All good things must come to an end...

January 2nd was the last day of my Christmas vacation. We decided to squeeze a little more fun out of the holiday with a day trip to Moab, and we were delighted when our biking buddies Max, Maria, and Nico were able to come along. We went to an old favorite trail, Klondike Bluffs.

It's not a hard ride and it has some interesting features that make it a great ride. You start off on a dirt road, but before you get too far you get sucked in by a horrible sand trap. You're riding along and the bike gets slower and slower, the front wheel starts to swim around, and inevitably you're off the bike, trudging ankle deep in fine soft sand. Then there's another sand trap, but after that the surface is good.

The road winds along among squatty humps of red rock and then you get to the big rock slab. The entire slab is sloped, making for a gentle but constant climb; traction on the rock is outstanding. It's a big white rock, wrinkled with seams and pocked with craters, so that you might think for a moment that you're riding on the surface of the moon. In fact, Chris and I have ridden this trail at night under a full moon, with the white rock taking on a silvery glow while everything else disappeared in shadow.

Another cool feature about this rock - and the best part of the ride, if you ask Cailan - is the set of dinosaur footprints. There are many very distinct three-toed prints, maybe about 15 inches long to the end of the middle toe. Cailan had some ideas about which Jurassic carnivore might have made the prints, but I don't know what dinosaur was actually responsible.

After climbing maybe 2 miles on the rock slab, you're out on another dirt road, and spend another mile or so alternating rock and dirt. When the road ends, there's a bit of singletrack that climbs pretty steeply along the north-facing side of a hill. On this trip, much of it was covered with snow. We all did some pushing through the snow, but there were also parts we could ride.

Then the trail ends at a bike ride, which looks a little out of place this far out in the middle of the desert. The bike trail ends because this is the border of Arches National Park: no bikes allowed. But a quarter-mile hike over more of the white slabby rock brings you to an overlook with an amazing view. You sit on the white rock, which just in front of you drops away to form the walls of a sort of cul-de-sac canyon. On the far side of the drop of is more white rock and behind that the orangey red rock formations of Arches and behind that the snowy tops of the La Sal mountains. Ravens and swallows soar and swoop in the canyon as you eat a snack and soak up the sunshine and the brilliant sky.

The return trip is mostly downhill. On the way down the white rock becomes snow, and your bike can carve beautiful turns this way and that as you descend. And even though the temperature was just above 40 degrees, a certain member of our party couldn't resist the temptation of a pothole filled with melted snow:

After the ride we drove into Moab and gorged ourselves at Pasta Jay's, one of the only restaurants that stays open all day during the winter slow season. Then we had to hurry home so Chris and I could get to a dance rehearsal. The sun painted us a glorious goodbye in the rearview mirror as it settled below the red rocks.