Over the last couple of weeks, we have been working and getting some stuff lined up for the future. We got an email from a friend inviting us to join he and his wife and son to a visit to Beef Basin. Just south of Canyonlands, Beef Basin is a remote, well, basin bordered by the Colorado River on the west and the Abajo Mountains on the east. It can be accessed by a handful of dirt roads, and the last dozen miles descends from 8200' to 6000'. The route isn't technical, but there are a few corners that have been washed out, and the road transitions from loose sand to solid sandstone.
We met our friends at Newspaper Rock and aired down a few miles later. The approach is a couple of dozen miles of washboarded road, which is painful when your rear tires have 90 pounds of air in them. With a lot less air, the road is tolerable.
There was little traffic, although we did run into two guys in identical black Tacomas that were nicely setup.
We'd been trying to get into Beef Basin for years, and every trip was thwarted due to bad weather.
Like much of the area, the roads are not "all-weather", but bull-dozed into the local clay. It's very hard when dry, but when it's wet, it's sticky and slippery. Four-wheel drive means nothing, mud tires means nothing. Several hours of rain, and you can barely walk, much less drive.
So past trips have been diverted elsewhere when storms blew in unexpectedly.
It was cool to finally get into the place, but after 4 hours of driving slowly, I was ready to get out of the truck.
Driving a 16,000 pound truck on roads like that can be tiring. For me, anyway.
The road was rough enough that some contents in the camper got thrown around a bit, and after picking a spot to spend the night, we had to do some organization in the camper.
The area is filled with ancient Puebloan structures and a weekend is far too short to give justice to all you can see there.
It's also filled with cows, as the area is a great pasture for local ranchers, so one is never far away from cows, or evidence of cows.
Our last night there, I started to get anxious about the drive out. It's not technical, but fairly rough and very steep in places. Driving a 9-year old truck that weighs 8 tons up several miles of very steep dirt road suddenly seemed dubious.
However, the truck, in 4 Low, did great. It never hesitated, never slipped, and navigated steep sandy switchbacks with aplomb. I didn't need to worry at all. Even over the roughest sections, the camper was quiet with no rattles or noise, other than the familiar sound of the nesting pots rattling in their drawer.
When we finally got back to a paved road, we stopped to air up the tires. This was the first time I'd used my upgraded air chucks, and the one (of two) air hoses I'd brought wouldn't fit in the chuck. I borrowed Troy's air hose and brought the tire pressure up to highway pressure (45 in the front, 90 in the back).
Later I found that my other air hose DID fit, and I need to acquire new fittings (for the other hose). Nice to know we wouldn't have been stranded if we were solo!
We drove through Moab, happy that we didn't need to stop there.
We drove along the Colorado River and spent the night at a dispersed camping spot near Dewey Bridge. The weekend went by way too fast, our time with our friends was like a blink of an eye.
We have a busy couple of weeks ahead of us, before we head off to Overland Expo. Until then there is lots to do!
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