Images from our second day in Moab, Utah for the 58th annual Easter Jeep Safari.
by Matt Konkle
Managing Editor
MOAB, Utah — Klondike Bluffs Trail System northwest of Moab straddles the very western edge of Arches National Park. And while Arches is known for all kinds of amazing rock formations, Klondike Bluffs is easily known for its many dinosaur footprints embedded in sheetrock.
In fact, we cruised up with Tread Lightly! during last year's Easter Jeep Safari and helped load wood planks for trip after trip into the trail to stage for a fence-building event to help prevent damage to those footprints.
Well, shortly after we arrived for the 58th annual EJS, Tread Lightly! asked us to hang out on Klondike for a bit on Sunday and take a look at how the fencing was doing. So we decided to tag along so we could also do some additional product photography at the same time.
Klondike isn't a wild, Moab bump your way to the top trail. It does have sheetrock sections that feature some small ledges as well as some other dips, but for the most part, it is more of a scenic experience. At least, for the section we've done up to the dinosaur tracks.
Additionally, our photographer Doug has never been on this trail and he loves historical things, so we wanted him to take a look at these footprints to get that 'out of off-road' Moab experience.
Of course, with plenty of new products featured on our two Moab vehicles this year, we did need to keep building that photography folder, so we staged our JTe and JT in different locations to show off our new Lost Canyon Gladiator bed rack, as well as feature our Res-Q recovery straps, boards and recovery kits.
After a few hours, we felt we had accomplished most of our weekend goals and were ready to attack the full EJS experience starting Monday, with a planned run on Flat Iron Mesa.
However, the time spent walking around scores of dinosaur footprints during the day got our video manager, Rob Jarrell, thinking about heading over to Mill Creek Canyon to visit the Dinosaur Interpretive Site. Mill Creek lies about 15 miles north of Moab and offers a look at preserved bones from the Early Cretaceous period — approximately 112 million years ago.
The trail itself winds around ledges of sheetrock and contains over 200 tracks and traces, and plenty of fossilized bones representing at least ten different types of animals, including nonavian theropods, sauropods, ornithopods, ankylosaurs, birds, and crocodiles.
From reading the numerous informative placards, it seemed Camarasaurus served up the most bones in this location. Camarasaurus was a very large, heavy-bodied, four-footed saurischian (lizard-hipped), plant-eating dinosaur. It had a short skull with a blunt snout and a fairly long neck and tail. Camarasaurus grew to an average length of 59 feet and the four pillar-like legs may have supported a weight of nearly 20 tons.
It may not seem like a big thing, especially with all the off-roading Moab has to offer, but staring at those placards and seeing them call out stuff that happened 150 million years ago just is mind blowing.
You can head out to Moab for years as an adventure location and never realize just how much history this place has to offer.
