Day 6: Canyonlands

Today we did a loop out from Moab through part of Canyonlands National Park. In the map above we did the loop clockwise out and down along the black route (not the orange track) and then back up the upper black track. We did two "out and backs". The first was out to Musselman Arch, the green pin part way off the main route. The other out and back was to Dead Horse Point, which is the red pin at the end of the blue track pointing down.

We headed out from town and dropped into the canyon next to the Colorado River. Amazing cliffs and views. Here are some pictures, including one of Jug Handle Arch, which looks like the handle on a jug.

A bit further down the road we turned off onto a dirt road and began to climb up away from the river area. We came to the famous Ballancing Rock, which is amazing. I noticed it was not oriented quite right. With just a bit of work and finesse I was able to reposition it so it was correctly oriented.

We continued on, climbing until we were on what is called the White Rim Trail. This is named for a layer of white stone which makes almost a natural ledge from the cliff side that the trail follows. The white stone is harder and does not erode as easily as the red stone in the layer above it. Here are some pictures from this part of the ride.

A bit further and we came to Thelma and Louise Point. This is where the iconic end to the movie was filmed. We discussed drawing straws to see which of us would ride our motorcyle and launch off the cliff to achieve Instagram imortality. Amazingly no one wanted to achieve that five minutes of fame.

So we settled instead for ChatGPT combining a picture of me with a picture from the movie. Here is our version and the original movie version. For the movie they destroyed a car. In our version no motorcycles were harmed.

Here are a couple of pictures of the actual Thelma and Louise Point, and us after we staged pictures of me. It was pretty cool to see the place where they filmed that scene.

We continued on the jeep road above the canyon and river. Here are some pictures.

Next we did a detour off our route to see Musselman Arch. It used to be called Little Bridge but was renamed in honor of a guy named Mussleman, who did a lot of exploring in that area. For some reason I was the only one in our group to walk even a bit out on the bridge. It was quite wide and not scary at all. Very cool natural bridge.

After Mussleman Arch we retraced our way back to the main trail and toward the Schafer Trail. This is a trail originally used by native Americans to get to the top of the mesa. Later it was used by a man named Shafer to move his cattle to the top of the mesa. We could see it off in the distance, as shown by these two pics, more or less meandering towards the cliffs, then a series of switchbacks to climb to the top of the mesa.

Here is a zoom in on the Shafer trail as it starts to climb.

Here we are part way up. You can see the white colored trail against the cliffs, and how it is starting to begin switchbacks.

Here is Graham coming up the switchback.

Here is a picture from the mesa top of some of the last section of the trail. This shows the vertical cliff right at the edge of the trail.

Here is a 4x4 on that section of the trail for perspective.

Here is a picture from the National park website that shows almost the entire Shafer Trail. Since we did not have a drone we were not able to get a perfect view like this.

Once we got to the top of the mesa we ate our sandwiches we had bought in Moab and brought for lunch, relaxed , and enjoyed the view of the canyon below. During this week Christian had been working on his selfie technique. In this one he took we all agreed he had achieved maximum selfie.

Next we headed for Dead Horse Point. From this vantage point we could see almost all of our route from when we first hit dirt road in the morning and all the way through the climb up the Shafer trail. We could have looked out at this view for hours. Simply smazing vistas.

Here is a group photo. That is the Shafer trail in the background. This was an incredible day. Our last day in Moab. Tomorrow we ride to Grand Junction to turn in our motorcycles. Then, Sunday we all fly home.