The Red Hills of Utah - Kanab Utah

After all the EJS festivities ended at Moab, Utah we joined up with some of our friends with the Montrose Colorado based Western Slope 4 Wheelers club in Kanab, Utah.  We enjoy meeting up with this good fun group of friends that like to four wheel and have fun doing it just like us. 

We arrived at our RV site in the Grand Plateau RV Resort. Shortly after setting up 'camp' we promptly went to the Kanab local family owned, Escobar's Mexican Restaurant, for dinner. We are happy to say they have always served delicious food and kind service and still do!   With our bellies full, we returned to the RV and prepped for the next day's adventure.

Site M43 - Home Sweet Home

The next couple of days were packed with fun dirt road adventures which also included arches, a cemetery, slot canyons, four wheeling and short hikes. We drove the Cottonwood Canyon Scenic Backway, Johnson Canyon Road and House Rock Road.  Kanab has so much to offer when it comes to beautiful scenery. These adventures are only a small part of that surrounding area.

Cottonwood Canyon Scenic Backway: The destination for the day was Grosvenor Arch, however, the easy Cottonwood Canyon road was the straight line route but this wasn't the way a group of four wheelers were settling for.  The leaders took the more scenic route through Coyote Wash and up and over the switchbacks to some great elevated views of Coyote Wash and extending into Cottonwood Canyon with its spring green cottonwoods and colored clay foothill scenery. The good four wheeling  and colorful scenery were definitely a bonus.

Grosvenor Arch is actually two sandstone arches (double arch) towering about 150ft
above the ground. It is located in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

Great views as we descend into the canyon

We were lucky enough to spot a herd of desert bighorn sheep.

Look at those horns!

After a day of exploring Cottonwood Canyon some of the group also stopped at the Toadstool Hoodoos Trail on the way back into Kanab. The round trip hike was about 1.6 miles with the trail being mostly sandy soils. These formations are name Toadstools because they have spire like features with a boulder perched atop a pedestal rock like a mushroom / toadstool. The top rock is made of a harder material that doesn't erode as quickly as the rock material underneath it, thus the lower rock erodes faster than the upper making these toadstool looking 'Hoodoos'.

Johnson Canyon Road: This road starts out as a paved road but when you reach Skutumpah Road it turns to dirt. One of the area attractions is the old Gunsmoke film set which is located about 5 miles from Highway 89. The set, however, is on private land and we could not access the property for a more closer look but it was interesting to see some of the remnants from afar. Most of the buildings were dilapidated due to the weather but we could still envision Marshall Dillon and Miss Kitty walking down the dusty main street of 'Dodge City'.

Old Gunsmoke Film Set through our eyes

2018 photo from Visit Kanab FB page.

Continuing down the road we arrived at Lick Wash Trailhead.  This was our lunch stop and where we also enjoyed a short hike through the slot canyon.

Lick Wash canyon walls

Lick Wash slot canyon

Narrow part of Lick Wash Trail

Amazing root system squeezing through the rock wall.

Always fun to share the experience with friends.

Lunch time camaraderie (photo by Lynn)

Lunch time camaraderie (photo by Lynn)

We did end the day by taking the road less traveled or otherwise known as the Great Western Trail.  The Great Western Trail is  a dirt / four wheeling road system from Canada down to Mexico and covers 4,455 miles through Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Arizona.  It's always fun to drive a part of this historic route whenever we have a chance. We have driven some of the route in Arizona and now Utah. 

As we all met for dinner at Iron Horse Restaurant we found there was a poker game going on with some of the locals.  It looked pretty intense as the anti was high so we moved on to our table to enjoy a nice dinner and conversation and left them to their game. 

Locals playing poker

White Pocket, Arizona: Our last group trip we four-wheeled to a beautiful remote place known as White Pocket.  This has been on our places to visit list for some time so we were excited to be a part of this adventure. The most challenging part about White Pocket was getting to it.  It is located about 1 1/2 hour drive down a bumpy, dusty and some-what deep sandy roads into Arizona. The drive is worth it!  Briefly, the White Pocket area is made up of colorful swirls and patterns of Jurassic age white and red Navajo sandstone, which were sculpted over millions of years ago by wind and water erosion.  This was an awe-inspiring trip. One that we are glad we didn't miss.

Paria Ghost Town: Once we returned to HWY 89, we aired up our tires from the long bumpy ride to White Pocket and then decided to make one detour to an old ghost town.  Paria or Pahreah was inhabited in about 1870 to late 1920s. The settlement experienced many hardships including lack of consistent irrigation for crops and river floods, which washed away structures and crops.  In later years the film industry became interested in using the picturesque ghost town as a location for making Western movies.  The area is surrounded by colorful Chinle Formation mountains with straited cliffs of bands of red, orange, purple and grey.

Paria town cemetery. In our readings we found out it is a replica, more of a memorial,
as the tombstones and markets are replacements as the originals eroded over time
and prone to vandals. There were many Smith's and Smithson's buried here in the late 1800s.

Other than the Memorial cemetery, there wasn't much left to even let you know there was a town in this area and even the large scale film sets had been removed and some burned by vandals. Just a nice scenic drive into the Paria canyon. 

