05-15-10

This morning, we got our camping gear together and loaded it into Clifford in preparation for our trip on the White Rim trail on Tuesday.
Around 10:00 we decided to take a ride.
When we went out yesterday we missed one of the trails that went north off the road to Spring Canyon Point, so today we decided to go check it out.
The trail went to what is called Rainbow Terrace.
Of course as you know I don't like to go over terrain that I have already covered so I decided to come at this place from a different direction than what our guide book describes.
After wandering around for several hours, not sure where we were, we finally came out on "Spring Canyon Road, just east of Tombstone Rock. The trail we wanted was only about 100 yards east of the rock so we stopped there for lunch. After lunch we headed out "Rainbow Terrace" trail.
Unfortunately we didn't take many pictures today but here are what we have of the Rainbow Terrace.


After about a mile the trail became very hard to see and we found ourselves wandering around on a "slick rock" mountain side with no idea where the trail had gone.
Finally we saw a couple of Jeeps and a pickup a little higher on the mountain so we decided to drive up the rocks and see if we could locate the trail. Eventually we came across the track and turned onto it. A short distance later we came upon the jeeps.
They were climbing up some very intimidating rock ledges but they looked like they knew where they were going so we followed them. It is a good thing we found them because if I had come to these rock ledges alone I probably would not have attempted to climb them.
Unfortunately we were so engrossed in climbing the rocks that we forgot to take any pictures.
After we attained the ledge/terrace we stopped to talk to the people in the jeeps. I asked them if the trail went any where and they said to follow the slick rock ledge around the mountain eventually it would come to a good dirt trail and then it would connect to a road that would lead us north to Highway 191.
We did as they suggested and eventually, got to a sandy trail that went in and out of a wash. After about five miles we came to a better dirt road.
We had been looking for a place called "Dripping Spring" which we wanted to see because of the "Dripping Spring" we had visited near Quartzsite. We knew that it was off this trail and we could see several large Cottonwood trees to the west, so when we got to the intersection, instead of turning right toward the highway we turned left and drove into the wash where we found the spring.


There is a lot more water in this dripping spring than in the one in Arizona.
We got home around 5:30.