OMG! It's been way too long since my last blog! I guess time really does go by fast when you're having fun! And, man have I been having fun!!
With this blog, I'm straying away from my normal blogging in order to share my four wheeling experience in Utah with you. Therefore, this blog will not include the usual photographic/technical detail of my previous blogs. I'll revert back to that again with future blogs. In the meantime, I wanted to share this terrific experience with you.
Two weeks ago, my best friend of 42 years and I took off on a journey to visit six national parks between Minnesota and Utah. Half way through the adventure, we added three more for a total of nine national parks visited in two weeks. And it "only" took 5323 miles to do it!
While in the vicinity of Moab, Utah, I decided to put my 2003 GMC Envoy to a small four wheeling test. And what a test it turned out to be! The going was tough. Tough enough for us to make a whopping 18 miles in 3 hours of driving! Several times during the trip I had to get out of my vehicle to figure out how I could clear the obstacles in my way.
The following photos will give you some idea of what we encountered during our four wheeling journey.
This first photo simply gives you an idea of the kind of area in which we were four wheeling. It was rugged to say the least. That's my friend Wayne waving from the Envoy.
The next photo is my attempt to let you see one of the obstacles we had to climb over. You'll note the incline on the right is about five feet high and has been scraped by several vehicles that bottomed out on it in the past. After some careful calculating, we opted to go to the left instead. It proved to be the right decision. I didn't bottom out, but I did have to throw the Envoy into low four wheel drive to climb over it.
This photo shows where the trail was going to take us. Note there are two (barely visible) vehicles in the bottom center of this photo. That's how far down we had to go - over 1000 feet into the canyon. This shot was taken with a 40mm lens, so it is NOT a wide angle shot that exaggerates the perspective.
This photo shows a small part of the trail we had to take to get to the bottom of the canyon. If you think climbing over boulders is tough, you should try doing it on a trail with switchbacks and that is not much wider than the vehicle you are driving! There were a few times I was concerned I would have to back up to the top or else get hung up trying to go down into the canyon. Fortunately, I was able to continue on into the canyon.
This photo shows what the canyon looked like right after we got past the switchbacks. It was truly a beautiful place and worth the effort to get there. But, as it turned out, the beauty didn't stop there as you'll see in the next two photos.
This photo shows the horseshoe bend in the river that we came upon while down in the canyon. You can barely see a black dot in the center on the left side of the photo along what appears to be a road. It was, in fact, a road, and that is another four wheeler that was on the road. This was also the road I was headed to, but I had a LONG way to go to get there.
This final photo shows my Envoy on the curve just before we left the area of the horseshoe bend in the river. We had made it through the worst part of our journey on this trail! We still had some "small" obstacles to go over, but they were nothing like those we had previously encountered.
For any of you who may have a similar desire to go four wheeling, I can tell you the Moab, Utah area is filled with all levels of four wheeling trails - easy to expert. And the area is absolutely beautiful as well. There are several good books available that rate the difficulty of the various trails so you won't find yourself getting too far over your vehicle's our your own ability. I guarantee it will be an experience you won't soon forget. If you don't have a four wheeler or don't want to use yours as I did, there are also places where you can rent a Jeep so you can experience the same kind of fun we did.
If anyone has questions about this area, please let me know. I'd be happy to make suggestions to you.
Thanks for reading my blog!
John
