Radioactive Mountain Biking
Last weekend Rosey and I were on our way down to Moab to do some mountain biking when we saw a dirt road off of Hwy 6 that looked like it led to some cool rock formations in the distance. With hardly a moment's hesitation we scrapped our Moab plans, pulled onto the dirt road and decided to go exploring. We had hoped to be able to explore by car for a while but the previous weeks heavy rainfall had washed out the infrequently travelled dirt road and made it impassable. Good thing we had our mountain bikes.
We ended up doing about 25 miles of mountain biking in an area that was either in or just outside of the border of the San Rafael Swell. As we were riding and exploring we stumbled onto some old mines. The only thing that I had ever heard of people mining in this area was Uranium but I was surprised not to see any radioactive signs, although all of the mine pits were surrounded by 10 foot high chain link fences. It wasn't until we got a little further down the road that we discovered the sign pictured above warning about the radioactive mines.
The rest of the pictures are here.
Black Dragon Canyon (almost)
We didn't get enough of a taste of the San Rafael Swell last weekend so we decided to head back this weekend for some more. We chose a spot just off of I-70 from a book that we got about the swell. The area was called Black Dragon Canyon. Unfortunately, the mile markers had changed since the book was published and no longer matched the directions. So, we spent a good half-an-hour driving back and forth on I-70 looking for the dirt road with a swinging fence.
I'm not sure that we ever really made it into Black Dragon Canyon. We explored several really cool smaller canyons and climbed over a bunch of slick-rock, but we ran out of time before we could get into Black Dragon Canyon itself. So, I guess we'll have to come back for yet another adventure in the swell.
The rest of the pictures are here.
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