While most motorcycle riders don’t have the physique of a marathon runner, it seems to me that riding a motorcycle in the desert requires the same close examination of proper hydration to stay alive. The air is dry and hot, and sitting on a motorcycle with the warm air blowing across you makes you forget that you are losing water. Any sweat evaporates immediately. Thus, Alex and I just drink water at every stop whether we want to sip warm water or not.
We left Arches after filling up our water bottles at the visitor center and headed south through Moab to Canyonlands NP. Canyonlands is located well of the highway by about 40 miles, and we were not sure what to expect for camping. We kept our eyes out for potential roadside spots thinking we might need to pitch a tent just about anywhere. Instead, we ended up driving all the way into the park partially looking for our friend Steve (from Arches) and partially because we really couldn’t afford to backtrack with our gas situation.
We didn’t find Steve, but we found a great campsite, parked our bikes, and set out to explore the rocks. The landscape was like nothing I had imagined, let alone expected. Large mushroom-shaped rock formations spotted the floor, some connected, some standing alone. Rock “needles” (for which the district of the park was named) rose out of the canyon walls that surrounded us. The rock seemed to be in two distinct layers, one white and the other red.
We scrambled to the highest mushroom and sat relaxing in the coolness of the desert evening waiting for the sun to set. It was absolutely beautiful, and we stayed up there for a few hours, talking, snapping some photos, and watching the spectacular sun lower behind the distant canyon walls.
After grabbing a few Starbucks pastries from our newly acquired stash, we returned to the rocks to sleep out under the stars. This turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip as the stars were about the best I have ever seen. We must have caught glimpses of 15 shooting stars between the two of us, and several satellites made the trip across the vast, twinkling sky while we lay there in awe of God’s creation.
The following video was shot after Alex noticed a raven floating quite close to where we were sitting on the rocks. Watch it and then read on. It's irony will be realized soon.
In the morning, we grabbed a few pastries for breakfast, secured our remaining treasure to a small limb high in the tree by our camp, and took of for a hike into the canyons. The hike was wonderful, and the cloud cover kept us cool all day. As we finished, we watched a large lightning storm roll through to the south of us.
We returned to the campsite thankful to find everything dry. Unfortunately, the two bags of pastries that we had hung in the tree and were to sustain us for the next four days were torn open and had been picked clean by Ravens. I paced around the campsite with Alex, cursing the birds and picking up the tattered wrappers. Hungry, we drove 60 miles into town and ate a large pepperoni pizza realizing that it would take a whole tank of gas to return to the town on our way out the following day… an expensive meal!
On our way back to camp we noticed our site neighbors were outfitted with arm length, orange rubber gloves and face masks. They would go between their car and tent with bottles and other objects. My best guess was that they were running a meth lab. They didn’t look like the druggie type and we went over to introduce ourselves, inquire about their garb, and invite them to our planned night campfire.
It turned out that they were on a very similar road trip around the country. They both will be starting graduate programs at Harvard in the fall and wanted a little refresh before entering the next station of life. They were not in the narcotics business at all and instead were trying to disinfect their stuff after a mouse decided to make a home and lay babies in the trunk of their car. You can read their story at www.nationalparking.wordpress.com.
That night it rained. Alex and I were confined to the tent. No starry night on the rocks.
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