Ride 1 Monolith Gardens

Wow Wow Wow, a real trip of a lifetime pulled together this week. With a ticket to Rampage in Virgin Utah I had the opportunity to travel to and from with lots of riding opportunity in between! I had absolute freedom to pick and choose the next 4 days, the only certain thing was Rampage from 10-3 on Friday. I heade out eagerly after my Mother in law flew in to take care of my son while I would be gone. I must say I felt pretty selfish putting this together but his Grandma absolutely adores Landon and she has lot of paid time off and she was happy to do it. As I loaded up the truck with all my gear I could not believe this was really happening, I manged to squeeze both bikes in the cab of my tacoma pretty nicely by the way! This made for excelletn security while I was away on one bike or leaving the car parked with both bikes. So I set off by 11:30am and up I went thru Phoenix and on to Kingman Arizona where my first ride would be at Monolith Gardens. I knew nothing much about the place othere than it was about halfway between Gilbert and St George. After a sight filled drive I arrived by 3pm and eagerly got the Trek Superfly ready to go. The landscape was very very cool. A geology person could probably describe it in detail but for me it was absolutely pleasing. You start off in a series of valleys with large rock and small cliffs. It's higher desert with lots of small cactus. The trails was swoopy and rocky and smooth in the beginning. As I climbed it became quite rocky, a bit shaky for the rigid but managing just fine. The scenery opened up and could see various features as I went about. This was becoming quite the scenic ride as it went on, climbing higher and higher it was spectacular. Once I reached the tip top I had to detour a trail closed blockage, lame but I had another option. I was finally going downhill and it was pretty good, a bit chunky for my Trek but managing just fine, then I made my way back to the rim trail and descended some more. Then a short climb thru a nice area and a few mellow loops and back to the car. As I look back at it this was a very good ride, with better scenery than the trail which is just fine. I later found out the multiple trail blocks were from a race coming up, kind of lame they set up the markings before the event so someone thinks the trail is closed who doesn't know better. With some riding done I could now relax a bit and enjoy the drive thru Vegas which was amazing country as the Southwest is. I still could not believe this was all happening, so happy to be on my own and a few days of adventure.