Into The Heart of Darkness
Ok the title and the graphic are a bit dramatic but nearly everyone you talk to in the US & Canada is fairly alarmed when you say that you are driving into Mexico. They have been fed on a near constant stream of news stories about drug related killings, beheadings, theft and other crime over the border. We’ve been regularly told that we are crazy particularly without a gun. We’ve been told that our truck will attract loads of the wrong type of attention and that a drug lord will want it.
All this has led to a little bit of anxiety before crossing into Mexico. But it wouldn’t be adventure travel without the adventure part !
Leaving Cardiff by the Sea we drove down towards the border. We’d heard that the Tijuana crossings were really busy and stressful so we had decided that the border at Tecate which is about 40 miles East would be a better bet for us. We didn’t arrive until fairly late in the day so we decided to camp near the border on the US side and cross first thing in the morning.
We managed to find the Potrero County Park which was only 5 miles from the border and was a really pretty state park where the trees were all in their autumn colours. We spent the night here and left at 9am to reach the border for 9.30.
The nice thing about Tecate is that there is no town on the US side of the border. As you drive towards the border you suddenly reach the barriers and there is nothing on the US side – no need to go through customs or stop in any way. This was a slight problem as we needed to check out with US Customs and hand back the white cards in our passports so we were properly registered as leaving the country. You don’t do this and you can end up blacklisted.
As we went through the border gate the Mexican border guards motioned us into a parking bay just beyond the border. They wanted a quick look inside the truck but that was it. We asked them where we could check out with US customs and they pointed to the foot border back into the US. They also told us where to get our tourist cards.
We had to drive around the block and park on the street just outside the border zone and then walk up to US customs as if we were coming back into the USA. We spoke to customs who grilled us about where we were going – why they cared seeing as we were leaving their country I don’t know – but they did take our little white forms. They had to then escort us back through a locked gate to the Mexican side.
After this we had to go to the Migracion office to get our tourist cards. We found an empty office but after waiting a minute or so a border official turned up. We filled out some forms and had our cards – only problem is you have to pay a fee at a bank to validate them and it was Sunday and the bank at the border was closed. The border guy told us we could do it tomorrow wherever we were. That was fairly easy and we hadn’t been asked for a bribe, threatened with a gun or even robbed yet.
Now we were free in Mexico. We had directions to get on Mex 3 towards Ensenada. This was great until we turned down a road to be blocked by a Parade straight through the middle of town. It took us a bit of negotiation to find a way round this but eventually we were on the 3 heading across some gorgeous hills and through the main wine region to Mexico’s third biggest town of Ensenada.
We got there in decent time and checked into an RV Park at the Estero Beach Hotel – where a lot of the Baja 1000 racers had been staying – although we had missed the race. There were a couple of racers still there taking their time to leave.
We spent a couple of nights at Estero Beach as we needed to chill out a bit after our time rushing around in California. However on Monday morning we drove into town to visit a bank – only to find it was a bank holiday and all the banks were shut. So we headed back to Estero beach to chill in the sun – except it wasn’t actually that warm. So we thought we’d go in the hot tub – only to find it wasn’t hot.
We decided that we needed to head South to find better weather. So on Tuesday morning we headed to the bank first thing to get our Tourist Cards validated. We found a Scotiabank where the teller even spoke English. We quickly paid for the validation – USD$21 each. And then we got on the road and headed South.
Mexican Insurance
Before heading down into Mexican you have to purchase Mexican Auto Insurance. This is a requirement for obtaining a Temporary Import Permit for your vehicle. The permit is not necessary for travel into Baja itself but is necessary for any further travel onto the Mexican mainland. After some research I soon discovered that you could either get insurance for a couple of weeks or if you wanted any longer then you needed to go for six months or a year to be cost effective. We decided to get six months of insurance even though we’re only planning a couple of months in Mexico. There is then a choice between Liability only or Full Insurance. The price differential meant that we decided to get Liability only (USD 600-700 for Full or around USD 150 for Liability only). We’ll just need to be real careful in our driving and cross our fingers. Knowing the way that insurance companies try and wriggle out of any payments I’d be fairly sceptical about ever getting a payout anyway ! It took a little while to find a company that would insure a UK registered vehicle that wasn’ t on their list of makes and models but after a tip off we found Lewis & Lewis. You can buy their insurance over the internet and they email the policy. The total cost was USD 153.63.
