The next morning, I took a sip of coffee, and a filling fell out of a tooth. What? Fortunately, after the initial surprise wore off, I found there was no pain or discomfort, so rather than driving back to Flagstaff and hunting for a dentist; we carried on. Neil and Lori showed up in their GXV, and we went for a great bike ride on cinder roads around one of the larger cinder cones. It threatened to rain, but never did.
After showering and eating lunch, we took off for Utah, and drove through random showers. It became clear our plan to camp on Cedar Mesa was going to be stymied by the rain. The weather forecast (which was consistently wrong the entire trip) suggested the next day would be drier, so we decided to camp at the Goosenecks for the night, as the soil there was rockier and mud would be less of an issue. This proved to be the case; and we had a nice, albeit windy night camped next to a 2,000 drop into the San Juan River.
The next morning, we drove up the Moki Dugway and onto Cedar Mesa. If you've never been on the Dugway, you are missing out on a great experience.
The dirt road rises 1,200 feet in three miles from the floor of Valley of the Gods to the top of Cedar Mesa. The road is narrow and has many tight switchbacks, but the Earthroamer is surprisingly agile for a 25 foot long truck.
We headed to the ranger station to check in and ask about our intended destination. While there, it started pouring, which made our destination somewhat pointless. Most of Cedar Mesa, indeed, much of Southern Utah has a soil that, when dry, is much like talcum powder. This very fine sand, when it gets wet, quickly develops the consistency of chocolate pudding. You can't walk on it, drive on it, or do much of anything else. It does dry out fairly quickly, though.
(Photo by Anthony Sicola)
The ranger cautioned us against trying to reach our intended destination as the roads would be impassable. He did suggest another canyon, only 5 miles away as the crow flies, but 15 or so away by paved road. He thought that canyon was away from the path of the oncoming rain. We decided to go for it. After 30 minutes of driving on pavement, we turned off onto a dirt road that varied from groomed to rough and followed that road to a trailhead. We parked and kitted up for a day of hiking. We found zero ruins, but a number of really cool petroglyph panels. We were able to do a loop inside this canyon. If we had more time, we could have walked into the Grand Gultch.
We got back to the trucks late in the afternoon and decided to set up camp a couple of miles back on the dirt road. There was a large sheet of sandstone that was flat and off the road. We were also expecting Astrid and Anthony (@overlandnomads) to join us at some point. One advantage of having a self-contained rig is that once you put it in "Park", camp is largely set up. I did pull out our chairs and large folding table so we'd have a place to eat dinner outside.
As we were getting ready to eat dinner Anthony and Astrid arrived. By the time we'd eaten, they had camp set up and were able to prepare and eat dinner.
