Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Road Trip Day Three

Heading south from Moab on State Route 191, about half-way to Monticello, Wilson Arch was visible from the road. There were several hikers in the area and I tried to catch one under the arch waving his arms, but I wasn't quite fast enough: (Click the picture to see the guy.)
At Blanding, we turned off onto Route 95. This is another "Scenic Byway" and it billed itself as the Bicentenial Highway. (By the way, we also discovered that they have "Scenic Backways" that are another whole level of primitiveness.) There was not a lot of traffic... this guy on a bicycle is getting ready to cruise down a 10% grade at about 35 MPH:
Along the way, an interesting sight was Jacob's Chair sitting all alone on a mesa:
The road followed White Canyon for quite a while. It was pretty impressive, but we didn't get a good picture of it. Unless you are right on top of it, not much of it shows (as in the photo above). We finally crossed over it when it took a turn to connect into Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, but there was no place to stop on the road. Shortly after, we met up with the Colorado River again when Route 95 crossed over it on this bridge:
There were several recreational areas where you could approach the river, but most of the turn-offs didn't even look like roads, so even though you could see pit stops down there, you couldn't figure out how to get to them. This part of the river is probably the nothern-most limit of what you could call Lake Powell. (A "Uranium Rush" town called Hite is mostly under water here, having been flooded when Lake Powell was created.)
The nicest rest area was at a spot called Hog Spring. It had nice trees, a suspension footbridge over the spring, and shaded picnic tables placed up into the canyon.
After crossing through the San Rafael Desert, the landscape changed again as we reached Capitol Reef National Park, with water, trees, and strange black lava boulders that looked like gigantic rabbit droppings. One of the attractions in the park is a set of petroglyphs pecked into the cliff wall:
When we went to leave, the truck would not start, or even turn over, the temperature guage was pegged at the high end, and it seemed like the block had seized up. We waited and prayed for a while, and then tried again. Still nothing. After a lot of effort, we got the stuck hood open, and that attracted some helpers. We jump started it from another vehicle and went on our way. We are stopping in Torrey tonight (just outside of the park) and will check it out further in the morning.

Also... no good cell phone coverage here in Torrey, just "digital roam".

1 comment:

jjp said...

Hmm. Haven't had a single startup problem since the starter was replaced and I replaced the ignition control module.

If you have problems in the morning, give me a call. We can come down.