September 19, 2013
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Epic Road Trip, Day 9, part 2
I was happy to see the canyons of Canyonlands, and it was still early enough in the day that the kids were having fun, too.
Blobs...
Shrubs on blob outcroppings...
Vast vistas...
Boots over vast vistas...
Kendrah on the edge of the world... Isn't this a great picture? It's one of my favorites (I may say that a lot, forgive me). I love the casual comfort she has while sitting there with her legs dangling over thousands of feet of nothingness. Ok, actually, her feet are on the ground and she was perfectly safe but it looks scary and wonderful.
There were canyons inside canyons and hoodoos jutting into the sky from far, far below.
I strained the limits of my camera to get a closer shot of the hoodoos.
Then turned slightly to my right and got some other shots from other perspectives.
Such an incredible place, I didn't have to go far to see another rock that caught my eye.
But I was usually drawn back to seeing those massive canyons. I would have loved to take a jeep and explore far and wide out there.
Jabba the Hutt rocks.
More canyon views.
Desert greenery with canyon views. And a boy that I love.
The next 4 photos are not for the faint of heart. We stood over the canyon, looking down on a switchback road that went thousands of feet down into the canyon. You can see (well, maybe) a jeep part way down in the first photo, a white suburban heading down in the next, another glimpse of a road in the third as I look to my right.
Those roads are only reached AFTER they took this one, which was to my left:
I bet you have to pack an extra pair of pants if you're planning on driving this road. Even if you were fine when you started, I'd guess there would be some carpel tunnel symptoms starting. Wouldn't you have white knuckles the entire time if you were out there? I said I'd like to have a jeep and explore, but really, driving on the bottom of the canyon would be anticlimactic after getting down there.
Thankfully we didn't need to take this road to get back to Arches, I think my little Saturn would not have appreciate the journey. As it was, we took a nice paved highway and headed into Moab to go through the McDonald's drive through for more ice to keep our drinks cold. On average, the three of us drank between 4 and 5 gallons of liquid each day. You'd think we would be stopping every 10 minutes to pee, but we figured we sweated most of it out so didn't have to make too many stops.
The next post will be about us back in Arches National Park.