As the saying goes - all good things must come to an end but we have enjoyed our adventures around Southern Utah and hope to continue more in the future.

Thanks for reading.  Wishing you many great adventures of your own.

Jack and Deb 

We'll close with some lyrics from an ole' Marty Robbins song entitled 'The Red Hills of Utah'.

How green are the valleys

How tall are the trees

How cool are the rivers

How soft is the breeze

If it's just like my dreams

Then I must go and see

For the red hills of Utah are callin' me

Moab, Where the scenery never gets old.

We have been visiting Moab, Utah for years on an annual basis.  We keep coming back because of the beautiful landscape and that it is also a Jeepers paradise.  Moab's scenery is made up of nearby La Sal Mountains (13,888 elevation), towering red rocks, unique formations, arches and mesa views where you can see for miles.  It is home to two National Parks and boasts of being a mecca destination for all types of outdoor enthusiasts including hiking, biking, off-roading and river rafting to name just a few activities.

This was our 13th year to attend the Moab Easter Jeep Safari and it's 59th year of existence. Again, it did not disappoint.  As we usually do, we embarked on our own journeys to explore trails and geocache around Moab, plus participated in EJS scheduled activities. From driving dusty roads to dining at Sunset Grill overlooking Moab we were once again blessed to experience this grand area. 

We began our adventures driving Deadman Springs trail. The trail was made up of dirt, sand and rock sections with an occasional ledge to make it interesting. Legend has it that in the 1890's two cowboy's found a dead cowboy at the springs - hence the name Deadman Springs.

Lunch spot in the area of Deadman Springs.

Another trail that we had never explored before was Devil's Racetrack Trail.  It is about 90 miles from Moab and closer to the town of Green River, Utah.  The trail itself is in the Eagle Canyon and Coal Wash Wilderness areas. It's a spectacular area with canyon views, sandy wash bottoms, unlimited rock formations and a couple trail obstacles to conquer.

Devil's Racetrack Trail and sandstone cliffs

Devil's Racetrack Trail

Dutchman Arch

Sinbad Pictographs

 

The last EJS run we did was Dome Plateau trail. This trail dished out some outstanding views, colorful Entrada Sandstone cliffs with some arches, interesting caves and miners cabins. We even went into an uranium mine.

See the arch?  It's technically called a window.

La Boca Arch

Dinosaur Tracks, one of the three toes doesn't have water in it.

View from our lunch stop overlooking the Colorado River and Professor Valley.

After lunch, we stopped at Cave Springs.

The remains of an old mining camp. Cabins were built with old
railroad ties that still had the rail spikes in them. 

Mining camp

Nearby was the mine entrance - Did we go in?

Yes we did. The trail leader had a Geiger-counter with him which read the radiation level. 
Most of the time it was at safe levels but got higher the deeper into the mine we walked.

This was only a short distance into the mine. We could see
that it continued on but that would be unsafe.

In between all of the scheduled planned activities we went out on our own to do some exploring. We found rock formations rarely visited, petroglyphs and geocaches.

It's been years since we drove the Long Canyon Road so we thought we would do the drive again and collect a couple of geocaches along the way.  The majority of this trail is pretty smooth; however, there are a few bumpy sections, shelf road sections and also narrow sections.  The section called Pucker Pass is where is gets both narrow and bumpy.  It was named Pucker Pass by some Jeepers back in the days when the drive down the canyon was a lot more challenging than it is now. 

Jug Handle Arch at the mouth of Long Canyon

Challenge #1... The narrows into Pucker Pass in Long Canyon Road. 

Challenge #2...Fallen rock that you have to drive under.

Once you reach the highest point along the Long Canyon Drive
you are welcomed by breathtaking views of La Sal Mountains
and rock cliffs.

Another day, we enjoyed combining geocaching and Jeeping which brings us to great scenic locations and fun 4-wheeling adventures. 

Geocaching brought us to this off the beaten
path of this Spiral Formation.

Again, a geocache brought us to this old cabin made of railroad ties. Located in the
Dubinky Well area we needed to drive up a wash to get to it where we found the cabin
located right on the edge of the wash. The only inhabitants now are the pack rats.

We enjoyed a drive along the very scenic Potash Mine road which follows along the Colorado River.  All throughout the area are hiking trails, tall red rock walls, petroglyphs and even rock climbers scaling the vertical cliffs right beside the roadway. 

We had the Colorado River on one side and sandstone cliffs on the other.

We also stopped at some interesting petroglyphs as we drove down Seven Mile Canyon road.

Petroglyphs showing bighorn sheep with rectangular bodies and 
also found a nearby cache.

In the same area as the sheep we viewed Pictographs of human-like
figures painted on the rocks. The middle, more decorative image,
is known as Intestine Man, because if you zoom in, it looks
like intestines.

It was another successful Easter Jeep Safari with many miles of dirt and sandstone passing under our tires. Next, we leave Moab and on to some more Jeeping adventures where we meet up with our friends with Western Slope 4-Wheelers to explore Kanab, Utah.  

Happy Trails! 

Jack and Deb

1. "Adventure is out there." - Up (movie)