Canyonlands-4Wheeling

 Canyonlands! Wow, what a totally different experience! Located just a few miles from Arches and Moab, we descended down into a totally new and unique adventure.



The Green River in Canyonlands
 

Mark heard from a friend (Roger our resupply person) that there was a very scary road down in Canyonlands, and he had to check this road out. Mark said that Roger called this road the Knifes Edge, and that section of road became our mission to find. Arriving at the visitors center, our first question to the ranger was, "Where's the Knife's edge?" His reply was that there is a place down in the canyon that some people might call the knife's edge, but it isn't generally called that. That sounded good enough for us, after all, if some people called it that, it must be the place we were looking for.

We got our directions, then headed back out of the park to intersect the road that leads to the bottom of the canyon. As we came to an overlook above the Green River, (which I thought was the Colorado River), we noticed a road that wound steeply down the canyon side, and were grateful we weren't going down that road. But wait, don't breathe a sigh of relief too quickly, for the road we were on headed straight for that road. And down we went. This road had few pullouts, and hugged the canyon wall that had to have been a couple of thousand feet high. We had to time the curves to avoid colliding head on with the 3 trucks that were headed up our way. 



The Drive along the Green River
 

Finally getting down to the bottom and the river we heaved a sigh of relief and continued on the drive along the river. This road was now a dirt road and only suitable for 4 wheel drives. At a few points along the way, we were thankful we had a vehicle that was full of food and water, so that if we got stuck or our SUV broke down, we would be able to wait a few days for the rangers to find us. No cell service out here, and way too far to walk out, not to mention too hot to leave our vehicle.





 

At certain points along this road, our vehicle would go over a rise, and we could see nothing underneath our tires. Mark would lean out one side, and I would lean out the other, just to make sure we stayed on the road. At these points, there was a big drop down to the river, and sheer canyon walls on the other side of us, just feet from our doors. Mark turned to me and asked me if I was scared. "Oh yes, but let's keep going," I said, "This is fun."

 

A little further along, we came upon an old corral located in a small box canyon. It looked like it could hold maybe 10-15 horses or cows and the corral was very old. We stopped to look and walked around this corral for a little while breathing in the history.

 

After a bit we hit a really fun section of road, full of deep sand where Mark had to keep going if we didn't want to get stuck. Then we hit a spot where red cliffs on each side of the road were about 8 feet high, and it felt like we were driving through the red sea that had been parted for us. After all this, we finally hit what we thought was the knife's edge. Only it wasn't nearly as scary as what we had just been through or as scary as Roger had described it as being. Oh well, it was fun getting there! On that note we headed back the way we had come and went through all the fun scary parts again. Mark did a fabulous job getting through all the tight spaces with the SUV and we survived the journey. This 4 wheeling road actually winds all the way around the bottom of Canyonlands, and we figured it would probably take about 4 days to drive the whole loop. Some parts have to be taken really slow, so as not to drive off a cliff or into the river. There are places to camp along the route and costs $30.00 for a camping permit.
 



The road down into the Canyonlands
 

 As we were heading back out to the steep drive back up the canyon wall, I yelled at Mark to stop! As I was looking out my window, I happened to see a badger rooting around in a side canyon. I had never seen one in the wild before, so Mark backed up and we both got to see this big guy. Just as I was getting a bead on him to get his picture, he took off through the brush. Oh well, it was great seeing him for a few seconds. He was a beautiful gray and white fluffy looking thing, and moved fast once he got going.

 

This whole adventure took us about 5 hours, and when we got back to the visitor center, we thought we would take the drive around the top of the canyonlands to see everything from the top. The first vistas were very cool and exciting, but as we ventured further into the park, we quickly grew tired and bored with the whole desert thing again. We agreed to end our stay at Canyonlands and head out to Las Vegas. We had a great time though in this park, and saw a whole lot of new vistas and tried a whole lot of new things.
 

(Caveat)

We later found out that the Knife's Edge that Roger was talking about was near Capitol Reef and the town of Torrey, not in Canyonlands. Well, at least we had a ton of fun that we wouldn't have had otherwise. : )