Create Your Own Adventure

🚵 New connecting trail in town.

Kokopelli trail system has been one of our favorite trial systems that we’ve been coming back to over and over since 2020.

Just recently the new connecting trail called “Saddle up” has been added. This trail now connects the main trailhead parking lot with two frequently visited trails, Rustlers and Mary’s.

What a great addition! If you’re like us, we’ve ridden up and down the service road many times and even though everyone that we’ve encountered on that portion of the road has been respectful and shared the road properly, we are thankful for the new trail.

Saddle up connecting trail is so good for a few other reasons other than not having to ride the service road; a great short warm up before hitting Mary’s 180’ climb off the start or the climb to Rustlers loop, awesome views of the valley and near by trails.

Thank you to all involved that cut this trial in!

To learn more and support Copmoba ⬇️⬇️ link in the comments below.

It’s warming up at Mojave National Preserve. Snakes and lizards are already active, and desert tortoises are beginning to emerge from their burrows.
This is the time of year when we start seeing them on park roads. And every year, some of them are killed by vehicles. Desert tortoises can live for decades in one of the harshest environments in North America. They survive drought, predators, and extreme heat. What they can’t survive is a car moving too fast to stop.

Please slow down and watch the road carefully! Tortoises can be small, low to the ground, and hard to see until it’s too late.

Mojave National Preserve exists to protect species like the desert tortoise. A few extra seconds of caution can make all the difference.

Just when we think how can views get possibly any better out west?!

🏜️ Canyonlands views are amazing even on a cloudy day.

We would love to drive the Shafer Trail but after looking at the trail from up close, we’ve come to a conclusion that our RAM3500 dually truck with a long bed isn’t going to work due to its size.

On the other hand our little Abarth wouldn’t work because it’s too low to the ground. 🤪

But we do have a choice of renting a Jeep and drive this road properly if we choose to that. So we might just do that before we leave the area.

About Shafer Trail:
“The road below you hugs the walls of Shafer
Canyon as it quickly drops 1,400 feet (427 meters). Today the Shafer Trail provides access to Canyonlands backcountry and the 100-mile White Rim Road. Travelers who descend these switchbacks continue a legacy of exploration and survival as they follow historic pathways through the desert canyons,Long ago, native people likely used this route to travel from the mesa to the Colorado River. In the carly 1900s, ranchers drove livestock on it.
Back then, the route was narrower and much more rugged. Animals sometimes slipped to their deaths. Imagine coaxing several hundred sheep along this path to find shelter in the canyons below orto graze in the grasslands above.”

Have you traveled the Shafer Trail?

Dom & Kyra ❤️
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