It rained during the night and into the morning. Yes, it’s nice to be camping in a trailer and not in a tent!
We spent the morning doing nothing, and we did it well. Come afternoon, after a few hours at the public library where the cell coverage was better than camp, we proceeded on to Zion Vineyards winery…
… for a a bit of a pricy wine tasting.
After our tastings, we chose a couple of pricy bottles to purchase…
…one for tonight’s steak dinner and one to enjoy at home.
I’m sure that this Zion Vineyards wine will be an improvement over our Spanish box wine for tonight’s dinner.
But such was not to be. The wife decided she didn’t want good wine for our City Market (Kroger) bacon-wrapped steaks, so the bottles will go into trailer storage, perhaps not to be consumed until we get back to Colorado.
Yes, we had our bacon-wrapped fillets with boxed Spanish wine.
It’s Sunday, our second full day in Hurricane, and we set out to explore the Candy Cliffs area of Yant Flat. For directions to the trailhead, I had previously downloaded an online write-up. They proved to be reasonably accurate.
From the trailhead, we hiked up an old Jeep road now closed to motorized traffic. Along the way, we passed numerous prickly pear cacti in bloom…
…yucca getting ready to bloom…
…and some claret cup hedgehog cacti beginning to display a spiny bouquet of intense scarlet blossoms.
We only hiked as far as the Yant Flats overlook.
We could have descended down into this colorful country, but one member of our party elected not to do it.
Getting old is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Instead of venturing downward, we headed back to the truck through this beautiful but sandy country.
We packed up, unhooked and were soon on our way down Scenic Utah Highway 12 from Escalante toward our next stop in Hurricane, Utah.
Since we couldn’t take the trailer through Zion, we made a roundabout trip across the northern tip of northern Arizona and back into Utah through the polygamous havens of Short Creek, Arizona, and Hilldale, Utah. Short Creek (now named Colorado City) was the former home of Warren Jeffs, the convicted child sex offender and president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous cult based in Arizona.
With only the one wife I came with, we left Short Creek and continued north to the KOA in Hurricane, Utah.
I’m not a big fan of commercial RV parks where rigs are packed together tighter than sardines in a can, and this was one of them.
We were assigned a site at the end of a row, which looked ideal on the map, but it had a bad slant to it.
Even with three or four blocks under the low-side wheels, the trailer was still not level.
Wife was not happy, and as all of us married guys know
unhappy wife = unhappy life.
We talked to a park honcho and the next morning we got to move to a far better site.
We were going to drive the Hell’s Backbone backcountry road today, but after yesterday’s fun on the washboards, we decided to Hell with it and just hung around camp. Dianne worked on her LifeVantage business while I topped up the truck tires (we lowered them yesterday to provide a softer ride on the washboards). I used the 12-volt air pump I bought at Canada Tire nine years ago. The pump I bought last year at Amazon doesn’t work now.
We then drove to dinner at another of our favorite Utah restaurants, this one located in Boulder, Utah.
The latest reservation we could get was for 4:15 in the afternoon, and it definitely wasn’t crowded.
I had braised bison while Dianne had a salad and lamb skewers. We enjoyed all this with a bottle of red wine from the Douro Valley of Portugal. All was very tasty.
While the meal was all a bit pricey, we really don’t mind spending the kids’ (we don’t have any) inheritance on our own self indulgence.
Heading back into Escalante, we made a brief stop at the Hole in the Rock Heritage Center. Here, Dianne demonstrated that the covered wagons like the Hole in the Rock party used were narrow enough to make it through the top portion of the route down the cliffs, which we explored yesterday.
Back at camp, we finished our bottle of wine while watching ducks and geese swim in the reservoir.
Today was the day we would drive the 55.3-mile route to the Hole in the Rock.
In the late 1870s, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (Mormons) decided they needed more of their members to colonize the area that is now southeast Utah. Volunteers were conscripted and an expedition of 200 people, 83 wagons and over 1,000 head of cattle began their trek toward what is now the Four Corners area.
