Friday, April 18th 2014

It is cloudy today and of course the bloody wind is blowing again.   Hopefully the sun will shine as the day progresses.  

More views of the bench lands

We headed off to Black Dragon Canyon today.  There are supposed to be more pictoglyphs on the rocks there so that is our destination today.  My shoulders get a rest today as Kay is my pilot for the day.  This frees me up to take pictures as we are moving….no stopping necessary!!

John was leading and yes, that is him way over there!!
The trail was quite dusty so we left lots of room between us.

More Spring flowers

We travelled varied trail again today with some of it being sandy and some of it rock.  Kay is getting all kinds of experience on the quad through all kinds of terrain.  I told her she will be an expert rider by the time she quits hanging around John and I.  She told me she has seen more things than she ever has going on these adventures with us.  That I must agree with as John has dragged us thorough all kind of crap!!   Remember the snow we rode through in November!!

Cottonwood trees in Black Dragon Canyon.  There must be water
here as they need a lot to survive.

Nothing but a small trail and sheer rock walls

This sandstone resembles a honeycomb

You look up and all you can see is rock wall

pictoglyphs

They are very faint but you can see them!!

Cactus in bloom

looking down into Black Dragon Canyon

The views are endless

Beverage Break

Wild burro

More wild burro

Someone took the time to make a rock wall to protect their campfire

water tanks for the cows
Water is an issue here for the livestock

End of the day - final beer stop

End of the day - final beer stop in the I-70 underpass

We eventually made it to the pictographs passing one lonely bicycler and one hiker.  Both seemed happy in their travels and we bid each other a good day.  When we arrived at the pictographs, we encountered a number of horsemen and fortunately they were headed in the opposite direction so we wouldn't be bothering them.
Although this trail eventually would spit us back out onto I-70, we turned around and retraced our travel back out of the canyon and back onto the bench lands were the rocky trail gave way to sandy trail.  
We eventually made it back to the spot where we had started and headed under the interstate to try some of the trails on the other side.  It was getting to be late afternoon but we had time for one more short trail.  It consisted of mostly sandy type trail as we travelled the bench lands again and we were fortunate enough to see several wild burros.  They make their home here and I think only have one natural predator and that would be the cougar who also makes a home here.
With the short trail behind us, it was time to cross back underneath the interstate and head back to camp.  Kay and I were in camp a good ten minutes before John arrived (gee, I didn't think we drove that fast) as the wind apparently blew his hat off and it took him a while to find it.  It was a camouflaged hat and hard to find!!  
We spent the evening in the trailer again watching the hockey playoffs and rehashing the day's adventure.   Life is good!!