Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Near Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Posted at 8:05 pm, April 12th, 2005

In fairness to the guy in the Humvee he did decide to continue down the road, although he didn’t make it to the end. For my part, after three miles I parked the car, got out, and joined two other people who were laughing at the “road” ahead. During its final four miles the road traveled up and over rocky outcroppings that I might have hesitated to traverse on a mountain bike; anyone with less than a foot of clearance would not have been able to drive it, and even with a ton of clearance it would still be pretty dicey. I ended up hiking the last four miles, and along the way saw numerous places where the rock was scraped and dented — one can only imagine what the underside of the truck that made each mark looked like.

The hike itself was great as the scenery here is like nowhere else, with huge numbers of rugged canyons and crazy rock formations. The road ended at an overlook that dropped hundreds of feet straight down to the Colorado River, and I had it all to myself. The only downside of the day is that the sun was blazing, and if skin cancer isn’t cured in the next twenty years I’ll probably be in a lot of trouble. I’m going to stick around for at least one more day and plan to do some hiking tomorrow, and also to get a look at what a park brochure describes as “one of the most technical four-wheel drive roads in Utah” (today’s road is described as “moderate”).

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