They had two proven routes to get there. They could go south into what is now northern Arizona and cross the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. Unfortunately, the local Native Americans did not look kindly toward folks passing through their lands.
A second alternative was to head north and cross the Colorado River in Moab, but that was deemed to be too lengthy a route.
So, the group looked at a third alternative. They would head for the town of Escalante and go south from there on a totally unproven route. Dianne and I would spend the day retracing that route.
On the first part of their journey from Escalante, the Mormon pioneers followed an existing trail used by the locals. I’m not sure how smooth their route was, but our route required traversing what some experts claim is the worst washboard road in the state of Utah.
Go slow and the truck vibrated so badly, I feared my tooth fillings might fall out. Go fast and I more smoothly bounced over the humps. Unfortunately, I then had no steering control.
On the left side of the road, we saw herds of local wildlife (slow elk, as Ed Abbey called them) feeding beside the roadway.
On the right side of the road stretched the cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau.
At around the halfway point on our drive, we reached Dance Hall Rock, a large sandstone alcove, where the LDS pioneers played music and held dances.
The roadway crosses a number of deep washes requiring one to traverse steep ups and downs. Out here in the 1960s, brake failure on a truck resulted in the death of 13 members on a Boy Scout outing. A roadside monument commemorates their passing.
While the first part of the graded road was easy enough for most any vehicle with high clearance, good tires and decent shock absorbers, the last seven miles become a bit rougher requiring high clearance 4×4.
Finally, the road ends at this gap in the cliffs known as the Hole in the Rock.
The Colorado River flows 2,000 feet below the cliffs at road’s end. Here, the Mormon pioneers found a narrow gap in the rock face (the “hole”) that with a little modification could be used to lower the wagons down to the river.
It’s steep and about an arm’s width narrow at the top.
Given the choice of riding in the wagons as they were lowered down or just walking, I suspect the majority of the pioneers chose to descend on their own two feet.
At the bottom, the pioneers built rafts and ferried the wagons across what then just a river. From there, they continued overland until they got to the site of Bluff where they said “that’s enough” and settled down. Today, the diminishing waters of Powell Reservoir fill the canyon bottom where the Colorado River once flowed.
I wonder if the folks on the houseboat passing by realized what they were looking at as they passed the Hole in the Rock.
After a lazy morning in camp, we finally set off for today’s hike – a seven mile stroll to lower Calf Creek Falls. Our first obstacle was finding a place to park.
Something tells me we won’t be alone on the trail.
Other than being a bit sandy, the trail was well defined and easy to follow. Cliff faces towered on either side…
…with beaver dams in the stream below.
A guide we got from the Esalante-Grand Staircase visitor center helped us find some pictographs from the Fremont Culture on the cliffs across the valley.
Finally, we arrived at Calf Creek Falls…
…a sight we shared with a wild turkey who was not shy around humans.
On the trip back, we were treated to the canyon’s naked cliffs blushing in the sunset light.
Finally, at the end of a 7+ mile hike, we found our truck patiently waiting for us in a now empty parking lot.
Back at camp, we dined on chips and salsa while looking across the still waters of the reservoir.
After a fantastic breakfast of spoon-size shredded wheat and formerly frozen blueberries, we packed the truck, hitched up the trailer and set off for Escalante. We stopped at one scenic overlook on the way and gazed down on the land of sandstone. This is a drive I’ve made many, many times before.
It took almost three hours to cover the 110-mile distance. I love pulling a trailer over the mountains (no I don’t).
We checked into Escalante Petrified Forest State Park and after getting the trailer set up, downed beer and a bowl of popcorn while gazing at 130 acres of choppy water.
Our site looks down on Wide Hollow Reservoir, which is teaming with ducks and squawking geese. While the weather seems a bit iffy, only 1/100th of an inch of rain is predicted to fall tonight. It may not be fun pulling the trailer, but once again, we’re thankful to not be camping in a tent.
Tomorrow, it’s off to work (weather permitting). I’ve got several back-of-beyond roads around here that I want to cover for Utah Life Magazine, which would make this portion of our adventure a tax-deductable business trip.
