Leslie and David's Wanderings: 15 May 2021 Park Row from the back door

Man, are we getting tired of the 40 mile drive to Moab! There was one trail in Arches we still wanted to hike. Its called Park Row trail. It runs along the bottom of a canyon with massive red rock buttes and fins running down both sides. Being the weekend, we knew we needed to be there early, but we got a slow start and reached the entrance to Arches NP at 9am. Only to find it was closed already for maximum capacity! So we decided to try another trail we had seen along the Colorado River called Grandstaff. It had great reviews on Alltrails. But when we pulled up to the parking lot at the trailhead, it was full as was the overflow parking across the road. Damn! So we decided to explore some of the dirt roads off US191 north of Arches NP. We turned off on to Mill Canyon road and followed it. To the junction with Cotter Mine Road. There we read the information board and looking at the map, we decided to take Cotter Mine Road instead of Mill Canyon. A little ways up Cotter Mine Road we found the dinosaur tracks exhibit. First found in 2009, the exhibit is of a variety of dinosaur tracks dating back 116 million years. The area was a shallow lake and apparently a gathering area for at least 20 different types of dinosaurs. Some of the tracks are easy to discern in the rock, others were not very visible. A bit further down the road, we came to the ruins of Upper Courthouse Station, which is where the stagecoach from Moab to Thompson Springs would stop. Beautiful place for a stage stop! We continued down Cotter Mine Road until it dropped us back on US191. Heading north on US191, we turned off onto Willow Springs Trail since we had noticed a lot of people boon docking off this road. We were surprised at how many people were camping back in the area with everything from Big Class A Motor Homes to little pod trailers. The road was actually in pretty good shape, but we would not be pulling the Wanderer down it. We followed the road until we came to the Willow Springs Dinosaur Tracksite. We had to crawl over the exposed slickrock until we reached the parking area. But if you came to Moab with a 4x4, you have to do some slick rock crawling at some point! We parked and walked the exposed bedrock with various dinosaur tracks embedded in the bedrock. These dino tracks were supposedly 165 million years old. At this point, David realized we were only a couple of hundred yards from one of the back entrances to Arches NP! But those last couple hundred yards were rough with some pretty big drop offs. We just dropped the Behemoth into 4 low and crawled our way over it with ease. The first ½ mile in the park was equally rough road, but the Behemoth handled it with no issues. David was more worried about the tires, not being off road rates, than the ability of the Behemoth to crawl over the rock ledges. Then we were on a nice sand road. We picked a point with a really nice view and stopped to eat lunch while admiring the view out over the Salt Valley. We then continued until we reached the main paved road in Arches NP. We giggled about having snuck in the backdoor to the park! We decided we could still do the Park Row trail and drove down to the Courthouse Rock overlook and parked there. Turns out, this was the perfect place to start this trail from since you would be going up hill on the way out and down hill on the way back and the parking was wide open. The sun was high overhead and between the sun beating on us from above, and the radiated heat from the rock walls and floor of the canyon, it was hot! Park Row Trail (2.2 miles, 422 feet of elevation gain) follows the dry bed of the canyon bottom with massive red stone buttes and fins on each side. The canyon walls were magnificent as we walked past the Three Gossips stone formation and up the canyon. Most of the canyon floor is exposed slick rock and the erosion marks in the rock were very pretty. At one point it cuts through a sandstone rock formation and the erosion left beautiful swirling grain in the rock. We walked until we reached the climb to the parking lot at the other end of the canyon before turning around and returning the way we came. This is a beautiful hike! Leslie became a little overheated, so we took our time going back, but there was no shade to be found to cool off in. Back at the Behemoth we turned the air conditioner on MAX and left it that way for most of the ride back to the Wanderer. As we drove past the main entrance fee station, the line to get into the park stretched for over a mile. We just thumbed our noses at the fee station and grinned ear-to-ear!