05-17-10

Today we started on our ride at around 10:00.
We wanted to check out Tusher Tunnel so we headed north on 191 and turned off on "Old Mill Canyon road".
Once again we were following the directions in our Moab back roads book.
We had no trouble finding the parking area.

The tunnel was up a short steep trail and had a large entrance.

It narrows as you move along but is still tall enough that one can walk upright.

At the exit is a view of a beautiful "slick rock" area.

We walked along a narrow trail and found a few other caves but none were very deep.

When we got back to the jeep, Patti noticed a ravens nest high on a cliff. It is hard to see but it is in the hole that looks like a mouth.

From Tusher Tunnel we went to find Hidden Canyon. We drove around following the directions in our book and sure enough we drove through a beautiful canyon.

along the way we came across a really pretty lizard.

After we went through the canyon we decided to see if we could find the Hidden Canyon overlook so we followed the directions in the book but this time there were so many roads that I think we got a might confused for a spell.
The roads dwindled to trails and then to tracks and then we got into a vast area of "slick rock" where the trail came and went.

Fortunately someone has painted white arrows and occasional short stripes on the surface of the rock.
We followed these signs for a couple of miles.

Now I may have mentioned this before but "slick rock" is a bit of a misnomer. The rock is anything but slick in fact it is bumpy as hell.

Eventually the trail we were following disappeared at least I couldn't find it any more. We were kind of tired from the beating we were getting from the "Slick rock" so we turned around and started back the way had come and after a short distance we stopped for a break.

While Patti sat and smoked a cigarette I walked over to what looked like an edge and found a pretty little canyon with a small stream in its bottom.

It took us much less time to get off the rocks than I would have expected and soon we were back on trails then dirt roads and then the highway from there, in about a half hour we were home again.

Tomorrow we will go to Canyonlands National Park and a three day jeep trek on the White Rim road.
If our Verizon wireless Internet gadget works, I will send you a blog from there. If it doesn't work I won't publish another blog until Thursday or Friday.