What a day – part 3 of 3

WOW, jaw dropping is about the only way I can describe the road we took home.

The road starts out for about 23 miles almost straight as an arrow up and down some very minor hills, most are covered in cedar trees that only grows about 10 feet tall, anyway it’s 23 miles of very very boring road.

Then the fun begins if you want to call it fun. I have never been afraid of heights but this road had me swallowing hard a couple of times before I relaxed. For a second I was ready to turn around and say I can’t go down that. You must be up a zillion feet looking out over Monument Valley. Again words or pictures can’t begin to describe the views. When we were there it was starting to get late and for some reason while clear skies the last couple of weeks everything in the distance has been hazy.

The road is cut into the side of…. Of vertical rock face cliff. I mean you have vertical rock cliffs on one side, gravel road ,then NOTHING on the other side. To give the road crews credit all but one section of the road is wide enough to meet someone and the outside vehicle not to feel to afraid they are going to tumble off into nothingness.

Did I mention that its gravel and very steep, with all kinds of switchbacks. Many spots if you were to drop, not toss out but drop straight down it would hit the road a few hundred feet below you. It’s one of those roads that you sure hope your brakes don’t go out. Now, what I really did, I just put the jeep in first gear and didn’t really use the brakes…… but you can bet I had my foot there just in case:)

The sign at the beginning of the road should be about 3 times larger and also have a warning about being afraid of heights or a weak heart you should not travel this road.

You can see more pictures and the videos of us going down the hill at RMTravels.smugmug.com, we forgot to turn it off while we got out to take a few pics, so you might want to skip that part. Oh, and trust me when I say the hill is MUCH steeper than it looks on video.

The one thing I don’t understand, we drove 23 miles only met 1 car and that was around mile 20, we’re going down the hill on the skinniest part of the road and here comes 2 vehicles, fortunately they stopped just as the road starts to get skinny so we didn’t meet them on the skinny spot and I didn’t need to change my pants when we got home, then at the bottom of the hill we met 2 more……..23 miles 1 car then on the most challenging part of the road 4 cars………….Why is that? I guess I’ll call it the Mary T effect.  Did I mention this was a highway 261.

WOW!!! What a day, what a fabulous day it was!!!

Originally we were going to stay 2 nights but with so many things to do and the magnificence of the area we are staying for a third night, where else are we going to get firsthand local knowledge on the best places to go and things to do, let alone tell us that if we get stuck or have a problem off road they will come and rescue us.

NOTE: while they did hand us the map we used earlier in the day they did not make it or have anything to do with it.

We would like to stay longer but warmer weather is calling us, while over in CO because it was so cold we winterized the water system and we’re starting to miss running water for dishes and our own shower not the CG’s showers.