John noticed a trail leading out of the campground into the mountains. “I wonder where this goes?” he says. Turns out, it is the trailhead for a 3 1/2+ trail. Oooo, we don’t usually do anything over a 3 rated trail.
We are feeling bold and in the mood to explore and decide, we will only go as far as we feel we can safely navigate the trail and then turn around.
If nothing else, the scenery is beautiful. Sometimes difficult spots on these trails have bypasses.
Cool rock formation. We are hoping that the tough spots on this trail have them.
This part of the trail is deceptively smooth and easy driving.
But having done our fair share of off highway driving, road conditions and terrain change quickly.
And here we are. The first big obstacle, a steep down grade of sand and a stream crossing.
John gets part of the way down and notices the steep drop of into the stream. We have a lift kit and 34” tires but the closer we get the more obvious it is that we are not going to be making this crossing with the stream as high as it is. Time to turn around and get out of here.
Well that was fun. It was only fun because we got out. It would have been a different story if we couldn’t have.
We turned right at the T-intersection to head to Steel Bender, so we decide to try the leg of the road to see if we could get any farther than 100 yards.
Hey, a stream crossing we can manage without swamping the engines.
Turns out this road dead ends at private property. But looky up there! Caves! Here we go Candy and John, caves AND heights.
We get to the top and discover that the caves are big. There is evidence of an attempt at stabilization of the walls, ceiling and arches. You could see rebar, chicken wire, and some other material.
Look how tiny the Jeeps look.
There are holes drilled into the back of the cave walls that are reminiscent of test bore holes when miners are looking for something.
It is an obvious hangout spot for kids. There is some graffiti type drawing and some fairly good artwork too.
We are having such fun. Tomorrow we will hit a couple of trails that we know we can traverse.