California, Dude !
From Primm we headed down to Cardiff by the Sea in California. This is about 20 miles North of San Diego and the home of one of my best friends.
We have spent a couple of weeks in Cardiff getting everything ready for what we are seeing as Part 2 of our trip – the transition from the easy travelling in North America to real Overlanding in Mexico and beyond.
So beyond hanging out with my friend, Matt, and having a couple of real boozy nights out at his local dive bar – The Shanty – we’ve been shopping for things that we need – including improving our collection of tools, buying consumables we think may be harder to get south of the border and getting all the other things we’ve been meaning to get but just never got round too.
There are a couple of things that we needed doing to the truck which we couldn’t do ourselves so we had to turn to the professionals.
1) Tow Hook: At the back of the truck the original tow hook had to be removed to fit the house on the back. This left us with no way to tow anything or to be pulled out from behind. We wanted to resolve this.
2) New Steer Tires: Our front tires have worn right down over the 19k miles that we have driven on this trip. The backs are ok but the fronts only had around another 3k miles left in them before being worn right down to the manufacturers replace line. We therefore needed to get some new tires.
3) Locks: All the external lockers and the main camper door had pretty flimsy locks on them so we wanted to beef these up a bit before hitting the countries outside North America.
4) Power: Our method of hooking up to shore power has been very unreliable and we have wanted to get this sorted for a while. We’ve bought a battery charger that can take any power input from 90v up to 260v and need to get this installed properly.
5) Solar Power: I think the solar power hasn’t been working so want to get this checked out.
The first thing we wanted to try and find were tyres. We initially thought that we could regroove our tyres so we did some ringing around the main tyre chains in the US and none could help us. We eventually got given a card by a manager at Discount Tire in San Marcos, CA for a company called SRD Racing who he thought had a regroover. This was a real stroke of luck because we went down to SRD and found a cool little company specialising in off road racing. They told us that we couldn’t regroove the tyres because they were too worn but that they could get us some replacements for only $400 each – a bargain considering we had been quoted $1200 each.
While we were at SRD we found out that they could build us a tow hook for the back of the truck. We had booked in to a welding company to get this done but Justin, the owner of SRD, had come up with a better plan for the back so we decided to go with him. We’re really glad we did because the tow hook they fabricated looks great and they built it from scratch which is really impressive.
In SRD we also got Justin to look at a small power steering leak – easily solved with some silicon. To tighten up a nut that had come loose on the fuel pump. This was the second time this has happened and its in a really awkward place but we’ve now bought the right tool to do this ourselves in future – it only needs doing every 6000 miles or so.
Also at SRD while Justin was working I changed the oil and replaced the oil and fuel filters. Easy enough to do but my first time.
We were really grateful for Justin finding the time to fit us in because he was seriously busy preparing his race car for the upcoming Baja 1000. And congratulations to Justin for winning his class in the race – second year running in two different classes.
For the work on the locks we went to Sonrise RV. We weren’t so lucky here as the work they did was a bit sloppy. However they took just over a day to install a big puck lock on the main camper door and padlocks on all the side lockers.
We had thought about getting Sonrise to install the new charger but after seeing their work we are glad that we didn’t. Instead we went to Camping World in San Marcos. These guys are quite expensive but really know what they are doing. They quickly and easily installed the charger and gave us a socket on the outside to plug in from. They did an excellent job.
We also got Camping World to check out our solar power and discovered that it had been wired up wrong from the outset. Our batteries are paired to be 24v because the alternator provides 24v current. The solar was wired up so that it was only providing 12v charging – no use on 24v battery pairs. A simple change to the wiring changed this so that they could charge our 24v batteries. This was quite annoying to discover as it was just a silly mistake in the building.
It wasn’t all chores while in California. We made a quick trip out to Joshua Tree National Park – mostly to get out of our friends hair for a couple of nights. I also went surfing with my friend Matt – although I call it surfing its more like falling when I do it. Matt took us on a whistlestop tour of local attractions and the pick of these was the beach at La Jolla which was covered in seals.
