Saturday, November 14/2015

We are headed to Arch Canyon Trail today.  It will be a good trip down memory lane as we were lucky enough to do this trip on a Jeep Jamboree and have nothing but good memories from this.

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We headed down the wide graded road and took in the spectacular scenery that surrounded us.   The sun was shining and it was a good day to go for a scoot.   We travelled through varied terrain of sand and loose rocks and made several crossing over a wash that at one time had water in it.  The trail looked like Arch Canyon but there were a few things that just didn't add up however, it has been about 20 plus years since we have been on the Arch Canyon Trail and perhaps our memories were not what they used to be!!

Sandy trails and large cottonwood trees

One of the many caves that dot the landscape

We travelled about 10 miles up into the canyon and knew that this was definitely not Arch Canyon Trail but continued on until we were finally stopped by huge boulders that had fallen from the face of the surrounding cliffs.  It was time to turn around.   All was not lost though as the trail did throw us a bit of a challenge in some spots so it was all good.

A photo opportunity.  It doesn't look steep but it was on quite
an angle!!

Lots of loose rock

We never saw any creature (other than cottontail
bunnies) but the tracks were there!!

Shelf Trail

We made our way back to the wide graded sand road and headed up a shelf road.  We knew this definitely was not Arch Canyon Trail but one always wonders just what it at the end of each trail. We had exactly 1.2 miles of shelf trail to do and it took 30 minutes to go that far.  I know because we had to come down the same trail and I took the mileage and recorded the time.  We got to the top of the mesa and had a refreshment break, did a few extra miles along the top then decided to head back down.   Oh brother!!  Not my favourite trail but John was in his glory!  All I kept thinking was "just get me off this bloody mountain in one piece"!!

You may not see it but there is the skeleton of a car
beside the rock......nasty

Looking down at the shelf trail we just came up

The trail was nothing but rock in some areas

Once we reached the top of the mountain, this was the view from
there.

We came up from down there

Headed back to camp

We did indeed get down and once again were safely on the wide graded sand road.  It was  getting late but we tried one more detour and low and behold......there is the sign to greet us to Arch Canyon Trail.   God dammit, we had passed this spur earlier on in the day!!  Like I said earlier..... the signage on these trails leaves much to be desired.
We headed down this trail for about 3 miles then turned around and headed back to camp.  The canyon is surrounded by very tall sandstone cliffs and gets very little sun in the evening so it was noticeably cooler now.  We did notice that last night's frost was still on the ground and there was ice on the water!!  Yikes!!
We decided that instead of watching the football games tomorrow (WHAT!!) we would ride the Arch Canyon Trail!!
Once back at camp, I got supper ready.  We watched some TV and John uploaded the pictures from today's ride.   Hogan was happy to be chasing a few cottontail bunnies so he had his evening's entertainment before coming in and curling up on the bed.  Life is good!!