Sorry about the lack of updates lately. We’re on the way home and haven’t had a lot of time to do computer stuff.
We left Crested Butte, CO on Wednesday morning around 8:45 am and arrived in Ohio 30 hours later. We drove straight through with our only stops being for food and diesel.
Tomorrow we leave Cleveland for Hartford and then head back up to home on Monday. It’s been 28 days. It will be nice to be home.
After our last night of camping on our trip we headed south on Utah 261 down to the Valley of the Gods. I have a hard time believing that tractor trailers go up and down this grade. Here’s some photos and a video of what it’s like driving down this infamous road in our 1982 BJ42 diesel Land Cruiser.
Ok, just one photo before I catch some sleep. This is us in the Valley of the Gods.
We’re in Crested Butte, CO now. We arrived earlier this afternoon. Today’s driving was some of the most spectacular of the trip. We started the day in Durango, CO and drove up the “Million Dollar Highway” which is US550 north from Durango to Ouray, CO. It’s the most scenic road I’ve driven in the entire U.S.
That’s it for updates today. We’re heading out early tomorrow for Monument Valley and Valley of the Gods. We’re taking dirt roads most of the way down from Torrey to Lake Powell and hoping to catch the 11 am ferry at Bullfrog to shuttle us across the lake. There most likely won’t be any new updates until we make it to Crested Butte on Sunday. Time to catch some sleep…
We didn’t get to do as much hiking as we had hoped due to my stupidity on a previous hike in Dominguez Canyon, CO. I have large scabs on my heels where the blisters once were so serious hikes were out of the question. We did manage to find a nice 1.5 mile hike to a viewpoint over the Upper Black Box Canyon area of the San Rafael Swell. This hike is located near the closed end of Mexican Bend Rd. adjacent to the Wildlife Study Area.
I didn’t know there was a “Little Grand Canyon” in Utah. There is. And a great place to check it out is from The Wedge overlook where these photos and videos were taken.
The San Rafael Swell area wasn’t on our list of places to check out but luck and circumstances led us in that direction. I’m glad we ended up there.
Goblin Valley, UT was one of the areas that I was really looking forward to this trip. Unfortunately we arrived just as the weather was getting bad. 50MPH winds were kicking up the desert dust and making it painful to be outside. We snapped a few pictures and a quick video and got out of there.
We’ve been hanging in Torrey, Utah the past couple of days avoiding the unpleasant camping weather. Our camp spot in the San Rafael Swell area was the last camping I think we’ll do this trip. While we were out exporing the area the wind kicked up and blew our tent into the bushes. We didn’t have it properly staked to the ground. One of the support poles broke and every surface of the tent’s contents is covered with red rock dust, even the insides of our sleeping bags. You expect a little dirt while camping but you just can’t get comfortable in this much dusty filth. Combine that with snow, freezing rain and wind and it’s just miserable for tent camping.