Unfortunately despite being in California for over two weeks we ended up spending a lot of it driving around doing tasks and didn’t do as much sightseeing as we would have liked. I think our lasting impression of the San Diego area is probably the traffic – its busy and the drivers are really aggressive.
I’d really like to take this opportunity to thank Matt, Phoebe, Jack, Annabel and George for their Awesome hospitality and for putting up with us parked in their street for so long. Thanks guys.
Vegas Baby !
After spending the last few weeks in the wide open spaces of Utah, Vegas came as a real shock. Loads of traffic and people everywhere.
We managed to negotiate our way to the MGM Grand where we had booked a room for a couple of nights. They were the only casino that we could find that actually mentions oversized parking on their website. Whilst there we did find that there were other casinos with decent outdoor parking as well but hindsight is always 20:20.
Once at the MGM though we were stuck as there were no signs for the oversized parking and lots of roads with height restrictions that we were too big for. I parked up in a fire lane and stayed in the Beast while Sarah ran off to try and find where the oversized parking was. After wandering the vast casino for about 20 minutes she reappeared to let me know that security would shortly arrive to take us to the parking lot. After waiting for a couple of minutes a red pickup turned up and a security guy told us to follow him to the parking lot. We had to go back outside the Casino grounds and then into a lot next to the swimming pool which was a big walled lot – mostly empty.
After getting our stuff together the security guy gave us a lift to the main entrance and told us that if we needed to visit the Beast we would need to call security.
Check in was quick and easy at one of about 50 check in desks in the huge lobby. We went up to our 10th floor room and marvelled at the luxury of a king size bed and a separate sofa. The footprint of the room was about 10 times the size of the Beast. Luxury! The view out of the window was of a pretty nasty flat roof but in the distance you could still see the casinos New York, New York and Excalibur.
After revelling in the comforts of our room we headed off down the strip to check out some sights. It was pretty hot so we only made it as far as the Bellagio. We were both amazed at how much Vegas had changed since we were last here in 2004. Big new casinos have opened and new skyscrapers dominate. It seems a shame though that the big theme casinos like Paris, New York and Luxor are no longer in vogue and the new ones are much less interesting.
The pavements were so crowded that it took us an hour to walk the ½ mile up to the Bellagio and back.
We headed back to our room and got ready for a night out. We had booked the Cirque de Soleil show called “O” at the Bellagio so decided to try out their buffet for dinner. When we got to the Bellagio we found an enormous queue for the buffet but fortunately after queuing for under a minute one of the waiters came along the line asking if anyone wanted to eat at the bar. We quickly volunteered and were taken straight past the massive queue to be seated at the bar right in the centre of the action. Result !
The buffet was great – unlimited quantites of good food including snow crab legs and some great prime rib. We’d soon stuffed our faces though. The whole experience isn’t that cheap though as with a couple of drinks each it came to $100.
It was soon time for the show to start. I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about “O”. There is no doubt that it was spectacular. The stage consists of a large circular pool of water – at any time any part of this pool can be water of any depth. One second someone walks across the water and the next someone high dives into the same spot. Only in Vegas could you get a stage show this elaborate which clearly costs an enormous amount to put on. However there was no discernible plot to the show which meant it just consisted of set piece dance after set piece dance some of which were incredibly spectacular but without a narrative to hang it on it felt ultimately hollow and even a bit weird.
In all I’m glad we went to “O” but I wouldn’t hurry back – certainly not at the prices they charged. We had the cheapest seats in the house, at a discount, and still paid $100 per seat.
The next day we didn’t get up so early after what had been a late night for us and we headed off to the pool complex at the MGM. Because it was considered winter, half of the pool complex was shut however there were still three big pools to choose from. We sat by the pool until we got hungry and soaked up some sun.
Around lunchtime we went across the road to New York, New York. This is my favourite casino because it is good value and they’ve made a real effort to carry the theme throughout the casino. Inside is a little replica of New York too. We went to the “America” diner for lunch which had a massive 3D relief map of the USA on the wall – according to the menu it cost $0.5 million to make – nothing is cheap in Vegas. Sarah ordered Nachos and got served the biggest plate of food I’ve ever seen – needless to say she didn’t finish it.
