Day 137 - Hummer Tour and Sand Storm

After a very windy night we all awoke to find that we’d managed to remain in the campsite and this was good because we needed to be at the Hummer pick up point by 08:15.

The 10 seater beast was driven by a skilled off-roading pro who took us to a nearby slick-rock course where he spent the next couple of hours demonstrating the power and ability of the 4 x 4 monster. We scaled 45% rocks no problem and later would scale a 60% one also. The driver showed us the, now closed as it is now on private property, Lion’s Back slope which was the scene of a famous video clip (Moab Crash in Youtube… we think) where the brakes went on a jeep going down the slope and the thing free rolled/ bounced down before falling off the edge about 30 feet or so – the couple survived! We traversed more rocky terrain, even speeding, in reverse, up one of the steep slopes at one point which was fun. We drove down “the wall” which was basically just that and the driver held the hummer in position as we all had our pictures taken sat in the nearly vertical vehicle. After this we had to give way to a precession of about 10 or more Jeeps that were all trying the drive up “the wall” and so we all watched them attempt, and eventually all succeed in climbing the rock. We also saw some dinosaur tracks along the route and even got to traverse the Baby Lion’s Back at the end of the two hours. Danny loved this tour and rated it as one of his travelling highlights. It was harder to discern whether or not Corrie enjoyed the tour as it is difficult to discern between a scream of joy and a scream of sheer terror!

The rest of the day was our own and everyone went off to do their own thing once more. The wind was strong again now and remained so for the rest of the afternoon with another powerful sand storm sweeping through; a lot of tents didn’t quite survive this one – ours did though! Corrie used this time to catch up on some beauty sleep and keep sheltered from the strong winds.

At 17:00 we all met up again as Damian had a surprise trip for us. We piled into the van and off we went. After a half hour or so we were asked to close our eyes for the next few minutes. Along the journey Danny couldn’t help but notice the faint whiff of southern fried chicken coming from the back of the van. When we stopped we all walked to the edge of a cliff where we could see the spectacular view of Dead Horse Point – considered one of the nicest views in the USA. We were lucky too as the sky had cleared from the earlier sand storm and so we had unobstructed views of the horizon.

Damian then asked Danny for a hand and the two of them shortly returned from the van with part two of the surprise: southern fried chicken, beans, veg, mashed potato, cake etc etc – yummy! After this we all went over to another view point where we watched the sunset for a while before going back to camp.