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To The End Of The World LbNA #8142

Owner:Adoptable
Plant date:May 1, 2004
Location:
City:Blanding
County:San Juan
State:Utah
Boxes:1
Planted by:y-nought
Found by: terpsechorean girl
Last found:Apr 10, 2013
Status:FFFFFF
Last edited:May 1, 2004
Finding this Letterbox involves steep hiking off trail over slick-rock sandstone. Elevation gain is about 450 feet in 1/2 of a mile each way. Take plenty of water and be wary of cacti, snakes, large cracks in the earth's crust etc.

Comb Ridge is a continuous spine of sandstone running 100 miles from the Abajo Mountains of Southeastern Utah to Kayenta, Arizona. In that distance it's eastern sheer cliff face is nearly unbroken and the ancient Puebloans carved steps in it so they could travel between the many settlements in the area. At one time several thousand Anasazi lived here. Now, most of the people here are just passing through, staying only a short time to experience the rich beauty of this landscape.

It was a Saturday and after a quick stop at work my sons, Elros (11) and Dark Side of the Moon (14), and I needed to get away. We were on our way to camp at Natural Bridges National Monument and then explore a nearby slot canyon on Sunday. Mostly we just wanted to walk around in the desert, away from phones, television, and "to-do lists". We drove west on highway 95 from Shirt Tail Country Store south of Blanding. Ten miles in, about where the turn-off to Butler Wash Indian Ruins is, we saw a familiar stone pillar (hoodoo), on a high point of Comb Ridge. You can see it clearly coming from either direction and we had been thinking of going up there for more than a year. The allure finally won out and we pulled off the road just after mile marker 110. It is the only good pull-out and it is about a mile northeast of where the highway cuts through the ridge.

We saw the hoodoo at 265 degrees but took a faint trail heading closer to 255 up onto a domed ridge. It is best to stay up on the slickrock and avoid crushing the fragile cryptobiotic soil crust. After the dome meets the steeper part of the ridge we shot for a gap to the right of the hoodoo at 315 degrees. This is steep and tricky and there are many ways to go, as well as many ways you can't go.

Once we got into the gap we climbed to the hoodoo and found a geocache. I guess we weren't the only ones who couldn't resist this spot. From the northeast side of the hoodoo we looked at the other blocky high point at 345 degrees. On the lower left of that cliff face is a row of pockets. Below and to the left of those we put the letterbox in a nook behind a rock. Be careful as you peek over the edge to see the highway directly below you descending into Comb Wash toward Mule Canyon.

I thought about how this hoodoo was watching over these valleys when the Anasazi were growing corn here. And the hoodoo will probably be here when the highway crumbles back into the sand. We can glimpse eternity out here on these dry rocks, laid down grain by grain in some ancient sea bed. Perhaps the Anasazi felt the same way, bringing their children up here to shake off the cobwebs of daily life.

This letterbox is named "To The End Of The World" after a Pat Metheny song that we listened to before we planted it. What would you name it?