After lunch we went for a wander and checked out Excalibur and the Luxor. Neither of these casinos have really got anything to recommend them. Luxor particularly seems to have stripped out most of its theme in an attempt to modernise and has pretty much lost most of its charm in doing so.
In the evening we went out for a long walk up the strip. Much easier in the cool of the evening. It was Halloween so every other person was dressed up. We noted though that all the women who were dressed up had all picked a costume and then decided on the slutty version of it. I’ve never seen so many slutty witches, pirates and cheerleaders.
We headed up the strip and checked out the Venetian, Caesar’s Palace and Paris for our evening stroll. Just walking round these three casinos was a major exercise. The gondolas in the Venetian are a blast and a little bit surreal being inside and not even on the ground floor.
To be honest this visit to Vegas has been fairly low key – we haven’t got drunk, gambled too much or stayed up all night. However its still been fairly culture shocking coming from the emptiness of Utah into Sodom & Gomorrah.
We managed to leave Vegas without to much incident but didn’t get too far and ended up only really getting to the Nevada border before nightfall. We saw a sign for a truck stop which turned out to be in a little town called Primm. Primm seems to exist solely to be the last casinos before California and has three casinos right next to the highway. We stayed in the car park at Whiskey Pete’s – a bizarre casino which is styled like a castle complete with crenulations but has a cowboy theme. This is the other side of gaming in Nevada and a nice contrast to Vegas.
Strangely in the casino was a bunch of Bonnie and Clyde memorabilia including the car they died in – riddled with bullet holes – and Clyde’s shirt – also full of holes.
And So To Zion
After our night at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park where it was cold (-5c) but nowhere near as cold as Bryce Canyon we were in desperate need of some groceries and clean clothes. We drove the 20 miles or so to a small town called Kanab, otherwise known as Little Hollywood due to all the movies made in the area, where we found both a supermarket and laundrette.
It took us the best part of the day to do our chores so when we left instead of going straight into Zion National Park we found a great free campsite about 0.25 miles from the highway down a dirt road. It was a lovely spot and was completely deserted. We knew from an already made fire ring that people had been there before us but it’s obviously not too well know as we had the whole area to ourselves for the night.
In the morning we drove the remaining 10 miles to the East gate of Zion National Park. The entrance from the East requires a drive through a 1 mile long tunnel that is quite low and not very wide. As a result we had to pay a $15 charge to have the tunnel shut to oncoming traffic so we could drive through in the centre of the road. This seems to be a bit of a con because they were only letting all traffic through one way at a time. It’s the first charge we’ve had to pay at a National Park after purchasing an Annual Parks Pass (at $80 a real bargain as entry to Parks can be as high as $25).
Once through the tunnel there are some tight switchbacks to negotiate before reaching the Canyon floor. Zion is unusual for a national park in that most of it is not accessible by your own vehicle. Instead there is a very efficient shuttle bus service which runs the length of the canyon.
So on arriving at Zion we checked into the South Campground ($16 per night), a very leafy and shaded campground right next to the Virgin River. After getting settled we hopped on a shuttle bus and went up to the Zion Lodge stop. Here we hiked the Emerald Pools Trail (lower, middle and upper) and ended up at The Grotto. The walk was a bit disappointing as 2 of the Emerald Pools were small muddy ponds, it was also very busy. The best section of the walk was the last steep climb to Upper Emerald Pond, definitely the prettiest of the three ponds and much less crowded . After this we went to the end of the canyon and walked the riverside trail up to where the river disappears into a slot canyon – only 10 foot wide or so. You can walk up the river from here but at this time of year you need a drysuit and there were loads of people doing the hike (called the Narrows) which put us off.
After these two trails we weren’t that impressed with Zion and returned to the Beast for a nice BBQ and fire for the evening.
The next day we were up and out relatively early and jumped on a shuttle to the Grotto Stop where the trailhead for the Angel’s Landing hike is found. This hike is straight up the canyon walls up some pretty fearsome switchbacks to a small plateau called Scout’s Landing. From here the path to Angel’s Landing climbs another 200m or so along a narrow ridge with 500m drop offs on each side. There is a chain embedded in the rock for some of the trail but still one slip and you would be history. The view from the top is stunning though and there is a great plateau at the end to enjoy the view. If you were scared of heights this hike would be your worst nightmare!
