Last night as we turned in, it was a beautiful evening. Cool enough that we needed a sweatshirt and the sky was filled with a full moon. At midnight I was woken up to the sound of the gusting billowing wind blowing my tent first in one direction then seconds later blowing it down in a different direction. The tent poles creaked and bent and the tent fabric made snapping sounds in the wind. Fortunately the tent was undamaged. As the wind below across the desert floor, it picked up the fine dusty sand and deposited it inside my tent.
When I woke in the morning, every thing in the tent, including my face and sleeping bag was covered with a layer of the red dusty sand. Sometime during the night, I had put on a COVID mask so that I wasn't breathing in the dust and put on my sunglasses so the dust would keep out of my eyes. I've done a lot of camping and never had experienced this kind of wind before.
The wind had brought cooler weather with clearing skies. After a nurshing hot breakfast and good strong coffee, the bags were packed, the tents came down and stowed and the F350 reloaded with all the equipment. This was followed by a another daily ride briefing by Dave and Birdie pointing out the highlights of today's ride on the map. Compared to yesterday, this ride was going to be longer at 20 miles but we were starting a bit earlier and the day was fairly long, so off we went.
If you decide to take this trip in the future, I would advise that you stop at the Visitor's Center in Moab and pick up a copy of the "A Naturalist's Guide to the White Rim Trail", by David B. Williams and Damian Fagan. It pertains directly to this tour pointing out landmarks, geology and animals.
On a ride like this, you begin to grasp the age of our little planet as you descend the geological layers of the canyons. From the start of the ride, we dropped 1000 feet or so and today we will be continutinging on the White Trail layer with our lunch stop at about 15 miles to view into Monument Basin and and the Colorado River cutting through it. Like looking back in time and imagining the geological processes and the types of life that may have existed. Just so different than our daily experiences at home.
The photo below was taken during the lunch stop with Keith pondering, Life, the Universe and Everything.
The camp for today is called "White Crack" and is located a bit more that 1 mile off the loop. Once we got camp set up, Birdie and Dave took the group on a short hike. One of the fascinating things that that they pointed out was some small depressions in the rock surface, maybe 12-15 feet in diameter that were filled with water. Looking more closely you could spot small shrimp like creatures and other animals swimming in the water. As explained to us, these tiny lifeforms complete their entire life cycles in just a couple of weeks hatching, maturing, mating and dying when the little ponds dry out. The offspring however can survive the following dry conditions and when the rain fills the tiny ponds again, they hatch and the cycle continues. It's interesting in the ways that life finds a way to continue.
Brian
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