Four Wheel Drive Road
Yes, that's its name. It's just the Arches Four Wheel Drive Road. Even the rangers
at the visitor center didn't know what its actual recorded name is. This was my third
attempt at exploring this road. Randy and I took off down this road in 2001, getting a
flat tire for our efforts (on the easy gravel section, no less.) Linda and I took a look at the
very first obstacle of sandstone shelf in 2007 and decided that the Liberty just wasn't up
to the task just yet. Well, the time had come and the skid plates had been installed,
so it was time to fish or cut bait. We headed off along the Arches Four Wheel Drive Road.
This is the easy part, heading north along the washboard Salt Valley Road.
At this point, we turn west, along this sandy track leading towards The Marching Men.
The Marching Men.
The Liberty poses with the Marching Men as a backdrop.
Sandstone shelves that made the first part of the road a bit challenging.
The white streaks are from vehicles that didn't have a good breakover angle.
Our only problem came at this point, as we got stuck in a sandy uphill section. I broke out the entrenching tool and dug out around the
tires. Linda then backed off the dune onto slickrock, gunned it and caught air going over the top (well, it sure seemed that way.)
More shelves.
This was a fun rock to drive over, as Linda couldn't see me spotting for her over the hood of the Jeep. It was near this spot that a northbound Wranger driver warned us that we should probably turn around because he didn't think we'd make it through the sandy parts of the road...I mean, come on, it's a woman driving a Liberty. He then saw that we had our tires aired down and decided that maybe, just maybe, we might know what we're doing.
Up and out of the sandy wash. This road would be impassable after a good rain (which they appeared to be getting off in the
distance...it was one of the reasons we kept driving and didn't do any hiking at any of the rock formations along the route).
We followed the decked out Wranger that had passed us up on the Salt Valley Road eralier. We assumed they knew where they were going. We found out later, after dumping the GPS data into the laptop, that we had strayed off the trail and briefly out of the park before veering back on course.
Eye of the Whale Arch.
It was near here that we saw a northbound rental Jeep Cherokee and a foreign driver who didn't understand my warning about the
deep sand and rock ledges in store for him ahead. We later saw that he turned around and was heading back towards civilization.
The only evidence of a name to this road.
The road comes out very close to where writer Edward Abbey's trailer was located when he was a seasonal ranger here in the early '60s.
Our skid plates acted as scoops when we went through the deep sand. We were leaving a little trail of red sand everywhere we went. I scooped a whole gallon ziploc bag full of the stuff. When we returned to the visitor center the next day we asked the ranger if we needed to return the sand, lest we be in violation of the Antiquities Act of 1906...he said we were in the clear.
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