ZR-1 Corvette Road Trip to the Southwest and San Diego

[GOLDCYLON]

Sounds good when Jim has a moment I am sure he will chime in.

[QB93Z]

I am back on line after a brief WiFi and Cellular outage in the Capital Reef NP area. I will get caught up in a bit.


Lyndi and I would be honored to see the PZG (Phoenix ZR-1 Guys) on the 31st. Dinner would be best for us. Thanks for the invite.


Jim

[GOLDCYLON]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

I am back on line after a brief WiFi and Cellular outage in the Capital Reef NP area. I will get caught up in a bit.


Lyndi and I would be honored to see the PZG (Phoenix ZR-1 Guys) on the 31st. Dinner would be best for us. Thanks for the invite.


Jim

Jim that works do you want me to ship those jumpers or bring em to dinner. My sons would like to come with their C4 GS and C7 Z51

[QB93Z]

Originally Posted by GOLDCYLON

Jim that works do you want me to ship those jumpers or bring em to dinner. My sons would like to come with their C4 GS and C7 Z51

Great, the more, the merrier!


Yes, please bring the jumpers.


Jim

[QB93Z]

On Day 10, Thursday, we got on the road very early and rendezvoused with the Canyonlands Ballooning Company for a sunrise hot air balloon trip. We watched the team inflate the balloon and then add some heat to get the balloon aloft:





Once the balloon was ready the 15 members of the flight group climbed in to the basket with the pilot. Lyndi took a nice picture of the inside of the balloon:




Just before lift off, the wind changed direction and established a potential flight path in the direction of a storm that was over Arches National Park. We disembarked the basket and held for about 20 minutes, but the weather pattern did not improve so the flight was scrubbed.


Even though the basket did leave the ground, based on US Navy definition of a vessel being "underway", all lines have to be cast off to count. So we won't get air-time credit for the attempt.


The change in our schedule allowed us to return to Canyonlands National Park with better weather than the day before. We got some nice pictures with better light with the low early morning sun:




We left Canyonlands NP and drove to an adjacent area called Dead Horse Point State Park. The views of the Colorado River canyon area were amazing:



to be continued........

[QB93Z]

More pictures from Dead Horse Point State Park:





Jim's Recommendations: I highly recommend Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park. Both parks are in very good condition and the viewing areas were well marked and very safe. Lyndi and I both also enjoyed Arches National Park, but for sheer awesomeness, I would rank it third of these three parks. All are very worth seeing.


We drove back to Moab and then North on UT-128. Designated a Utah Scenic ByWay, UT-128 follows the Colorado River. We bid farewell to San Juan Mountain and the Moab area:



The Purple-Z on the bank of the Colorado River:





We watched some young people preparing for a rafting trip:



to be continued......

[PhillipsLT5]

WOW, San Juans, Colo river, Moab area, U R livin the DREAM!
Need to turn the Z into a 4 wheeler for that terrain LOL
I think there is a name for that area where the Colo river makes that 180 turn?
see u in a bit in Phx area

[QB93Z]

We continued north, heading for I-70. The poor weather that had been bothering us for two days continued. There was a squall to the east:



Lyndi has again documented one of my favorite things about driving out west:



We arrived at Capitol Reef National Park late in the afternoon:



Capitol Reef NP is the location of an interesting geological event called pocket fold. Forces under the earth's crust pushed up a section of the crust, leaving the western side of the "break" in place. The "fold" is over 100 miles in length:







The terrain shown here is not the result of erosion like we saw in Canyonlands, it is a ridge of stone, above the plateau. The ridge has no slots or breaks for miles of its length and created a significant to westward movement for years.


to be continued.....

[QB93Z]

This formation is called Cathedral Rock:




To the original men who discovered the formation, this rock looked like the Capitol building in Washington DC, thus the name of the feature:




There are also some interesting petroglyphs in one of the canyons at the site:






The area on the east side of the Capitol Reef has some interesting landscapes:





We found the Capitol Reef National Park very interesting because of the uniqueness of the formation. I recommend a visit to this park.


Jim

[QB93Z]

Day 11 - On Friday we drove back to visit Capitol Reef NP again and hiked 2 miles to see a large natural bridge formation. We were at the park early so we had the trail to our selves:




An interesting geological feature that we noticed was a large number of round basalt boulders scattered around the landscape. The boulders are basalt, and were porous, indicating a volcanic origin. There is no other evidence of volcanic activity in any of the features in the Capitol Reef area.




The natural bridge was magnificent:







to be continued...