After the Angel’s landing hike (which made up for the previous days’ disappointing hikes) we took a shuttle bus to the Court of the Patriarchs (the Mormons’s became very poetic when they named things in this Park). Here we spent some time on a lovely little beach by the Virgin River with the three Patriarchs (Jacob, Abraham and Isaac) looming above us.
From here we caught another shuttle to the end of the Pa’rus trail and followed this the 1.5 miles back to the campground.
Zion is our last stop in Utah and we’re now heading for Vegas so not long now until we leave the USA and hit Mexico .
Bryce Canyon
Our second night at Calf Creek the weather changed – the temperature dropped and there was some fairly heavy rain in the night. We left first thing in the morning and drove towards Bryce Canyon. As we got closer to Bryce and started driving uphill we began to notice the temperature dropping still further and patches of snow on the ground. By the time that we reached Bryce the ground was covered in snow and the temperature was hovering around -2c.
The first thing we did was drop in at the visitor centre and look at the weather forecast – they were expecting -10c to -12c overnight. Easy decision then – we weren’t staying the night like we’d planned.
We headed over to the main amphitheatre at Sunset Point and set out on a walk down the cliffs. We walked down the Navajo loop and then to extend things went around Queen Victoria’s Gardens before ascending back to Sunrise Point.
The trail descended sharply into a canyon with really tall trees – but still not tall enough to reach the top of the canyon. Everything looked amazing with a sprinkling of snow. The walls of the canyon are covered in hoodoos and it really is an exceptionally pretty park.
The area known as Queen Victoria’s Garden has a hoodoo which looks not dissimilar to Queen Victoria herself.
After the walk we drove along the scenic drive and checked out a few of the viewpoints. To be honest it was really more of the same. The final viewpoint was called Rainbow point and is the highest point in the park. It was bitterly cold here and we didn’t hang around.
For the evening we drove about 80 miles South to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. This is a really small state park with its claim to fame being a couple of strikingly coloured sand dunes. There was a great little campground here with hot showers (now we may have a shower on board but unlimited hot water is something we can’t pass up).
Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
One of the most recent National Parks is the Grand Staircase which was formed (over much opposition) by one of Bill Clinton’s last acts as President. The area encompassed by the Monument is huge at over 2 million acres and yet there is only one maintained hiking trail and paved roads only skirt the edges. Given this, the park is relatively deserted especially when compared to its more illustrious neighbours such as Bryce Canyon.
We started off by going for hike in an area adjacent to the main Monument called the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. We travelled 8 miles down the House Rock Valley Road to the Wire Pass Trailhead. This road was ok for a gravel road but with short areas of nasty corrugations. From this trailhead you can access The Wave which is a permit only hike – we didn’t have a permit so we hiked through Buckskin Gulch.
For the first mile or so we walked up an open wash but this then narrowed into a tight slot canyon. There was a pour off about five feet high to climb down – no problem going down but coming up was more interesting and I needed to haul Sarah up. After another 0.5 miles or so the canyon opened out into a wide sandy area bordered by cliffs and then closed up again into a slot. This slot wasn’t that tight – maybe 4 feet wide but the sides got higher and higher as you moved downstream.
We had a bit of shock about half way along this canyon as sitting on a small ledge was a snake. Sarah does not like snakes at all but she managed to edge her way past to carry on. On the way back through the canyon we got to the ledge and the snake had moved – it was moving down the canyon along the edge. Again we edged by with no problems but Sarah’s stress level was high!
The Canyon runs for 13 miles until it hits the Paria River but we only went around 4 miles in before turning round and retracing our steps.
After this we drove back to the main road and slightly back on ourselves to reach the Cottonwood Canyon Road. This is a 56 mile long dirt road which cuts right across the Grand Staircase Monument. This road is definitely not feasible in a normal passenger car as there were some heavily rutted areas, some deep sand and some mud too.
We found a nice place by the river to spend the night though and in the morning drove the rest of the road, past Grosvenor Arch to Kodachrome Basin State Park. Kodachrome State Park marked the start of paved road which we were pretty thankful for.
