Dust Puddles in Arizona

Mary and I left for Vegas and Interbike last tuesday night. We camped in the mountains near the intersection of I-70 and I-15. We awoke to the first frost of the year, on our sleeping bag. The morning wakeup looked like this.

Interbike was good, just a little too much PRODUCT! I think I have had enough sales pitches for the year. We put in two days and then left the city that smells like urine, and headed to a place that does not smell like urine, Gooseberry Mesa, one of my favorite places on earth! As soon as we set up camp I headed out for quick sun-set ride. Not a bad view from the bars of a sweet Trek Remedy.I didn't go to far out due to the fading light, so I played in what is called "Gods Skate Park" Gooseberry is pretty much one big skatepark linked together with singletrack.

After a good nights sleep on the windy edge of the mesa I stumbled out of the tent to the view of Zion on fire.

After breakfast we headed out to the edge of the mesa to a trail we hadn't done before called the Windmill trail. This was a great start to the ride as it was a mellow climb along the edge.

Gooseberry just gets better the more times I go. There isn't riding anywhere else like it, not even Moab.

Did I mention that the views from the Mesa are, well..... Pretty Good, if your into that kind of thing.

All told the ride took us around most of the entire edge of the mesa which I had never done before, about 15 miles. We ate some lunch and decided to pack up camp and go look for a new trail system called Little Creek. I had bought a map from the new OTE Hurricane bike shop and the girl there had given me directions, allthough I am pretty sure she had never actually been to Little Creek Mesa. Well here's to giving directions when you've never been there, kind of a re-payment for when I used to give advice on trails i'd never done in Moab, sorry about that folks!Mary luckily talked me into getting a full tank of gas, which for me, is most of the time too much trouble. I think deep down I kind of like the danger involved in running out of gas. It makes for good stories, like that time in inner city East St. Louis when we finally found a station under the big "Trust Jesus" sign, oh how I digress ( see, you want to hear this story don't you?) Anyway, we start out on a perfect Utah road, lots of washboards, rocks, ledges and the opening of many gates. We were scouting the edge of Little Creek Mesa, looking for an "obvious" road up onto the thing.

We drove on, and the road became dusty, not a normal kind of dust, a thick blanket of powder beginning to accumulate on the bikes, the truck and all of our gear in the back.

Notice in the above picture how far away the road is taking us from the mesa we had hoped to climb up onto. We found a sweet oasis out there in the desert. Had the truck ran out of gas this place would have saved our lives, but thanks to Mary and her "smart thinking" there would be no such death march/drinking out of a cattle tank story to tell.

And the road went on, and on, and on........ And we opened more gates.....

By now its pretty obvious we aren't going to find the Little Creek Mesa trails, but this road was so long and had such potential for getting us really disgusstingly lost and stuck I was enjoying it. This brings me to part of the title of this post. What is a "dust puddle"? Well, put a bag of flour in a pothole, make it level with the road so that you can't see that there is any hole there at all. Now, hit it with a truck at 40mph, POOF! You just made your-self a dust puddle!

And we drove on....

Eventually the dreaded dead end happend. Luckily, Jethro Tool wasn't home at the time to come out with both barrels blazing. If this bailout thing fails, this will be my spot of choice in the event that the world goes all to heck. I can live here with 15 kids, and 20 head of cattle. And since its Utah I can pick up a second wife on the way out to help with the raisin of the little "workers", I mean kids. (Mary says if I post this I am in serious trouble or something, but her voice trailed off into something like bla bla bla bla....)

We found an alternate road that kind of headed south east, which was kind of the direction we wanted to go, and kind of towards the Grand Canyon which might have proved to be hard to cross in out little Toyota truck. So far it had been a beautiful sunny day. I had used 4x4 a few times to get across dry washes. It would be a disaster if it rained, and caused a muddy flash flood. No chance of that, right???

Well, luckily it did not rain, and after about 4 hours we saw a trail of dust in the distance. It was a more traveled gravel road with someone driving on it. We took this road heading back north and came to pavement, then the pavement ended again making us think it was kind of toying with us. We eventually popped out in......Arizona. Whew! After that kind of drive we decided to head for Marys brothers house in Manti UT for a shower and some rest. I rested the next day by going on a sweet shuttle run down the Patton Trail. YEEE HAAAA