Reply #19

feelings about that road. I always figured that if my brakes failed while traveling down hill at 80,000lbs I might start hugging/scraping the rock wall on the opposite side of the road since I knew I'd never clear all those curves and especially the big turn to the right about a mile up from the stop sign and the runaway ramp (though I had engine brakes on most of the rigs I drove back then, you still need your service brakes to stop). It's about a 7% grade with little to no warning at the top. I stopped and took a bunch of pictures at the top the second time I went that way. Glad I was trained well and started down in a really low gear and even more so as soon as I could see what was ahead.

It's beautiful country, I just wasn't thrilled about the grade and the way it was engineered and the signage was poor. Might be different these days but back in the day, twenty some years ago, it was pretty unnerving the first time down.

I bought a bunch of jewelry at the tribal swap meet tables near the bottom.

Since it was sort of a "shelf" roadbed I wonder how long it will take to put that back into working order. It's a ways from Page, quite a ways from Flagstaff and the only road to get from one to the other.