< more recent | 22-27 October 2020 | older >
27 October 2020: There seemed to be no escaping the storm, and on the highway black ice was making the drive dangerous, as evidenced by the fact that with a roughly 60-mile section of highway there were about 10 trucks that slid off the road, jackknifed or overturned. Got off the highway and took a slower, emptier route via local roads the rest of the way into Oklahoma until the snow finally began to ease up a bit …
26 October 2020: The snow started falling overnight with the winds easing up a little bit. By morning everything was already covered in a layer of white, and visibility was near zero. The bright colors of the southwestern desert were enrobed in a dull grey that seemed somehow threatening. Temperatures had dipped into the mid-20s and the weather was forecast to continue like this for two more days. Sheltered in a tiny one-room cabin with no plumbing or electricity and just a propane space heater, it was probably not a good idea to try to wait it out. Decided to just get back on the road heading for New York and hopefully out of the storm. Made it as far as Amarillo before stopping for the night …
25 October 2020: Drove into the Chaco Canyon this morning and spent the day exploring the ruins of these ancient pueblos. This whole site is quite spiritual and there is definitely something very special about it. The original plan was to spend two days exploring here, but park rangers warned of an impending winter snowstorm expected to hit tomorrow, which they say will render the roads in and out of the canyon completely impassible even for 4WD vehicles. By late afternoon the winds were ripping through the area with gusts around 50 MPH, and it was almost impossible to stay outdoors…
24 October 2020: Said goodbye to the Ladies Offroad Network crew for now, and left Moab to begin the journey back toward New York. Still have a few interesting stops, and detouring to the south east to check out some archaeological sites. Took a break at the Mesa Verde Cliffdwellings in the afternoon before overnighting in Colorado…
23 October 2020: Today we had a special guest guide, Dan Mick, who joined us and led the group on Steelbender, the most challenging trail we have done all week. An awesome day, and a great way to wrap up the week…
22 October 2020: Back to the trails today with Fins N Things, one of Moab’s iconic red rock trails. So much fun to drive up and down the “fins” of what seems like petrified sand dunes, and at the end of the day we played around on the Little Lio’s Back…
THIS MONTH:
Hitting the road again to begin the next big U.S.A. Roadtrip to the west. For this journey we will be spending some time en route exploring a few of the wild places in between New York and Moab. We are making the long drive west into its own overland adventure with camping, hiking and off-road fun. The focus of this trip is to appreciate America’s wilderness and get to know some of the lesser known public lands along the way…
COMING UP SOON:
A new Moab adventure is in the works for October, details to come soon…
The 5th Annual 2020 Ladies Offroad Challenge started on May 4th. Ladies will participate in a series of challenge tasks that are built to educate and encourage stepping into some unknown territories. The Challenge goes on through October this year with participants striving to “Do the Best They Can” at each of the tasks. Ten Participants from the Challenge will be invited to the very special Top 10 Weekend hosted by Charlene Bower…
Looking ahead to a return to Paris as soon as possible to reconnect with friends and some favorite places in the city of light. Timing is still uncertain due to the pandemic, but we hope the trip is back on the calendar for late fall/early winter…
BUCKHORN WASH PICTOGRAPHS
The Buckhorn Wash panel located in a scenic sandstone canyon of the San Rafael Swell is a spectacular example of Barrier Canyon style rock art. The ghostly red figures seem to stand watch over the San Rafael River. The site includes both painted (Pictographs) and pecked (Petroglyph) prehistoric images, but the main panel, over 130-feet long, consists of a series of red pictograph figures pained over 2,000 years ago. The Barrier Canyon people were an archaic hunter-gatherer society that produced a distinctive style of rock art which appears mostly in Utah. The largest concentration of Barrier Canyon style sites are in and around the San Rafael Swell and Canyonlands National Park, but the full range extends as far as western Colorado. The red pigment was created using powdered hematite, and possibly mixed with animal fat, eggs, or some other fluid. For a brush, they may have used fingers or brushes made from animal fur or slender grasses. When painted on freshly exposed sandstone, the stone absorbs the pigments, thus preserving them for thousands of years. No one knows for sure what the images represent or why they were painted. Much speculation centers on shamanistic or religious figures. Typically, the billboard-sized galleries are not found near habitation sites but are often in very visible locations near the mouths or junctions of long canyons. Large elongated anthropomorphic figures predominate both in size and number. According to David Sucec of the BCS Project, five general style features seem to characterize the Barrier Canyon style: 1) Large “gallery-like” rock art sites often from 90 to 300 feet in length, 2) Consistent attention given to aspects of visual form and virtuoso painting techniques, 3) life-size to heroic scale anthropomorphic figures, 4) an unusually large number of variations, variety of form-types, particularly spirit figures, within the image-inventory of the style, and 5) compositions apparently representing friendly associations of animal, bird, snake and plant images with anthropomorphic spirit figures.
