Like any great road trip, we started ours A) Late (almost 6 instead of almost 1) and B) looking for some electronic gizmo so that we could listen to music. Road trip without music? Are you crazy?	The first morning "on the road" we awoke at my sister's place in Nevada. Great mountain views from that neighborhood. Curious absence of photos of the people in the house, Brian and I were exhausted after 4 hours sleep.	My Sister's home in Sparks, NV. She was kind enough to let us roll in at some ungodly hour (1am? 2am?) and sleep.	Hwy 50. Desolate.
This is a "major landmark" on Hwy 50 according to the sign. So major that they named it.... "Sand Hill". Lots of imagination those Nevada explorers.	Shoe Tree.	Not sure what an L is. Or why it has its own sign. But there is one out there, somewhere, apparently.	Quaint little towns pepper Hwy 50. Ok, maybe not "pepper". More like, once in a great while, a little town pops up.
Mom's Cafe. Looked like a good place for coffee and pie. It was.	Morning 3. Our campsite in BLM. I'll call it Camp1	The first of many, many photos of rocks	There were also wildflowers, really beautiful ones, not infrequently.
More rocks. These were stacked by someone to create a little cave in a natural crevice.	rocks, sky. Lots of that out in Moab.	This is the view to the west from Camp1	Camp1 was pretty much on the trailhead for Kane Creek Canyon. So instead of driving back into town to run a trail with a bunch of folk, we just started driving eastward.
This is just before we started out, the two cameras that I used weren't synched to the same timezone, so there will be occasional chronometric anomalies here.			stopping for a beverage and for the dogs to frolic in the cool water
	I don't know what makes the black face on some of the rocks, I assume minerals, but it was really beautiful and refracted the light into an almost oily-looking sheen.	The predominant feature of Kane Creek Canyon, not surprisingly, is Kane Creek	Thus the trail involves many crossings of the creek
Soop is kind enough to frame the naturally ocurring S in the rock face	If you look carefully, you can make out the upper trail, it is at about the 2/3 height on this image. The lower trail is where you fall if you fall off of the upper trail (and an alternate route). Long ways down.	One of the toughest spots on the trail, big stair step.	More amazing geology
Waiting for some folks to get through the tough spot	Seth. Waiting.	Another time problem... this actually came after the next few shots. A pretty creek.
Here you get a better perspective on the size of the stair steps.	Soop went first. Two tries and he was through.	Requires a little articulation from the truck. Those are 35" tires, by the way, it wasn't small bumps. There was also a dropoff to the right that went about 400 feet down.	We finished off the evening in downtown Moab, decent meal at Slickrock Cafe, then back to camp.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, california, camping, expedition, landcruiser, moab, nevada, travel, utah, vacation

# posted by Steve Broyles @ 7/30/2008 04:41:00 PM