Saturday, April 14, 2018

Boondocking in Rabbit Valley - Day 3

Last evening, I watched as vehicle after vehicle rolled by, some towing toys on trailers, some towing big RVs.  They were all headed for the big RV parking lot to the east of my campsite.  Apparently, this BLM area is quite popular with the OHV, mountain bike and dirt bike people from nearby Grand Junction and Fruita.

So glad I got here earlier this week, not sure there's an accessible campsite left open!

I went out riding in the morning along with some hiking, the temperature was in the high 50s low 60s but with clear skies and sun, it felt much warmer than that since there was no wind to speak off!  Very nice conditions.

There were several OHV vehicles already rolling about along with dirt bikes so I headed towards the I-70 exit and crossed over the super slab.  I bypassed the already getting full parking lot provided for Trails Through Time hiking loop and continued east along a dirt road that headed east away from there.

Two to three miles later, along easily uralable terrain (but not for Uma, the URRV) I came upon a selection of rock formations to pose Scarlett by:


 I would end up hiking all the way to the top of the hill
depicted in the picture, not too bad a climb.  Not much of a view though.

Retracing my route, I saw the distant peaks of the La Sal mountains (I believe) and posed Scarlett accordingly.  These mountains are near Moab, where I will be by next weekend.

 Same location, different viewpoints

 A little further southwest from the above shot.

This is the sight that greeted me upon reaching the entrance to the BLM area.  This area had barely contained one car or RV the previous two days.  Now it was almost bumper to bumper with weekend traffic and dirt riders.


Dodging around tykes on small dirt bikes and OHV's crammed with older people, I made my way slowly to my campsite.  As I type this, there is a regular passage of vehicles and dirt bikes past my camp site; like I said, this place is popular on the weekends!

As sunset approached in the evening, I tried once more to capture the colorful rock formation nearby:


You know how I used to recommend the use of sunsetwx.com for predicting a good sunset....they're not very good anymore.  They called for a red category sunset tonight, we got at most a light yellow.  I may have opined too soon, looks like this is the correct section/page of sunsetwx.com to use:  Just make sure you select the right hour for your location!  I'd been working on the assumption that sunsetwx.com was geo-locating me and rendering the right graphic for my timezone, this is not the case.



Tomorrow: Utah

6 comments:

Trobairitz said...

Beautiful sunset pictures. You can tell the weather is warming up when you encounter more and more folks at the BLM spots. People have cabin fever from the winter I think, and are itching to get out.

redlegsrides said...

Thanks Trobairitz, its more like they're desperate to get out I think! :)

SonjaM said...

The snowcapped mountain range is impressive, Dom. Nicely captured.

redlegsrides said...

Thanks SonjaM, I hope to be closer to it weekend after next.

RichardM said...

That sounds like a lot of people but then again, they are getting out when they are able. Not everyone has the flexibility you have.

redlegsrides said...

The amount of people was manageable for the most part, it was the idiots racing along racing big dust clouds that annoyed me.