Utah Oct/Nov '17

I just got home from my fourth annual road trip to Utah. In the previous years I have always gone strait to Moab but this year my wife was adamant that we go to Zion National park along the way. This allowed us to explore a little more of the state. All said and done I'd say the trip was a success. At nine nights out it was one of the longer trips I've ever been on.

Day 1 - 10/27/17
Nothing too exciting happened on this day. We left Bellingham, Washington around 5:30PM and made it just East of Pendleton, Oregon around 12:30AM. A big thanks to @username for recommending a good camp site in the Blue mountains. No pictures from this campsite because we were back on the road by 6:30AM when it was still dark out. The only thing to note was that I woke up twice during the night from what I think was a mountain lion screaming. Fun stuff for sure!

Day 2 - 10/28/17
This day was just full of driving. Like 13 or so hours worth. We ended up driving all the way from Pendleton to just outside Zion National park. I'm kind of a cheap ass, plus I just don't like camping around other people so I sought out a private camp site on Smithsonian Butte just outside the park. There was no way I was going to pay to camp inside the park! It turned out to be a fun 4x4 trail to get to the site. I highly recommend it if you ever need to camp near Zion National Park.



Day 3 - 10/29/17
Day 3 was the first day that finally felt like I was on vacation. Not a whole lot of driving but just doing what we wanted to do. We entered the park and along with about a thousand other people, hiked Angels Landing.



After doing the hike we left the park and headed towards Escalante and found camp off of Hole In The Rock Road.

Day 4 - 10/30/17
We had plans of hiking some slot canyons off of Hole In The Rock Road this day and even staying another night somewhere over here but due to the large amount of people everywhere we just decided to do a quick hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls (awesome hike!) and boogie on towards Hanksville.

Along the way I got to ford the Fremont River.



We made it to Hanksville and fueled up and then headed down to Poison Spring Canyon. Thanks for the recommendation of this trail @Blackdawg! We drove into the canyon for about an hour or so before setting up camp for the night. We found one hell of an awesome camp site.

 

Day 5 - 10/31/17
We woke up nice and early and hit the road! Poison Spring Canyon was very beautiful and very remote. It took several hours to work our way out and make it to the town of Hite.



We also came across this old car that I think was converted to an RV? I'm not really sure.. Makes for a cool picture though!



When we neared the end of the trail I came across this cool trailer



And the four way stop that I know @Blackdawg knows so well.



After making it back on to pavement and airing up we headed up north towards lovely Moab. My first choice of camping near town off of Willow Springs Road was packed so I settled on a campsite off of Klondike Bluffs road.

Day 6 - 11/01/17
By this day I was itching to put the rig into 4lo. First thing in the morning we headed down south to go hit up Strike Ravine. I had never ran this trail before but let me tell you. It's a fun one!





We finished Strike Ravine by about noon and I was still feeling ambitious so I headed on over to Moab Rim. I wanted to run this one last year but just didn't have time. Sadly I made it about two minutes up the trail before being stopped by the first large ledge. I gave her a number of shots and stacked a bunch of rocks but I just couldn't get it. I know if I wanted to spend some more time rock stacking I could have made it up but being that it was just my wife and I, I didn't feel like pushing it too hard. I still had to drive 1000 plus miles back home after all!

This is where I made it too.



I wasn't about to throw in the towel after failing at Moab Rim though. It was on to Metal Masher! Another trail that I had always wanted to run.





Part of the trail brought you to this cool lookout just north of town:



All said and done I got my fix of the more hardcore wheeling on this day.

 

Looks like an awesome trip! There are a lot of people down there though. You always see these desolate pictures and assume it's not that busy. Hah. I spent more time waiting in lines than Disneyland.

 

Very true about some places. I guess I could have expected it from Zion National park but I was pretty turned off when an SUV full of kids parked about 200ft away from us in the middle of the night off of Hole In The Rock road and set up camp. That made for a terrible nights sleep.

 

Depends when you go, I've been to SE Utah 4 times this year for a week each. In early March (still cold) it was a ghost town, even Arches NP. July was also quite barren (100+F temps).

OP - great thread, stories and pictures!!!!

 

Day 7 - 11/02/17
After beating on the truck pretty good the day before I was ready for something a little longer and not quite as extreme. Don't get me wrong, I love doing those tougher trails, but I had to drive this thing back to Bellingham when it was all said and done. I had always wanted to link up Hurrah pass - Lockhart Basin - Elephant hill - Bobby's Hole - Beef Basin so that was what we set out to do for the next two days.



I had done Lockhart Basin each of the last two years so I'm pretty familiar with this trail. My favorite part is at the beginning when you have to work your way up and out of the canyon. Pretty much the only technical/difficult part of this long ass trail. In previous years I had zero issues with the final hill climb. This year though it was much more washed out and made for a much more difficult climb out. It all worked out in the end but it took some work.





I took the turn off to go down to the Colorado River towards the end of the trail only to find that there was evidently some massive flooding and it was impossible to get the truck all the way to the river. It did make for some neat driving in a deep creek bed though.



After finishing Lockhart Basin and making it to the highway the original plan was to head north to Elephant hill. I switched it up a bit and headed south down to Beef Basin Road. At this point we were pretty tired from a full day of driving Lockhart Basin so we set up camp at the first site we could find.



