After month’s of planning sessions it was finally time to get on the road to the trail.

Of course the most important provisions were loaded first onto the truck, our four boxes of beer! As Merrick later told us the second most important thing in the desert is water . . . the FIRST is beer!

Nobody felt like cooking breakfast so we headed to the Moab Diner for the “Mountain Biker Special” sure to guarantee a quick downhill due to the large portions!

Moab Cyclery and Escape Adventures would be our provider for the adventure and we met at their headquarters to load our gear.

We met up with Merrick again for a final briefing and soon he and Tim helped us old guys up into the vans and away we went for a 10 mile ride to the trail head.

Like most old guys, some had to take care of a few personal issues before we loaded up. No modesty with this group!

Our official ride start photo. Got to count heads everyday to make sure we didn’t lose someone!

The first four miles were gravel road but as we turned the corner here was our first slot canyon to descend. Probably one of our steepest of the whole trip. The hearty breakfast and steep descent put our brakes to the test. Probably 18-20% down hill.

Puck Pass was VERY aptly named . . . As we approached the downhill, I heard George say “Oh Boy!” in a tone somewhere between excitement and horror!!

 

We soon encounter the White Rim, a trail we would be riding the next three days. All jeep trails, we encountered 4 wheel drive vehicles of just about every type and several groups of motorcyclists.

Our first nights camp Shafer Campground. Merrick passed down luggage from the truck and off we went to find our own pieces of heaven . . .

. . . where every room had a million dollar view!

Merrick had a great setup for cooking, one we would have had great difficulty reproducing for ourselves, if we had decided to go totally self supported. It was by far the best decision we made of the whole trip – hiring a company like Escape Adventures to toat our luggage, provision us for our meals, do the cooking AND surprisingly washing the dishes too!!!

First night out . . . fresh grill salmon . . . .

with a feta, tomato salad, boiled baby red Parmesan potatoes – yeah baby, bring it on. Always enough for seconds if you were still hungry!

Who was always first in line . . .

. . . the same person who was last in line. BillyB licks the fudge brownie mixing pan!

TommyH uses the foot pump hand washing station provided by Merrick and company. Very handy!

Believe it or not human waste is a HUGE issue on the park. With the arid desert climate, nothing ever deteriorates and in the last twenty years, as the number of visitors increased, so did the number of slit latrines. So much so that people were continually digging up what someone had left behind not too long ago. The Park Service has installed these outhouses that are first rate! No smell and very clean. I asked Merrick how often they need to be pumped and he said never! The bowels of the pits have a type of beetle that takes care of all the waste. Don’t fall in!

The Canyonlands National Park has some VERY strict culinary safety regulations that all provisioners must follow, such as: no food can be rewarmed and served twice,  so any leftovers are tossed; all food waste must be composted; dishes must be washed in hot water, then rinsed in two clean water baths and air dried. No toweling off of dishes. When the rangers come around for their visits, they use thermometers to test the inside temp of the coolers and the temp of any uncooked meat. Wooden cutting boards can be used for serving only. All food prep must be done on plastic boards that are sanitized. Merrick was very particular in his food prep methods and did an excellent job . . .

. . . which of course gave us more time to be happy. Here TommyH is twice as happy because of his red wine AND Everclear alcohol he mixed with Crystal Light . . .

. . . and George enjoyed his rum STRAIGHT out of the bottle EVERY night!