If you drive in a straight line the earth will start to fall away at the rate of about 8 inches per mile.
Now that may not seem like a lot but after just 10 miles in a place like this You’ll be in well over your head.
The Black Rock Playa is almost 30 miles Long from end to end. It is one of the largest completely flat
places on the planet. As cars drive on, or pass away behind you they drop over the horizon and disappear or appear like ships sailing in or out of port. Driving off the playa is like coming ashore.
You might need a place to stay when you hit land. Just up the road in Soldier Meadow is a first-come-first-served cabin sits, a guest ranch and plenty of dispersed camping..
If you follow the signs for Fly Canyon and High Rock Canyon, you’ll head southwest and through Fly Canyon
We recommend getting out of the car here for a bit.
Not much water flows through in any given year but tens of thousands of years ago there were great lakes, where now there’s only a see of dust.
Some of that water flowed through The Grotto swirling and filling and draining and seeping and now there’s this mini colosseum. A cozy show of sun of silence with shadows in the wings.
High Rock Lake is a lake in name only but it gets you to the Leadville Road and Lund’s Petrified Forest.
Fly Ranch is a private Ranch near Black Rock Playa. It contains a number of man made tufa springs formed by drilling for hot water that wasn’t hot enough. Contact Friends of the Black Rock High Rock for a tour.
The only way out is to sail back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day.
And that lead us back across the Playa for a quick driving lesson in the dying art of the manual transmission.
GPS Coordinates
Soldier Meadow: 41.37605, -119.17402
Fly Ranch: 40.85942, -119.33187
The Grotto: 41.31624, -119.27266
Lund’s Petrified Forest: 41.16033, -119.39151
Leadville Mine: 41.09860, -119.40265
High Rock Ruins: 41.29951, -119.29667
Happy Trails,
-M
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