Saturday, November 10, 2012

San Rafael Swell fall of 2012

 This is the trip I planned for a long time, to go back to the Swell.  I wanted to invite my family too also to see the area.  Mike and his family came and also my parents.  We all met at the Wedge on this good day with perfect weather.  Clear sunny day and perfect temps.  My parents and I left like an hour and half earlier so I can do a bike ride along the Good Water Rim Trail on the Wedge.  I did this trail last year and this time, it was awesome.
 Awesome singletrack with lot's of turns.  The trail was 15 miles and I did a loop with the road back to the campground area with a total of 23 miles.  It was a blast!  I had a bike wreck and it wasn't pretty.  One end on my handlebar got caught on a tree branch so I fell and fell on my side,  broke my cell phone and a buckle on my shoe.  The buckle can be replaced and my cell phone contract is up in two weeks anyway, so I will get a new cell phone by then.  I am using one of my old cell phones now.
 It was pretty and I loved the scenery!  Other than the crash, I had a good ride.  We all ate a picnic at the Wedge Overlook.
 After that, we went down Buckhorn Draw.  It's a good scenic dirt road that goes from the Wedge to Interstate 70.  There are petroglyths, pictographs, and a dinasour track along the way.  Also a Matt Warner name painted on a rock who was an outlaw that rode with Butch Cassidy then fixed his life up afterwards.  Pretty cool.

 These pictographs were amazing.  Everybody was amazed.  When we got to the pictograph panel, we couldn't really see them but we've read that we could see them better when it's shady.  So we saw the sun would go behind this mountain any minute, so we waited for like a half an hour.  Then we were in business.



 It's amazing to see how these pictrographs were painted by the Lamanites when Christ was on this earth 2000 years ago(Mormon beliefs).
 Jeri was really thirsty and she had a blast.
 We saw some modern petroglyths, if it wasn't for Laura, we wouldn't see these.  She had good eyes!  Mike and Josh were trying to figure out the story on these petroglyths.
It was a good day trip and everybody enjoyed it.  We didn't know we could get to this kind of stuff in 2 hours from our homes.  It was awesome.