It was a really scenic site but the wind was wicked that night. I ended up folding up the RTT before we even went to bed and just made a bed on the platform in the back of my truck. The wife and I slept much better back there.

Day 8 - 11/03/17
I had never been into Beef Basin so I was pretty excited to see what it was all about. We continued on the road and worked our way farther out into the backcountry. What a beautiful area! Eventually we found the sign telling us that we officially made it.



I really wanted to go find and explore the old ruins but at the same time gas was running a little low and my wife was ready to get back into town to take a shower. It had been 4 or so days since our last one! So we skipped out on searching for the ruins and worked our way towards Bobby's Hole. It was one hell of a decent down into Bobby's Hole (that sounds weird!). I bet it would be a blast driving up that hill. Sadly the only picture I have is of the sign at the top of the hill climb.



After exiting Bobby's Hole and driving down Devil's Lane you can see the beautiful Needles area.



It's pretty cool to drive up closer and closer and then eventually drive through the needles. If you've never been to this area of Utah I highly recommend it. Sooner or later we made our way to the actual Elephant Hill trail. At this point my wife was done with taking pictures, plus we did the trail last year so we already had pictures of me driving it. What a fun trail though! We made it out and headed back to Moab. Somewhere along the way I pulled over and emptied my 5 gallon Jerry Can of gas into the truck because the light had been on for an uncomfortably long time. Not sure if I truly needed it or not but I'm glad I had it.

This marked our last full day in Moab as the next day we would head to the salt flats on the west side of the state. More to come on that later.

 

Great pics. Great thread. I'm so jealous. I live in Utah and haven't seen as much of Moab as you have. Hopefully, that will change one day.

Anxious to see the pics from the salt flats, which is another place I would like to explore one day.

 

Holy shit, Bobby's hole is one place I'm too scared to travel (alone at least). Awesome pictures!

 

Thanks. I'm a little jealous that you live in Utah. My wife is always bugging me to move down there. I've been to Moab 5 times now and there is still a boat load of areas and trails that I want to explore. It seems like the dirt roads out there are endless.

 

Don't be scared! It really was pretty mellow other than the one big hill that brings you up into Beef Basin. Since we were running a little low on time and gas we didn't get to do any additional exploring out there. We pretty much did a a quick drive thru. There were a bunch of other side roads that I would have loved to go check out.

 

Day 9 - 11/04/17
This marked our last full day of trip. Always a sad one. We left Moab late morning and made it to the Bonneville Salt Flats at around 2PM. I was always curious about what this place was like in person and no surprise.. It's flat and salty.





We had originally planned to camp out here but after spending about half an hour there we decided we didn't want to do that. After you've seen it, there really isn't much else to do. I could see it being a bit more enjoyable in the warmer weather but it was fairly cold out and there was a bit of standing water on the salt flats themselves so we couldn't even walk around on them very easily.



We ended up heading west and found a cheap hotel in the small town of Jackpot, NV for our final night. Not the most exciting ending to an awesome trip but it was warm and comfortable!

I hope you all enjoyed reading about my getaway! I once again left with more curiosity about new areas than what I started with. I can't wait to go back next year. If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

 

There are some roads to explore on the west end of the salt flats (toward Wendover) that go toward Idaho, but I've not done them, so can't say if there any good. I just know of people who've done them.

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

Cheers and safe travels.

 

Great write up!

Endless would be a great way to put it for Utah. I've spent over 3 months camping there in the last two years and I haven't seen much of it. Zion, Bryce, escalante are all still on the to do list.

I drove right past you on my way back to CO. I was in Oregon for a little while, left on the 6th, got gas in Pendleton, checked the road website and saw that the interstate was open from the hazardous materials crash and got through before they closed it again.

I also drove through Jackpot, hit up the Salt Flats but there was standing water so I didn't drive on them. I was so happy when I got south of the SLC area, beautiful dirt roads everywhere asking to be rally'ed on!

 

Thanks! Three months camping out of the last two years aint bad! I was a little nervous to drive out onto the flats because there was standing water but I saw 3 other cars driving around out there so I figured it was safe. My wife didn't let me drive out too far though!

We enjoyed out stay in southeastern Utah so much this time around that I actually took the step and reached out to a real estate agent about buying some acreage in the Moab/Monticell area. There is just too much exploring to do down there and it'd be nice to have some sort of "home base" so to speak.

 

Yeah I've thought about looking into it after i find a place here.

 

Looks awesome! Do you know of any trails that are out there that a 2wd prerunner could handle? Definitely want to go check out Utah. More so looking for long dirt roads/trails with not much difficulty

 

Utah is FULL of long dirt roads that are easy for 2wd. So just look up whatever you want to see and you can do it.

Only thing that could make it interesting is when it gets wet, some areas can get nasty with slick deep mud.

 

Anywhere in particular you've been and or that you'd recommend?

 

Probably spent 3 months in the past two years and haven't even scraped the surface of the area near Moab.

There's stuff all around Moab, then you can jump west from there to goblin valley, real awesome and some trails and slot canyons. North of there is the San rafael swell, North of 70 you have the area of the wedge overlook/outlook which is like the mini grand canyon. That area is one that gets sloppy when wet.

And that's just a few large areas with hundreds of miles of hiking and trails, most easily done in good weather by a car.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the info man. Just posted a thread about advice and recommendations for 2WD trucks feel free to post in it!