Over to Western Colorado and Up to Salt Lake City

 On Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake

After our early morning hike in Arches we hit the road, heading east to tiny Crawford, Colorado. Along with a sweet visit with old friends who retired there from Santa Cruz nearly 20 years ago, we were delighted by all sorts of surprises. 

Crawford shares a pretty farming and ranching valley with Paonia and Hotchkiss tucked into a high, dry landscape and nestled against the Grand Mesa and the West Elk Mountains. Yaks are among the livestock in the neighborhood.

The fields, orchards, and forests are quite a change from the the rocks, cliffs, and canyons of southern Utah, but in Crawford's back pocket is the steep, deep Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Our friend Elena sprinted us to the rim of the canyon for a sunset picnic and we've put more exploring in that area on our long to-do-next-time list.

We got the bikes out for a ride that we figured would be a little jaunt out a gravel road past an outcropping called Needle Rock.

When we started climbing the 4wd track we kept tasting a potential summit and views and didn't want to quit. 

Very cool to reach the aspens, a kind of confirmation of getting into the Rockies.

Reaching the true summit is on that to-do-next-time list, but we got up to where we had some fine views.

Paonia has a riverside park where you can find some particularly fine ironwork by Ira Houseweart. This guy takes the time for details that reward really looking. Harlan had fresh eyes for the care in this work since he's been learning to weld this year.

I like how the roof supports echo the trees in the background:

One could just throw down a concrete ramp, but this is so much more fun:

From Crawford to Salt Lake City next, and one day there to explore Antelope Island. It doesn't look much like an island anymore, I guess, from a satellite view.

We rode our bikes out the flat, windy seven-mile causeway at the north of the island, then poked around that north end some on quiet paved roads and a nice rolling dirt loop.

It's bigger and hillier than I expected, and there are, of all things, bison scattered around--it took a bit to realize the big brown bumps aren't rocks. Signs scold visitors to stay clear of them, they are not friendly, so this is not such a great photo, but you get the idea:

Back then across the causeway with a nice quartering tailwind, and back across it again with our bathing suits. Wind had picked up, with impressive walls of dust that appeared to come off the lake (!), but we joined a few others making the long walk through what felt like sandblasting to the water's edge far away.

 

There were whitecaps right to the beach. 

It was much too shallow to swim, but wading in just deep enough to squat, you can lie back and you find that the waves don't break over you but push your head up, while your feet come right up to the surface. Here's Harlan getting a sense of what it feels like to be driftwood:

From SLC we pretty much booked homeward, but we did stop at the highway rest stop by the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I can't resist leaving you here with this link to a recent piece in the New Yorker, in case you missed it: "Behold, I Have Returned from a Hike."