

If bouncing along unpaved, rutted trails for months at a time wasn't difficult enough, the dangers were many: River crossings were most dangerous, but folks traveling this way were also at risk of being run over by the heavy wagons or shot when loaded firearms were accidentally discharged. Weather, diseases, stampeding animals, snakebite--the list of hazards goes on. See the article, Trail Basics: Dangers for more.

Traveling in our little Prius, by contrast, was quiet and comfortable. We had an adjustable cabin temperature, comfy seats, GPS apps to guide our way, access to constant weather and news reports, and even an altimeter to figure out the height of the mountain passes. We could stop to admire the view or to get a snack whenever we wanted. I wish we might have invited one of those travelers from the past to ride along with us.