in which the Lamp Stand receives a new name, and our subjects are amazingly still able to ride on…

---

the day started with a trek to get some fresh water. we hiked a little ways up long canyon where there was a stream inlet that appeared not to be as silty as the rest of the stream. plunking the filter in we got 5 gallons before the filter wanted to be cleaned. as we were near the end of the trip, we figured the 5 gallons would do us. we then jumped in the truck and set off to the campsite and the mine.

there was an offspurt road before the road to the mine that we figured might get us to Lamp Stand, so, after parking the truck, we headed off to that. finally, we saw something that might, if you squinted, may have served as a Lamp Stand to some rancher at some time.

what is that in the background?

with a little bit of help, that is:

we hereby dub thee “The Gin Stand”!

obviously, someone thought others might need some help in seeing Lamp Stand as well and kindly left that help in the shade of a nearby rock. sop opened and sniffed, and it was indeed gin, so he took a swig:

not wanting to be shown up (i am an itsy-bitsy bit competetive), i went for it as well:

your results may vary.

we sobered up while biking along the burr trail, taking random side roads to hone our sand-riding skills, finally heading back to camp past the fields of desert cilantro:

(which is just a name sop made up when i was oohing over the scent - it really does smell like a sweet cilantro! - he had me convinced we could pick a bunch and sprinkle it over our dinner the night before.)

oh! then we decided to head into capitol reefer:

and we finally found a campsite between the park and notom sometime after dark.

in which we head out on our bikes once again, this time in search of the elusive Lamp Stand

---

the road right next to our camp at the cottonwood tree (as i type this i realize that i am sticking out my tongue in concentration; i am a lousy typist) is confusing. not that it is extremely winding or has a lot of side roads; it is confusing in that when you head out you feel like you are going downhill, but you have to pedal hard for the simple reason that you are actually going uphill. it makes for a nice treat when you are heading back to the tree, but it throws you off a bit when you are leaving.

on this day, we headed out on this gravity’s fool road through long canyon with a side road leading to an item noted as ‘Lamp Stand’ on the BLM map.

this part of the road starts out with about 6 miles of road winding through the canyon: massive cliffs and rock formations on either side. Then you head up over a rise and get to look down into this:

you can hang out at the long canyon overlook and watch the swallows catching air. in my next life i want to be a swallow and just cruise around catching breezes.

following the overlook, you get about 1 mile of steep downhill and then cruisey rolly hills. Five miles later, we took the dirt road for the Lamp Stand.

Now, let me insert a few comments on BLM maps here. First, i am very glad they are available. Second, in their effort to turn BLM maps into tourist maps, they have added icons at point of interest. These icons are perhaps a little large for the scale of the actual map. Looking at the map, it would seem that Lamp Stand, and an arch right next to it, should be visible from the dirt road we followed. Of course the icons covered approximately a square mile each of actual map space, so it maybe was a bit misleading…

the road to Lamp Stand, or something near Lamp Stand, is dirt and sand and FUN. and we got to our buddy Jack and a number of his relatives, also:

we found an old uranium mine and a cool camp site, but we did not find the Lamp Stand, even up on the rocks of a nearby mini-canyon:

where could that thing be?

oh, and i should mention that as my estimation of my fitness level had fallen considerably the day before i was very much NOT looking forward to going over the overlook again, but it was not nearly as brutal as i had feared. So much less brutal that it was quite a lot of fun.