NASA astronauts are heading back to the moon and so are we. We got up well before the sun, brewed a pot of coffee, tossed cameras in the truck and blasted off for another landing at Moonscape Overlook. Our goal was to shoot the moonscape again, this time with early morning lighting.
On the way there, we stopped for some shots of the sunrise light bathing Factory Butte in blushing orange.
A few turns later, we reached Moonscape Overlook, which was now teaming with humans. Up on the hill sat a trio of Earth Roamers (very expensive off-road motor homes). Two had Colorado plates. The third was from Ontario, Canada.
In the morning’s sub-40 temperatures, we wandered around the cliff-top rim, shooting photos of the the dark rolling terrain below, which appeared to be totally devoid of plant life.
Some people might call this an ugly wasteland…
…but I find it strangely beautiful.
After a few hundred shots, we finally escaped the cold by crawling back into the truck and beginning our retreat to civilization. Our route ran beside the Factory Butte Special Resource Management Area, which is essentially a big adult sandbox for ATV/OHV owners. I wish these folks would just play with their toys out here where it’s legal and not go tearing up the outlying terrain where it’s not. But then, the rules, as we know, don’t apply to everyone.
Back in Hanksville, we celebrated Easter Sunday with breakfast at Duke’s Slickhorn Grill. I opted for steak and Easter eggs (over easy) while Dianne opted for flapjacks and Easter eggs scrambled.
Could this be why we never lose weight on camping trips?
Saturday offered another lazy day. After spending the morning in the trailer, we finally got out for a short walk, heading over to check out Carl’s Critter Garden.
The roadside lot contains an artistic sculpture garden of objects made from refuse. Some depict local animals…
…others feature humans…
…and some are just artistic hodgepodges depicting who knows what.
After our immersion into the Hanksville art scene, we decided to take a spin up into the nearby Henry Mountains.
The graded gravel road from town was wide and smooth at the beginning, but the higher we progressed, the larger and angrier the gravel got. With the road surface becoming wife-annoyingly rough, we turned around and headed back to town. Next time, we’ll take the Subaru instead of our 4×4 Nissan Pro 4X off-road pickup truck.
Returning to camp, we faced a serious question about our future. We could either dine tonight on Dianne-cooked spaghetti in the trailer with wine from a box, or we could drop into Duke’s Slickrock Grill, a hundred yards from our trailer, for a real meal with real bottled wine.
Although the vote was close, brisket and ribs at Duke’s beat out the spaghetti dinner option.
Awakening to a windy morning, we sat in the trailer debating whether to follow through with our original plan of driving out to a nearby significant geological feature. Finally, in the early afternoon, we decided to give it a try. We fired up the truck, set off down the highway, and a few miles from Hanksville, reached what we thought was our turnoff.
The wind blew the dirt making it difficult at times to even see the high-clearance motor trail to the site. Reaching our objective would require negotiating a half-dozen miles of this followed by a three-mile hike. We can’t take photos in this crap, so we made the logical decision to turn around and go elsewhere.
The elsewhere we chose was Capitol Reef National Park, which lay about 30 miles to the west.
Our first stop was the Gifford House store and museum where they still had a few mixed berry pies available for sale. They had two fewer available after we departed.
From there, we drove down the park’s Scenic Drive to pavement’s end and continued on a dirt road past the Golden Dome.
We continued to Pleasant Creek where the remains of an old ranch still grace the ground.
From there, we turned around, left the park and headed into Torrey where we enjoyed a great meal (with wine) at the Broken Spur Steakhouse. We met the former owners when researching a magazine feature a few years ago, and we’ve been back many times since.
Then came the exciting drive back to our camp in Hanksville. Even though we were on a paved highway, dirt blowing from the empty landscape drastically obscured visibility.
Fortunately, there was little traffic and we made it back to our trailer in one piece.
We now sit in our trailer, which is rocking in the gusting wind. If we’re not blown to Oz tonight, we’ll maybe try to reach our geological feature tomorrow.
