Salt Lake City to Moab, Arches N.P. and CanyonLands N.P.

Rusty McNeil · Sep 1, 2009

Here's a few pics from last weekends ride I did by myself from SLC down to Moab to see Arches and Canyonlands N.P. while I'm temporarily living in SLC working on a Substation project.
I rode about 630 miles in two days including about 130 or so purely offroad from improved dirt roads to single track trails.

Arches NP gets all the BallyHoo but I was more impressed with the multiple canyons of Canyonland NP, nothing like this type of Landscape to make you fell like a runty ass little Pissant on the face of this earth.

Hope y'all enjoy the pictures, I'm surely enjoying this paid "riding vacation" what a fucking paradise, while Texas has lot's to offer not much of what I like is close to Houston, Big Bend NP is the closest thing to this in Beauty and it's more than 700 miles from Houston.

Later all,

Rusty

vmax626 · Sep 1, 2009

That is some awesome scenery,
When I was younger me and my father went through the black hills of south Dakota and, thats the closest that my memory can come to that.
Glad that your having such a great time up there :eusa_dance:.
Enjoy it and take in as much as you can `cause memories like that are priceless.
<<Dave>>

unk:

Rusty McNeil · Sep 1, 2009

Here's some more with the pics of Canyonalnd.

The dirt trail switch back was the last and most challenging thing I rode, scared the shit out of me since I was on Supermoto tires...barely....the rear was a pure street tire, 'gainst my better judgement I let 'em down to about 13psi and went for it.

The road down was very sandy in the corners which is about as bad as mud and I fuckin' hate those riding condidtions but I really wanted to make it to the bottom of that canyon as chances like those don't come often. A dirt bike may be able to go more places than a 4 wheeler but I'm seeing now stabilty and "gravitational incidents" can be an issue on 2 wheels when on dirt. Maybe a bike light than my 320 lb Big red pig (+ the pack mule riggin' of all my road gear and emergency supplies) would have been a cake walk.

I would have liked to take more pics during the descent but i was kinda' busy and it was so steep I didn't feel comfortable stopping.

Going down was much more difficult than coming back up since going uphill you could pour some speed on in the sandy stuff and keep the front tire light on the ground and from washing out. I would have loved to follow that road out to the end but it looked like it was 'bout 'nother 40 miles or so and it was already 2:00 pm Sunday and 240 miles from home. Oh well.

The pic 'a me torwards the last is after I made it down the switchbacks after smoking a cig, the last pic is back at "home" 12 pack is to take the pain out of my ass from riding that far on a narra'ass seat like the XR650 has.