The raison d’etre for Kodachrome is a large number of pipes that have formed in the area. These are pretty curious looking. We went on a short (3 mile) hike in this park and climbed up and over a big mound of slickrock where we saw both a pipe close up and a small arch.
After Kodachrome we drove up the road a few miles to the visitor centre where we got some information on the state of another gravel road called the Hole in the Rock road. Reassured that this was in good condition and that there was no rain forecast for the next two days we headed 10 miles up the road from the visitor centre (in Escalante) to the junction with Hole in the Rock Road.
This road is famous for a group of Mormon settlers who were convinced they could cross the Colorado in this direction. Through sheer bloody mindedness they managed to get through but had to blast there way through a solid rock wall and then lower their wagons by rope down a 1000ft cliff then back up the other side of the canyon.
We weren’t so ambitious and were only heading 26 miles down the road to the Dry Forks Trailhead. On the way we stopped off at the Devil’s Garden where there are a number of Hoodoos. We arrived at the Dry Forks turnoff after a pretty easy run down what wasn’t a bad road – other than some bone shaking corrugations. However the 1.7 mile road to the trailhead was a different story. We drove most of this at a pretty severe angle with one side of the truck about 2 feet higher than the other. This is one road that a normal car would never get down. We decided to stay at the trailhead overnight and go hiking in the morning.
The Dry Forks trailhead is the access point for two slot canyon hikes. Peek-a-boo and Spooky canyons. Both of these are tight slots with Spooky much tighter than Peek-a-boo. In fact a couple of people had suggested to me that I wouldn’t fit down Spooky at all.
We hiked down into the main Dry Forks canyon and our first stop was Peek-a-boo canyon. Well first challenge was the 12 foot high wall to climb to get up into the canyon. Fortunately there were 2 or 3 hand and footholds cut in the wall and the climb wasn’t too bad. Once in the Canyon it wasn’t much further until another ledge to be climbed. At first Sarah couldn’t get up this but a bit of perseverance and she was up and it was worth the effort with arches, tunnels and various twists and turns along the way.
Despite a couple of tight spots, we made our way through the rest of the Canyon without mishap ending in a sandy wash at which point you turn around and work your way back through to the entrance. We had more trouble climbing back down but eventually we were out.
Buoyed by our success at Peek-a-boo we moved down the main canyon to the entrance to Spooky. This was a much less intimidating start, as the wash just entered the slot at ground level. However within a few paces the slot had closed right up, the walls were much higher than Peek-a-boo and there wasn’t a great deal of light, hence the name I guess. Both of us could only make progress sideways and my chest and back were both touching rock – the feeling of claustrophobia was palpable. We pushed on through and reached a point where the canyon walls were too narrow for me – I moved my chest down and just squeezed through.
Then as we moved through a slightly more open bit – there standing in the middle of the canyon – was the biggest spider I’d ever seen. Now Sarah hates spiders – this was a problem. I thought that I would encourage it to move , so I threw a stone at it. Instead of running off it reared up and bared its fangs – it wanted to fight!
We had to gird our loins and edge round it. There is something scary about a massive spider that is un-nerving even to those of us not scared of spiders.
There were a number of twisting, tight spots that needed to be negotiated and a couple that needed some minor climbing. That is until we were about ¾ of the way along the canyon when we hit a very large choke stone which was just over 6 feet high. The only way over was to reach up and over and then use your legs to brace against one wall while edging your back up the other. Once at the top you had to crawl through a short tunnel and then climb up and over another large stone before dropping back into the canyon. Although Sarah had managed so far to climb up all the obstacles in our way she was not tall enough to pull herself up this one and there was no way to help her because of the small tunnel at the top, so she waited while I quickly made my way to the end of the canyon (only another couple of hundred metres) where it opened out into a wide sandy wash.
We made our way back through the canyon. The spider had moved nicely under a ledge so not so scary and the tight claustrophobic bit from the way out seemed much less tight as the sun was now higher in the sky. We made it back to the mouth of the canyon with a real sense of achievement.
