After having such a long day yesterday, I was slow to rise and get moving today. I finally woke up after my family had already been up for a while, and after breakfast I got busy. I washed both 4-wheelers, which were absolutely filthy after being ridden more than 300 miles about five weeks ago. That job alone took me whatever part of the morning was left after I slept the rest of it away. This afternoon I took my ATV for a ride to Straight Canyon in the Book Cliffs northeast of town. I’d already been there in November 2008, but it was well after the fall colors had gone and it wasn’t terribly scenic. Today was different.
I may have missed the best of the colors by a week or so, but there was still plenty of color in the canyon. I rode straight from Price and followed the nice gravel roads for most of the way to Straight Canyon, and I was surprised to see that one of the gas companies had improved part of the road. About three quarters of a mile of the old road was widened and graveled, but where the road turns north into the mouth of Straight Canyon, the gravel road branches off to the southeast. The rest of the road north into Straight Canyon is as rough as ever. Shortly after starting up the rough part of the road, I began seeing a lot of nice red and pink Rocky Mountain Maple. I stopped at the old cabin to take a few photos, then continued to the end of the road. The road ends in a stand of big Ponderosa Pine trees. The last time I was there, I didn’t explore much beyond the end of the road, but today I hiked up the canyon a bit more and enjoyed some even more colorful fall leaves. It was late enough in the day that the sun wasn’t hitting the bottom of the canyon, but the colors still stood out well. I placed a geocache there near a huge fallen tree, then walked back to the 4-wheeler and cruised back toward home.

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GPS Tracklog and Photo Waypoints (Google Earth .KMZ Format)

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