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Show The Pavement ends #3 THE ROAD TO/FROM NOWHERE About 27 miles south of Moab on US 191, Wilson Arch towers above the highway, tourists slam on their brakes in the middle of the road, and locals like me swear and curse at them and wish it was \legal to travel with proton torpedoes mounted to the front bumper. Just before the arch, however, as you travel south, the old right-of-way veers to the southwest. The road, out of use for more than 40 years is returning to Nature. The asphalt is crumbling, the rabbitbrush grows along the fades centerline, the edges of the highway are breaking off and disintegrating. But for .6 mile, the highway is inexplicably paved, complete with fog and center lines. Then, as suddenly as it began, the pavement end and the old highway reappears. An aerial view shows the new pavement clearly. We're bewildered. The highway that starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and ends nowhere. If only AL roads were like this... #2: THE CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK PINYON/JJUNIPER GRAVEYARD Note old road alignment at Ieft. The graveyard near the Green River Overlook. Before the early 1980s, when the road to Grandview Point was still a narrow dirt track, the trip was dusty and slow. One of the reasons the trip took so long was because it was rocky and rutted and you couldn’t go very fast without rattling all your teeth loose. Another reason why it took so long is because the road went around trees and followed the topography of the terrain instead of going through it (and them). Of course, when the NPS finally and reluctantly paved the road, it took out most of the curves and leveled the dips and humps. 2. : As for all the juniper and pinyons that the new highway went through, they ended up . : Hes co eeaa . : The massacred pinyon/ JESIpers COW control pedestrian traffic at Island in the Sky trailheads. at the end of a service road near the Green River Overlook. The Tree Graveyard used to be much larger; in fact, it covered several acres. Now, in fact, the NPS is using the same trees it killed as protective fences at overlooks to regulate pedestrian traffic! So over the last two decades, the pile has been reduced somewhat, but the graveyard still speaks volumes about modern highways and the ease of travel in the 21st Century. |