Dirt Day

On Thursday, Dave and I decided we wantd to tackle a local dirt trail. This trail goes from Grand Junction, through Denver National Monument, through some back country desert, to Moab, UT. The paved section through the national park is pretty nice, I recommend it. No pics because we were on our way to the dirt section.

We followed DS Road. The cross streets had odd names, this one is 11 1/2, near 5 7/10 street the road turned to gravel.

This sign says "Colorado Utah Border"

 We headed towards the Sand Flats, hoping that we could get to Sand Flat Road into Moab.

 Dave is posing by a rockslide that was blocking the road, it would have stopped any four-wheel vehicle, and was quite challenge even for us.

 Another shot of the rock slide.

 I thought this tree had been struck by lightning, but we soon saw a whole grove of burned trees. Must have been a wildfire a few (3-5) years ago.

Right after these trees, we came to a place where we were supposed to cross the Dolores river. We were only about 1 mile from reaching pavement, but the river had washed the crossing totally away, and it was totally impossible to cross. After coming about 30 miles down treacherous gravel, dirt, mud, hills, rocks, and sand we had to turn around and do it all over again. Thank goodness we had enough water and gas. No pics of this river crossing because I was too heart-broken.

Dave and I both had some trouble but we were able to make it back to base alive.

Upon reaching the cabin, some deer were hanging out near our parking spot:

This map doesn't have the route in it because the road isn't on Google Maps of course. But I plotted it out using satellite view. The point "K" is where we had to turn back because we couldn't cross the river.

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Trip miles to date: 1,690