NEW JEEP at CANYONLANDS NAT'L PARK

For a change, we thought we'd post a summer blog or two from around home in Durango, as opposed to sailing on Summer Breeze. Since both of our vehicles currently have a quarter-million miles each on them, and one of them is 17 years old, we decided to buy a new Jeep Wrangler Sahara recently. As a "welcome-to-the-family", we took it for a little break-in spin just west of us into the Canyonlands National Park to the south of Moab, Utah. We put 600 miles on her; about 50 miles of it was in Low-Low at a 4x4 crawl. This is our fourth Jeep, so this is not our first rodeo.
Sorry for the lousy quality of the photos; our regular digital camera was missing-in-action. However, we did manage to get some fair pics while tenting out for a couple of nights on the eastern edge of the Canyonlands, about 40 miles south of Moab. Since this was a break-in trip for the new Jeep, we only did some easy & moderate trails, nothing difficult. Her performance was nothing short of stellar. The most interesting was a 6-mile run of sandy creekbed in Lockart Canyon, only 150 feet wide with 300-800 foot high redrock cliffs on both sides . . . under the warning of "quicksand" and "flashfloods". It was so spooky that stopping to take pictures was out of the question.
We did run into an interesting spot prior to entering Canyonlands. The photo that has the Jeep mirror in the lower righthand corner, and then a big rock in the distance, then the snowcapped LaSal Mtns. in the background is a pic of the "Rockland Ranch" at Hatch Rock. This is a "pluralist" commune of 80 folks that have cut cavehomes into the 1/2-mile long rock. This is serious fundamentalist Morman country; we got within a half-mile but we didn't approach it. If you'd like to read more about it, it's very interesting. Search "Rockland Ranch, Utah"; the Denver Post and CBS have done some articles on this commune.
So, enjoy, kids, this blog was the best way to get our summer adventures to you. Maybe we'll do some more once the snow leaves the high country above Durango.