The travels of the Rambling Roses: Riding with Buddy to Castle Valley. July 8 - 9 Look at this again, because we added the dinasaur pictures!

July 8-----31.91 in 2:45. I took a bike ride with my boy today, for the first time since Key West in December. We took a route that we both knew, to check out how Pam's bike was going to work for him, if he is going to ride with me when we leave Moab. If it wasn't going to work, we were going to look for a demo bike in one of the many bike shops in Moab. It seemed to work pretty well, except for the power grips on the pedals being tight on his foot. We had good weather, and a nice father/son ride

July 9 after running around town for a while, Pam and I headed out to the Manti La Sal National Forest, and Buddy went swimming in the Colorado with some new friends. We headed up into the high country south of Moab to beat the heat and to check out a couple of things a local banker told us about. We went WAY up into the la Sal mountains, which has peaks of nearly 13000 ft. Even though we weren't that high, it was definitely cooler, and we wanted to check out a 'gravity hill'. I don't believe in some things such as this, so when we coasted uphill and needed the gas to go down hill in this half mile section, I really studied it, and tried to figure out the optical illusion. I couldn't convince my eyes of what I knew to be true, and it really seemed that we were coasting uphill. We even turned around and did it again, and it was still very convincing. We were coasting uphill! Well after much mental debate between fact and illusion, I looked on the Internet,, and was assured it WAS an optical illusion, but man, Pam and I could not see it.! It was a really cool thing to experience, and I learned this illusion was repeated in several places around the country, including Bedford PA. The second thing we went looking for, which was harder to find, were some dinosaur tracks that are out in the mountains, only known to locals. We did find them, with help from a google search, and took some pictures. I figure the tracks are real, since there were so many, and there are many others in the area. They are three toed tracks, and they are very near a very steep drop off, but it probably wasn't a drop off when the tracks were laid, back in the day. Take a look at the pictures, and see what you think. I have more off a tendency to believe they are real, more so than gravity hill. Afterwards we met Buddy at a restaurant called Eddie McStiffs, and we got a great discount on food and drinks, thanks to Buds new friend, who is manager of the place.

On the following pictures of the dinosaur footprint, I tried to outline it in red.

This is where we found the tracks - it looks like they just ran off the cliff. But, we know that the land shifted and changed a lot since they walk here.