After making our way back to the camper we headed back to the main road and then to the next area of The Grand Staircase which was the Calf Creek Recreation Area. There was a really pretty little campsite here so we decided to spend the night and registered before heading off on the headline hike here – the trail to the Lower Calf Creek Falls.
This was a really nice hike through a lush valley (a real rarity in Southern Utah), past some ancient ruined granaries in the cliffs, some pictographs and then to a gorgeous waterfall at the end of the canyon.
The only fly in the ointment of this hike was that on the way back we came across a pretty large snake which was right in the middle of the path. Not knowing if it was poisonous or not we waited a few minutes for it to move away before continuing.
The next morning we decided that we needed a day off so booked another night at the campsite and decided to spend the day doing some cleaning and more importantly some relaxing in the sun!
Page and Lake Powell
After Monument Valley we headed West towards the town of Page. We needed to pick up some groceries, get a minor fix to the Beast and pick up our email.
Page is in Arizona, however it is right on the border with Utah and we headed to a spot in Utah to camp. Right on the shore of Lake Powell is a National Park Service managed location called Lone Rock Beach. It is rumoured that Hugh Hefner holds a party here each summer but there was no sign of the Playboy boat when we were there. However what is there, is a stunning white sand beach on the shore of Lake Powell. There is no campsite as such but you can stay right on the beach wherever you want.
Lake Powell itself was controversially formed by damming the Colorado River and flooding Glen Canyon in 1963 but took until 1980 to fill. The lake is 550ft deep at the dam and stretches back 186 miles up the Colorado River, 72 miles up the San Juan River and has flooded a further 96 other river canyons. The total shoreline of the Lake is 1960 miles.
We pulled right up to the water – through some fairly deep sand and stayed here for three nights.
I mentioned that we had to get a small piece of work done to the Beast. We could hear a hissing sound in the cab and each morning one of our air tanks was empty. It didn’t take a genius to work out that we had an air leak. We found a garage in Page, Liberty Auto, and they took off the console in the cab and quickly discovered a fairly major leak on the differential control. Behind the panel there was a mess of airlines. Eventually three different leaks were plugged and after watching how it was done I’m now completely confident that if we get another leak in this area I can fix it myself. We must get some spare connectors and lines for any repairs that may be needed in the future.
Also while on Lake Powell we took the opportunity to get our kayak out and go exploring on the lake. I did a solo trip out to the Lone Rock and back. Then both of us went along the shore exploring various drowned canyons as we went. This really felt like the summer we didn’t have in Alaska as the temperature reached 30c each day and the nights were mild. Winter comes late to Southern Utah.
Just before leaving Lake Powell we drove a few miles outside town and visited Horseshoe bend on the Colorado river.
Monument Valley
Monument Valley is an iconic destination and has been the scene for countless cowboy films. The local Navajo Native Americans have worked this out and as the valley is on their land they charge for entry ($5 per person). Now most people take guided tours of the valley which is very expensive ($40+ each for an hour) but we wanted to drive ourselves around so opted for a self-guided tour. The Navajo seem greedy as they even ban hiking without a guide (which of course they charge for).
One way they make sure that most people take guided tours is by ensuring that the condition of the road is very bad. The road through the valley is not paved and is one of the worst roads we have seen on our trip so far. It wasn’t helped by a water tanker driving down the steepest hill watering the ground to limit dust for the tours. We switched to low range and made it up through the mud with no problem though.
Natural Bridges National Monument and Capitol Reef National Park
From Goblin Valley we drove down a slight detour to Capitol Reef National Park. The road in was very pretty down a forested valley but on getting there we were not enormously impressed with the Park so we decided to drive the 18 mile scenic drive and then head off.
We reached Natural Bridges National Monument, and a chance encounter with a travelling Irishman early in the day had furnished us with the location of a great free campsite. Just before the entrance to the Park we turned off onto Elk Ridge Road and along here were numerous pullouts where previous campers had conveniently built fire rings. The night was pretty cold but the morning soon warmed up.
In the morning we headed into the Park itself and had a look at the natural bridges. Natural bridges are formed by running water (over a river) while Arches are formed by weathering. This Park has three of the largest Natural Bridges in the world. Including one that is the second largest in the world called Sipapu Bridge.
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