ABOUT THE NEEDLES
The Needles forms the southeast corner of Canyonlands National Park and was named for the colorful spires of Cedar Mesa Sandstone that dominate the area. There are hundreds of them poking up from the desert floor. There are also entrenched canyons, natural arches and sheer-walled cliffs in this vast, rugged landscape. About 50 miles of challenging backcountry roads lead to campsites, hiking trailheads, and natural features such as Tower Ruin, Confluence Overlook, Elephant Hill, the Joint Trail, and Chesler Park. One of the most technical four-wheel-drive roads in Utah, Elephant Hill presents drivers and mountain bikers with steep grades, loose rock, stair-step drops, tight turns, and tricky backing. Once over the hill, equally challenging roads lead to various features as well as BLM lands south of the park. Elephant Hill leads to a collection of parallel, vertical-walled valleys formed by rock faulting, known as the Grabens that continue to Beef Basin and the Manti-La Sal National Forest, south of the national park. Within the backcountry area of the Needles centered around Chesler Park there is quite a complex network of interconnecting paths, mostly along canyons and/or across slickrock benches. A reminder from the National Park Service: All of these roads require high-clearance, low range four-wheel-drive vehicles. Inexperienced drivers should not attempt these roads. There is a high risk of vehicle damage, and towing costs usually exceed $1,500.
Nesconset | Paris | Belgrade | Howard | Toledo | Silver Lake | Chesterton | Prairie City | Grand Island | Halsey | Gering | Buford | Hayden | Grand Junction | Moab
MORE NOTES FROM THE ROAD:
15-21 October – Moab
8-14 October – Moab
1-7 October – Roadtrip West
16-30 September – Roadtrip West
1-15 September – Long Island
16-31 August – Long Island
1-15 August – Summer Roadtrip
22-31 July – Summer Roadtrip
14-21 July – Summer Roadtrip
1-13 July – Long Island
16-30 June – Long Island
1-15 June – Bald Eagle
16-31 May – Central PA
1-15 May – Re-opening Trails
April – Lockdown NY
16-31 March – Lockdown NY
9-15 March – Roadtrip Home
1-8 March – Moab
23-29 February – Vegas to Anza Borrego
15-22 February – Southwest Roadtrip
8-14 February – Southwest Roadtrip
1-7 February – Glamis to Vegas
27-31 January – Yuma to Glamis
15-26 January – Nevada to Arizona
1-14 January – Starting the New Year
24-31 December – Holidays on the Road
16-23 December – Cross-Country Drive
9-15 December – New York
1-8 December – Paris
16-30 November – Paris & Rennes
1-15 November – New York
Archive
EVENTS
LADIES OFFROAD NETWORK NONCON 2020
Recap from the Ladies Offroad Network camping and wheeling event, dubbed the “NonCon” as in “not the convention,” that came together after the official convention was cancelled due to the pandemic… [read]
RE-OPENING
Report from the first trail run with the Off Road Consulting group at Rausch Creek Off Road Park as the post-pandemic phased re-openings begin in Pennsylvania and some of our favorite local trails re-open to the public after the two-month shutdown… [read]
REFLECTIONS
EGYPT: CAIRO REFLECTIONS
A quick overview of impressions from a stop in Cairo during our recent scouting mission in Egypt and Sudan … [read]
SPECIAL REPORT
A look into south-eastern Algeria on the border with Libya and Niger: overlanding with the Tuareg in one of the most remote corners of the Sahara … [read]
