The Utah Traverse - Part 2

With the winter storm having moved off to Colorado (where it dumped a couple of feet of snow on Denver), we aimed the car towards Moab, excited to cover some new territory.

Tooling along, relaxed and care-free, towards Capitol Reef National Park, we suddenly found ourselves driving through compact snow and ice! WTF!  (Not quite sure why this possibility never dawned on us … we were only going over 9700’ right after a winter storm!) We didn’t really have a good feel for the route, so weren’t sure how much worse it would get, and how long it would go on for. We only knew we were still a long ways from Capitol Reef, and weren’t very excited about it all. Fortunately, we soon found ourselves heading down, and were out of the treachery after 20 miles or so.  And so we slid back into our blissful state as we descended into lower, (somewhat) warmer climes.

Snow!

Our extra-long stay in Escalante left us with less time on this leg of the trip than we had originally planned. So, we had to choose to either hike in Capitol Reef, or in some slot canyons near Goblin Valley State Park. With the temps in the upper 40’s in Capitol Reef, we opted for the (warmer) slot canyons … leaving us with basically a drive-through of Capitol Reef. It’s too bad, because it was very impressive. Big red-rock cliffs, deep canyons, and bright green trees near the river. A return trip to explore this area is definitely in the cards!

(Side note:  Please excuse the minimalist vocabulary used to describe all the different colored rocks we saw. The whole topic finally got the better of us, and we bought a layman’s book on Utah geology ... but unfortunately it still remains unopened.) 

In Capitol Reef, we kept bumping into this one guy at the various viewpoints.  It seemed a bit odd that, as most people take pictures, he was using a piece of cardboard with a rectangular cutout.  No camera.  He'd just hold it up at arms length a couple of times, then he'd hop into his car and continue onward.  Kinda strange, we thought.  Our best explanations were either (a) that he had a photographic memory ... so no need to actually save the images, or (b) he was practicing some sort of extreme clutter-free and low-budget lifestyle ... so no camera to buy and no image files to clutter your life.  Never really figured it out ... but he definitely seemed to be marching to his own drummer.   

Cliffs at Capitol Reef National Park

Canyon at Capitol Reef National Park

The drive down the canyon from Capitol Reef, through the flats to Goblin Valley State Park was uneventful ... well, except for a couple of semis bearing down on us (at 65+ mph) on the 2-lane highway coming down the canyon.  These guys were serious.  And, when we finally hit some passing zones, they just blew by us! Not sure that's ever happened before on a 2-lane road!  (Maybe we're just getting old and pokey!)

Goblin Valley is located about 10 miles down a side road off the 2-lane highway in the middle of a vast desert.  Actually, this area is known as the San Rafael Swell, and we had been tipped off to it by a fellow hiker we met last fall in Colorado.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend time at the park, but instead continued on a couple more miles to the trailhead for Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons.  These are very popular, family-oriented (i.e., very easy) slot canyons, that seemed perfect low-stress options for us.  After getting off-course almost immediately (hey, we're rookies in this type of terrain!), we corrected course and made it the canyons.  We very quickly were confronted with standing water in narrows (so narrow, in fact, that one guy was "stemming" through this section above the water ... with a hand and foot on each wall).  We opted for the shoe-less, wet-feet approach, then spent the next few hours in awe of the crazy twists, turns, and colors of the canyons.  Absolutely fantastic.

We definitely plan to spend more time in this area on a future adventure. The park itself looks very cool, plus there's some of the best rock art (i.e., petroglyphs) in the world just 20 miles down the road almost directly across the highway.

But we had no time.  A short drive to our motel in Green River left us within a quick morning jaunt of Moab. 

Narrows in Little Wild Horse Canyon

Colors above Little Wild Horse Canyon

More Photos 

Activities

• Hiking:  Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons (near Goblin Valley State Park,  up and back each canyon)
• Sight Seeing:  Drive thru of Capital Reef National Park

5-Star Moments

• The awesome narrows of Little Wild Horse Canyon.

Tom's Daily Stress Points

• What's with this compact snow and ice!?!  How far do we have to go in it? When will it stop getting worse?  Should we turn around?

Sleeps

• Green River:  Quality Inn (fine, pool/hottub/laundry)

Eats 

• Green River:  Tamarisk (decent, huge SW Pueblo Bread)