2009 June 8, from Cedaredge Colorado

Hello, Everybody,

On the way back to Colorado from Texas, I stopped high in the New
Mexico National Forest to escape the heat and get shade, and
found a pretty little meadow surrounded by large pine trees - - and
lots of insects which wanted to join me in the camper. Then after a
couple of weeks, off to Utah!

After years of thinking about it, I finally made it to the Maze district of
Canyonlands National Park. Ed Arnold had the gumption to
organize things and reserve campsites for 8 nights, and we had a
terrific time together. The Park has three parts, Island in the Sky which
is higher, with many tourists and paved roads,  and which provides
spectacular distant views of all the surrounding canyonlands, The
Needles which has spectacular rock formations and great hiking,
and The Maze which is very scenic also and  by far the most remote
and with few roads, all very rough. During our first 5 days we saw 2
people. The Maze gained notoriety a few years ago when a solo
hiker had his arm trapped under a falling boulder and had to
amputate it to escape.

The northern and southern parts of the Maze are divided by the
steep and tight switchbacks of the Flint Trail, made somewhat
notorious in the guidebooks. The road has recently been improved
with a D9 bulldozer, so it's easier than in days of old. Even Ed's fairly
short-wheelbase Jeep Cherokee needed to back and fill on the two
tightest switchbacks, and my long-wheelbase one-ton Ford truck
needed some careful maneuvering to avoid scraping the sides. The
Cherokee is generally very agile on these Jeep roads, only scraping
bottom sometimes; my truck has higher ground clearance so
scraping is not a problem, but my higher center of gravity limits how
much side-tilt I can tolerate, and once I was alarmed to feel the
high-side tires almost starting to lift.

The Rangers advised that even my truck should be OK on the Flint,
but that far worse was the road through Teapot Dome Canyon out
to the Dollhouse area above the Colorado River. This 4-mile section
takes around 3 hours, and they recommended great care and
frequently getting out on foot to inspect the best tire placement,
and piling rocks to ease the steepest ledges. With two of us, we
could 'spot' for each other and we found this very effective. After
making it through Teapot Dome Canyon without vehicle damage,
we both thought we'd never want to come back to do it again - -
but of course we had to traverse the same section on our way out.
Going out, we took even more care 'spotting', and it did not seem
quite as bad as we had expected. Maybe we'd even consider it
again?

As we approached the Maze to rendezvous at our first campground,
we both encountered thunderstorms. Ed was on a graveled road
and was able to keep going ok, but I stopped for the night when my
road which had more clay in it started to get impossibly slippery.
During the next week we often had thunderstorms nearby, but
except for the wind blowing Ed's tent over the second night, we had
no problems from them. Lots of blue sky and clouds, and often
distant thunderstorms to add drama to the sky.

Not many birds in that country, but there were enough flowers
(especially on the cactus) to add some interest.  And the dry climate
preserves for years the dead Juniper trees and Yucca flower stalks,
often very beautiful and photogenic. 

The new slideshow is: 09 05 May UT Maze.exe

The server address has changed back to:    
http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john
(note the tilde ~ before the john part)

Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose
OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then
OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I
have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm and SpybotSearch&Destroy to
be sure the .exe files are malware free, so you can safely ignore
Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe> files'. 

Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next
picture.
Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture.
Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems
stuck.

If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic
to download these large files on a phone line   please let me know,
as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you
would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me
know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let
me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back
issues', or of all of them from 2004-2009 along with their
accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any
more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have
friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my
email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a
Windows computer and broadband internet connection. None of
this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures,
the better.   

Regards, John Armitage
1-970-250-6080 (new number November 2008)
john@qued.com (new February 2009)