Saturday October 28, 2023  Let the weekend warriors have their day

My humans keep leaving me for days and days.  I have given them stinkeye so they know.

Since today is Saturday, we decided to do a little cruising, staying out of the main tourist areas. 

We headed east on Hwy. 128 just to check it out.  The best analogy I could come up with is that this is a land version of cruising Lake Powell.  Let’s see if I can draw a picture.

We are in a narrow canyon.  On our right are canyon walls a few hundred feet tall, dotted with high desert scrub and rocks.  Then we are on the road.  To our left is a narrow spit of land.  In some places, it is big enough to put a small BLM campground with a few sites, like ours.  There is desert scrub, maybe some aspens, yellowing with the fall, maybe an oak or mesquite tree.  Then you have the Colorado River, and another narrow spit of desert scrub.  Then there are really tall red rock cliffs towering above us all.  The rocks bend with the river so it is almost like being in a boat on Lake Powell, only we don’t have the stunning reflection of the cliffs on the water.  It is beautiful, and not very busy.  At one point we see an Equine resort with freshly mown alfalfa fields.  This road would go all the way to I70, but we turned around after about 20 miles.  There are clouds looming, but no rain in the forecast.  We shall see…

After running some errands in town, we decided to hike part of the Grandstaff Trail.  It is right along Hwy 128 between town and us, so why not.  A soft sandy trail follows a creek up the canyon.  There are oaks, sycamores and all sort of river plants, including poison ivy.  I think we are the only people without a dog!  And outside of one or two bags of dog poop people left on the trail (drives me crazy!), the trail was real clean.  The sandy parts make you work hard in walking.  But at some points, it was rocky, then we get to bop over rocks in the creek to cross quite a few times.  There is a bridge about 2 ¼ miles back, but we only went about halfway as it was late.  It was well worth the time.  I will get my walking in one way or another!

Back at Artee, Rudy waited for us.  I think he is bored as we haven’t been around much to let him outside.  As the evening wore on… I heard it… rain.  It wasn’t hard, but it was steady.  I feel a bit sorry for those camping in tents!  It stopped, then started several times, and it was getting quite cold.  We were totally comfortable!