4-wheel driving in Willie

Thursday morning we drove into Moab and put gas in the Jeep and had a good breakfast. We had plans for the day – or any way I had plans for the day that I managed to convince The Driver he wanted to do too. We were going to take Willie on a 4-Wheel Drive Trail! I had picked up a list of some of the drives around here when we were in the Visitor’s Center the day before.
There was Chicken Corners Trail – it gets it name because the area guides are reputed to allow “chicken” passengers to walk, rather than ride, past the narrow, sloping section of the trail. Hum – nope don’t think so.
Next was Poison Spider Mesa Trail – don’t even like the name.
Then there was Moab Rim Trail – sounded interesting. Till I read on “this is not a sneaky trail; you know what you are in for in the first hundred yards, as it starts up a steep rock slope with a harrowing drop off to the left. Watch for black spots (tire rubber) and gouges in the rock (made by trailer hitches or underbelly parts) to follow the trail. Again not for me. Getting too old for that foolishness.
Next was The Gemini Bridges Trail – remember to click on pictures to enlarge
I read about it – sounded good – also said “easy”. Now that’s for me. So off we went.
Up the side of the cliff .
There goes the road in front of us.
And I mean literally on the side of the cliff.
Yep that's a drop off in front - better make that curve.
Over rocks, through loose dirt up and up. I was hanging on to the “Oh Shit” bar and The Driver was enjoying himself.
See the highway below (way below) us?
Just rough enough to make it interesting but not dangerous unless you do something really stupid.
There is a valley between the road and the other cliff you can see.
Willie was in 4x4 drive and seemed to be enjoying it too.
Been a long time since he got to play in the dirt. Soon we were up the cliff and the road leveled out quite a bit. Was not a drive on the highway though still pretty rough as you can see from some of the pictures.

Here is more of the road after it leveled out a bit. Still rough but no drop offs.

That isn't brick it is groved rock.

And the views – magnificent, beautiful, wondrous – need to check the Thesaurus to find more descriptive words. Lets see “mind blowing”, “amazing”, “incredible” still doesn’t do it justice. The sky was a brilliant blue and the rocks red, red. On a photo it would look retouched – no I didn’t retouch anything. So here are the pictures.
There's Willie
The mountains in the left corner of the photo are 35 miles away


Wish you could have been there - something to add to every body's "bucket list."