Saturday, June 28, 2008
Today Amanda and I went up on the Uncompahgre Plateau to do a little exploring. Last year I had driven across the plateau on it’s main road (Divide Road), so this time we started checking out some of the 4WD roads on the northeast corner of the plateau.
We accessed the plateau through Jacks Canyon and Divide Road, but quickly turned off the main road and headed towards Dominguez Canyon. We skirted around the canyon as it is a wilderness area and ended up on top of Dominguez Ridge. We were on some two tracks that don’t seem to be well travelled.
There were a number of wildflowers growing all over Dominguez Ridge
From Dominguez Ridge we crossed over onto Brushy Ridge.
View towards Brush Mountain
Brushy Ridge led us down into Palmer Gulch
Palmer Gulch brought us down into Escalante Canyon.
Escalante Creek
On our way down Escalante canyon we came across a couple of historic cabins. The first one belonged to Captain Henry Smith and was built in 1907. This cabin was built up against a large rock and his bed area inside the cabin was carved out of that rock.
The cabin built up against the large rock
Bed area carved out of the rock
A little further down the road we came across the Walker Cabin which was built in 1911.
After visiting the cabins we finally made our way back to US 50. We stopped in Delta for a late lunch and then headed back to Grand Junction in the 99 degree heat.