Thursday, November 17/2011

Getting ready to head out

Our trail for today

The trail below

On the slick rock

ripples in the sand from recent flood 

Beverage stop ( lots of lizards along this wall )

Hey little guy

And his friend

A lizard in the hand is worth?

More evidence of flooding in this wash 

Queen on the rocks

Carnivorous Dinosaurs

The tracks

Can you imagine this stalking you!

Old sluice box on the creek

Old Dalton Wells

Back home, What a view!

I had the most wonderful sleep last night. One can never say too much about being warm and having the luxury of actually being able to lie down and stretch out!! It is the simple things in life that  we often take for granted.
Today, the sun is shining through the windows and it looks like it is shaping up to be another nice day.

John has taken the quad out of the trailer and it looks like we will be heading out to the trails on it today. We did the Soverign ATV Trail today.  This trail provides some challenging terrain and some incredible scenery.  The level of difficulty is posted as intermediate but there were a couple of rather steep sections on the trail that required one to pay attention and pick the safest route up to avoid any incidents (like a roll over - backwards!!).  There is a vehicle width restriction through parts of the trail as it winds in and around several huge boulders but these sections are clearly marked.   There are a few rock ledges along the trail  along with several large areas of slickrock.  There are several signs saying "stay on the rock" and the rock has clearly visible paint marking pointing the way of the trail.  The trail also promotes "ride with respect" and asks that everyone please be mindful of the other riders on the trail.
It was a good ride and we stopped in a few washes along the trail to enjoy the scenery.  Because it was so warm out, the little lizards were very active so I couldn't help but take a few pics of them  - for Kimmy, who, for some reason, likes lizards!!  Also took a couple pics of the sand.  There was clearly some flooding in the washes as the water left the sand with a "ripple" effect.  It was quite pretty but I don't think that this would be the place to be when it was flowing.  Some of these washes are huge and you can clearly see where the water was.
We passed an area where some dinosaur tracks were imprinted in the sandstone.  These tracks, it is believed, are 165 million years old and belonged to a carnivorous dinosaur. they were huge!!
We got back to the bus as the sun was starting to go down and it was starting to chill off (I have an aversion to the cold since the other night!!).
John spent the evening downloading the pics while we ate supper and watched a bit of TV.  All in All - a good day!! There are a couple short videos on my Facebook page.