Day 15 (June 24) was probably the best day of the trip so far.  We had built the plan for this father/son excursion around the idea that we wanted to ride the White Rim Trail and today we completed the rather epic trip!

We started the day by trying to eat a good breakfast...carb loading with pancakes, oatmeal and some cereal.  We filled our camelbacks with ice water and brought two extra small water bottles each.  We even filled up on gatorade prior to leaving camp.  We had the GPS, a pretty robust first aid kit and some tools in case we had mechanical trouble.  Thankfully we didn't need any of it except the water.

The ride from our campground to the start of the WRT was 21 miles of asphalt driving through some very nice scenery on the road to Canyonlands NP.  The first 4 miles of the trail is actually Shafer Road which was built in the 1950's to haul uranium ore out of the canyon bottoms.  Fairly good road, but it edged along a 1,500 foot dropoff so we hugged the right side and were very wary of any vehicles coming up the other way.  The switchbacks in the road as it dropped to the white rim (literally a whitish rock layer that the trail follows around the whole park) are dramatic and we took them slow of course.  A great introduction to the rest of the day.

The trail then alternated between kind of fun trail riding on a packed dual track "road" and rather tense movement around the very edge of canyons dropping of 200-500 feet right next to the road. 

 Just when we'd get some speed up, we'd come around a curve and be right on the edge of some abyss!  We constantly had to keep our concentration.  We saw some great scenery including several arches...you can see Ben on top of the Mussleman Arch.

  We met a couple of guys who were driving a Land Rover around the trail and twice we saw them with their hood up adding coolant...they were friendly, but seemed like they should be heading to a Green Day concert rather than nursing their SUV through some of the most rugged terrain we've ever seen.  Flip flops, board shorts and a Justin Timberlake-like floppy hat must be the expedition wear this year.

We had to climb out on Horsethief Trail which was almost as dramatic as how we first started the trail.  By the time we hit pavement again (103 miles) we were pretty wiped out.  We rode back to camp, cleaned up and then went in to Moab for a well deserved pizza.  Great, great day of adventure.