Our View From The Road

Sharing where we've been and what we've seen

Tag: UT

  • Day 35: Angels Peak

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    Driving day today as we awake from another quiet night of slumber. The wind has picked up a bit and is from the West so that should help with our travels today.

    A normal pre-travel morning routine sees us enjoy a small breakfast and then it’s time to disconnect from the campground services and prepare to depart. All is good to go.

    Our first stop will be very familiar to anyone who has watched the movie “Forrest Gump” for we stop and take some pictures at the place where Forrest ends his running and decides to go home.

    It had to be done

    From here we drove just a short distance to Mexican Hat to view Mexican Hat Rock. Let me save you the time, it’s a rock that happens to look like a sombrero balancing on a much smaller rock. The picture says it all.

    Next stop, the Four Corners. This is the place where Arizona, Utah, Colorado & New Mexico all meet. It is marked with a plaza where you can walk between the four states or stand in two states or if you include your hands, like Barb, you can be in all four states at the same time (almost). You see, Arizona does not use daylight savings time & so you can also be a time traveler and be in multiple states at different times! The plaza is on Navaho land and as such an $8/person tribal fee is required to access the plaza which also contains many Navaho vendors selling all kinds of authentic goods. Enjoy the pictures.

    Four Corners

    Leaving the Four Corners we drove South and reconnected with the US-64E towards Farmington, NM and then onto Bloomfield, NM where we turn SE towards our stop for the night, Angels Peak, NM. This is a BLM night and so we will have to hope that we can find a nice spot. Oh, were we lucky. We found a quiet corner of one of the picnic areas that overlooks the Angels Peak Badlands & for the first time on this trip we snagged a gazebo under which to eat our meals! Bonus.

    Angels Peak Badlands, NM

    The evening is super quiet as the sun sets. There are almost no clouds in the sky & there shouldn’t be any light infiltration to detract from the starry skies.

    Sunset

  • Day 34: Monument Valley

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    7:00am and an alarm wakes us. The time has gone ahead an hour now that we’re (just) in Utah and we are being picked up at 9:00am for our guided tour of the Monument Valley and backcountry. We enjoy a light breakfast and get ready to be out and about for a few hours.

    Our guide arrives a little early so we climb into the rig and he takes us to the View hotel that sits at the entrance to the valley. Accessing the valley requires us to pay an $8/person tribal fee as the land is owned by the Navaho (Dineh) tribe. We pick up a few more passengers (visiting from France and Spain) and we head down into the valley.

    Approaching Monument Valley

    The drive can be made using your own vehicle and although RVs are not allowed our campervan would have been permitted but as we will discover, the road is very rough and uneven. We are both very glad to have chosen to take a tour and we’re only just at the beginning.

    The steep gravel and sand road flattens out at the bottom of the valley and you begin to realize the size of the sandstone mesas that are scattered about the valley. Some are over 1000’ in height.

    Our first images from the valley bottom

    The valley is most famous for being the filming location of early Hollywood westerns many of which were produced by John Ford such as Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956) both of which starred John Wayne. There is now a location within the valley named John Ford point.

    John Ford Point

    All of the mesas in the valley have names, some are easy to understand their source such as ‘The Elephant’ or ‘Three Sisters’. Others require a bit of imagination to see what is evidently seen by others.

    The tour takes us in the backcountry beyond the self-drive route to a tribal village where, in a traditional shelter called a ‘Hogan’ we are shown how rugs are woven from sheep’s wool that is sheared, washed, spun and colored by hand before being woven into intricately patterned rugs.

    Lastly while in the backcountry we visit a few places to see huge holes or arches through the mesas created by millions of years of erosion. At our last stop, our guide plays his traditional wooden flute while we gaze at the sky through one of these massive holes. Quite magical.

    Returning to the entrance to the valley, we notice that there are many more folks now self driving the roads and we see a few vans bumping along and we wonder if they have anything left in their cupboards. The tour was 3hrs long and cost us each $70USD, but we both feel that we got so much from it. We learned much from our guide about the history of the Dineh people and how living in a modern world has affected their way of life. If you visit, we recommend taking a tour.

    From our campsite
    Sunset

    The remainder of the day we spent at our campsite relaxing and planning the remaining days of our trip. Still more to come so keep checking back.

    P.S. Yes, there is now red sand everywhere in the van.

  • Day 33: Onto Monument Valley

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    Another chilly night, I thought we came South to get some warmth? Had issues starting furnace during the night so used electric cube heater as we were plugged in at the site. Turns out that the propane was NOT turned on thus no furnace, Doh! Although I suppose it’s nice to know it was user error and not a system error.

    Time for a statistic: It turns out that during this past winter, Grand Canyon village had 452cm (178”) of snowfall. No wonder we’re still seeing lots of it lying amongst the trees and on the north facing slopes.

    We started the day by visiting some of the lookouts that are East of the visitors center along the road that we will take to leave the park. I’ve added some pictures below.

    Last of the Grand Canyon pictures

    Upon leaving the Grand Canyon National Park the road begins to steadily fall towards Cameron, AZ where we turn North and then East towards Tuba City and Kayenta.

    The scenery really changes between the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. Along the lines of ‘from Yogi bear to the Road Runner’.

    Changing scenery
    Dust devil just south of Monument Valley

    We got gas in Kayenta and then headed North towards the Utah state border. Crossing into Utah and just 1 mile into the state we had reached our destination, the Monument Valley KOA. Home for the next two nights. We are now 500m lower at 1600m (5250ft) than the 2100m (7000ft) elevation of last night.

    During the afternoon we booked our tour of Monument Valley for tomorrow morning. Read tomorrows post to find out what we think.

