Washboard Zen
We arrived in Bryce Canyon National Park a few days ago, and after where we've been the last two weeks, it feels a bit like Penn Station during rush hour. The Minnie on the other hand, seems to be grateful to be back on paved roads.
After resupplying, hiking a bit and meeting up with an old college buddy and her husband in Moab, we decided to to forego the Memorial Day festivities and head off the grid. Thus, we headed towards the northern section of the San Rafael Swell. Our first stop was the Wedge Overlook, which Utahans call the Little Grand Canyon. Even though there were a number of folks zipping about in trucks and ATVs we found a beautiful spot to camp right on the rim of the canyon. It was a bit noisier than we were hoping, but the next day we were reminded that on Sundays in Utah most places are deserted. Only a handful of cars came past and we spent a lovely day watching the light change on the canyon walls and avoiding the sand tornadoes ripping across the plateau.
From the Wedge we dropped down into the canyon and found an amazing campsite on the San Rafael River under sheer red cliffs. It was one of the prettiest places we have camped. That afternoon we had a good laugh at the memory of our nervousness during our first big off-road adventure with Yancy last summer. Here we were relishing being completely alone, twenty odd miles from the nearest paved road, with no cell service. How far we have come, and how much we cherish really getting away!
After four nights off the grid, we were happy to return to Capitol Reef NP for a night to dump our tanks, get water and wait out some storms. Plus, we acquired one last strawberry rhubarb pie.
The next morning we crossed Boulder Mountain and dropped down the Burr Trail Road into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. We spent two nights camping in this section of the monument and one grand day hiking in the very southern tip of Capital Reef, which can only be accessed by a dirt road that Burr Trail dumped us on to.
The day after our hike, we popped into Boulder to check out the farmer's market as we were very much in need of fresh veggies. Alas, it was not meant to be. No farmers showed up! So we pressed on to the Escalante River Trailhead, where we enjoyed an outstanding, though very warm hike to a natural bridge and a small arch. Perhaps the neatest thing we saw was a zig zag pictograph, that stretched across the wall above an old granary. Thankfully, we crisscrossed the Escalante River a number of times, which kept me cool.
Onward we went to Escalante, a super cute and growing small Utah town. We stopped in at the ranger station for the Grand Staircase to find out about dispersed camping and hiking off Hole in the Rock Road. There were several slot canyons and a few other long hikes we were interested in doing, but Hole in the Rock is 50+ miles of awful washboard broken up by deep sand. The Minnie wouldn't make it to most of the trailheads. We were bummed, but set off to do the few things we'd been told we could access.
The Minnie's max speed on the Hole in the Rock was 10 mph, which meant the twelve mile drive to Devil's Garden took over an hour. There we found the rather fantastic Metate Arch, but not much else. We headed slowly back up the road and camped for the night with the cows near the trailhead to Zebra and Tunnel slot canyons.
The next morning, we followed the rudimentary and unmarked trail, with the help of GPS, to the entrance to Zebra Canyon. It is a narrow slot canyon with multiple pools to cross. The pools were only waist high, thankfully, but they were stagnant and kind of smelly. I really do not like walking through such murky water, so after the first pool, I turned back. Alanna forged ahead until she came across two dead ravens that were being protected by a third, who freaked out as she tried to scale a tall obstacle. It scared the heck out of her and since there was no way around the angry raven she turned back. We learned later that the two dead birds were probably fledglings from a nest on the rim, and that the third may have been another sibling.
Once we were done at Zebra, we headed to Tunnel Canyon, a much shorter slot, and really interesting. Again with the stagnant pools though! I sat it out, but it's a short slot so I could talk to Alanna the entire time. She took some cool photos and then we began the trudge back to the Minnie. I say trudge because it was over 90 degrees, our boots were wet and heavy and we were hiking in deep sand most of the way. Needless to say, when the Minnie came into view, we did a little dance. We slowly drove the Minnie back to the start of the road and took much needed showers.
We had resigned ourselves to being done on Hole in the Rock, so the next morning we backtracked to the Escalante River Trailhead. As we were checking out several pictograph panels, we ran into a BLM ranger and chatted for quite some time. He told us about a rarely used hiking route that would get us to Spooky and Peek-a-boo slot canyons, that would be safe for the Minnie!!! Alanna was thrilled so we returned to Hole in the Rock. Twenty plus miles later, at ten miles an hour, we found camping at a corral by a wash leading to the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch.
The next day our patience with the slow drive was rewarded with an awesome hike through about a mile of narrows in the Dry Fork. Note, narrows are not as skinny as slot canyons, you can touch both walls but you don’t have to shimmy through sideways. We dumped out near the entrance to Peek-a-Boo, the most popular slot canyon in the Grand Staircase. We have not seen this many people on a trail in a very, very long time. I was, unfortunately, too short to negotiate the last section of the 12 foot sheer climb into the canyon, but I hoisted Alanna up and she set to climbing and shimmying her way up the canyon.
Once she made her way back down, we set off for Spooky. There is a reason for its name, it's incredibly dark and so skinny in spots that Alanna could barely fit through sideways. They actually warn "big" people to avoid it. I'm claustrophobic, so when the walls started to narrow about 100 yards in, I turned around. I waited in a spot of shade with our packs while Alanna explored. I'm really proud of her--even though she is also nervous about hiking in slot canyons, she has a grand time photographing them. She is also very understanding when I back out, and is glad that I know my limits around murky water and uber narrow spaces.
On our walk back out the Dry Fork Narrows, Alanna was positively giddy, a chance meeting with a ranger on a random cliff face, had given us an extraordinary and unexpected day. Alanna drove most of the way back to the beginning of Hole in the Rock Road, at ten miles an hour. This is her sweet spot when it comes to driving the Minnie. Alanna can very oddly, in my estimation, find her zen bumping down a washboard road at slow speeds. It makes me a little crazy, but she loves it. Ultimately, just one more reason we make such a great team.