    Indian Tiki Masala for dinner and then a quiet evening in the van.

  • Day 16: June 4 – Santaquin, UT to Glenn’s Ferry, ID

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    Turns out that the I-15 was a little too close for Barb to get a good nights sleep. Tony, heard nothing…. Typical.

    A fairly early start to today as we’re off to Idaho (5 1/2 hours). A quick top off on fuel and then to Walmart for a few provisions before jumping back onto the freeway.

    The Salt Lake City area is a lot like Toronto in that all the nearby communities have now just blurred into one enormous metroplex. From Santaquin the 75km North to where we turned West on I-80 was all built-up urban landscape.

    Turning West onto I-80 took us out across the Salt Lake valley at the Southern edge of Salt Lake, here there is nothing, and I mean nothing but the road and a railway track. Eventually we came to the Western edge of the Salt flats and one of the most famous places in the world for those trying to set land speed records, the Bonneville Speedway.

    Of course there’s also nothing there, but the salt. Each year USAC marks out a new 10mile long “track” along which the speed demons will run their cars, motorcycles and other equipment. The picture below shows the area in which this happens, the mountains in the photo are evidently more than 10miles away. The vastness of this space is overwhelming as there are no reference points against which to measure distances.

    Above you can see a few hardy brave souls who have taken their vehicles out onto the salt flats. We hope that they all immediately go to a car wash after leaving as the cars are covered with salt ‘dust’ after simply driving about.

    Returning to the I-80 we quickly cross the state line into Nevada where we continued westward for about 45min before turning North towards Twin Falls, ID.

    Rolling grasslands reminded me a little of the Scottish highlands at times with some epic vistas. The picture below shows an area where it appears all of the smaller boulders that were in a glacier were just dropped leaving this hillside strewn with them.

    Arriving in Twin Falls we cross the Snake River canyon just West of the site where in 1974, Evel Knievel attempted to jump a steam powered rocket bike across the canyon. Evidently the ramp on which he built the launch structure still survives.

    Turning again toward the West we drive to Glenn’s Ferry, ID where we would be staying at the Y Knot Winery. We enjoyed a prime rib dinner and sampled some of their wines before retiring to the van where we watched a movie before settling down for the night.

  • Day 15: June 3 – Moab, UT to Santaquin, UT

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    A warm and sunny morning awaited us in Moab. This was the view from our campsite looking West as the sun lit up the rocks.

    After enjoying a breakfast outside at the campsite we packed up and headed out to Ken’s Lake Campground (BLM) just South of town where we hopped on our bikes and rode to a scenic waterfall.

    Off-road cycling in Moab, UT

    We also saw lots of these cacti in bloom. something that neither of us had ever seen before.

    Having enjoyed a small amount of outdoors time we reloaded the bikes onto the rack and resumed our travels. This time towards Salt Lake City. Our journey today saw us say ‘so long’ to I-70 for after several days of it carrying us Westward, we would now turn Northerly and take US 191 through the mountains. The drive was spectacular as was the scenery. Even the sky offered up its beauty as can be seen in the following picture.

    We stopped in Green River, UT for gas and Barb had to take a picture of the Sinclair company mascot. They at least understand the source of the petroleum we consume.

    Woody, Buzz, isn’t that a great looking van?

    A few hours after setting out we came down out of the mountains and into the Salt Lake valley. We stayed at the South end of the valley in Santaquin. Rowley’s Red Barn were our hosts. This is a ‘farm shoppe’ that sells homemade fruit pies made from the fruit grown on the farm; however, they also sell other items such as ice cream, preserves, cheese, fresh produce and as shown in the picture below, a large variety of classic soda pop. I enjoyed an old style lemonade and Barb had Butter Beer.

    Nope, none of these are sugar-free.

    Unfortunately the camping location is adjacent to I-15 and we’re both hoping the traffic noise does not make for a restless night.

  • Day 14: June 2 – Central City, CO to Moab, UT

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    We awake with the temperature having dropped to zero Celsius early this morning. We ran the electric cube heater all night and it appears to have warded off any freezing issues with our water lines. Phew! I did however have a restless night thinking about what might have happened. Hopefully I shall sleep better tonight in Moab, UT.

    Yes, that’s snow in June.

    Today I ran out of superlatives for the views and scenery through which we drove in Colorado. Stunning, Incredible, Amazing, Wow. We’ve already decided to come back and spend far more time exploring this amazing state.

    Eisenhower tunnel, elevation 3,401m (11,158ft) and 2.72km long under continental divide

    We climbed upwards for the first part of the morning until we reached the Eisenhower tunnel (above). It took under the continental divide, meaning that after we exit all rivers will lead to the Pacific Ocean.

    Exiting the tunnel we descended down a 7% grade for 13km (8miles). A good test of nerves and equipment and then onto Vail, CO and the driving was easier (not so quick Tony).

    Another long uphill and then a tunnel led to another (albeit shorter) 8km (5miles) 6% downhill section. This would be the last of the big downhills, but there was still many more smaller sections to negotiate.

    Eventually the scenery changed and the mountains became shorter and more grass and scrub covered instead of tree covered as they were earlier in the day. We approached Grand Junction and yet again the scenery had changed to be much more desert-like. All around us now we’re flat topped Mesa’s.

    Soon we had crossed into Utah and the temperature was 32 degrees C. Not much grows here. Turning down Hwy 191 into Moab, the rocks turned red and the number of campers increased significantly. Moab as a town was not really to our liking, overly commercial and too busy. We passed through on our way to the KOA that would once again be our home for the night. A nice site in a well kept campground. We’d recommend both this and the previous nights stay.