The Grand Canyon

The last two days have been an amazing adventure. On Monday morning, we were in surprisingly good working order after George’s Birthday at the CasaBlanca. We headed out west (yes, I know the Grand Canyon is west of Mesquite…) and drove through the Gold Butte National Monument to start our trip into the Grand Canyon region.

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Our first stop was The Cistern, what looks to be an old water storage.

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We climbed around on it and the rocks on the other side for a while before getting back on the road. We were only a few miles from the Arizona State Line and the end of Gold Butte.

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Unfortunately, there was a gap on the Arizona side before the border of the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument. These two National Monument areas and the void between them were pretty remote and had no paved roads, just a bunch of dirt and rock trails on numbered “BLM Roads” (Bureau of Land Management). Our first route issue arose quickly: the trail we were to take into the Parashant had new, vividly caution-orange “No Trespassing” signs on either side, and going forward. A few of them had been shot at.

Although we questioned the legality of these signs and whether they applied to the road or to the land on either side of it, we decided that they were enforceable by virtue of not wanting to be shot at by the crazies in the woods. We reversed back up a rocky yet tree-lined hill and took the other fork to get to a more welcoming clearing before we took a few minutes to study the atlas and topo maps we had to plan a new route.

We ended up needing to take the ridiculously named but ultimately mildly terrifying “Nutter Twist Road” and BLM 1063 around to get over to Bar10 Ranch. This was proper offroading and took hours longer than anticipated, a true test of our collective mettle. Most of it was rocky trails through flat lands but we did make several passes along high cliffs, through riverbeds, or across wide flatlands.

We did have to make one car related stop. The Jeep wasn’t overheating, but it was running a little hot, and the 4Runner was complaining about oil pressure. Low-ish oil pressure at low revs is to be expected because the oil pump is driven by the engine, but Charlie noticed the needle dropping a lot lower than it usually does. I checked for leaks and put in half a quart at the stop, which seemed to make it happier.

Ultimately, although the day was difficult, we had only two truly scary parts so I’m very proud of how well we handled the rest. There was one extremely rocky hill-climb that was worrying because of its proximity to, well, a hill down into the canyon.

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We stopped to walk it, then proceeded one at a time while the other three “helped” and documented thoroughly. This was the first time I was actually irritated by having a standard transmission. Even in low-range in first gear, I have to be moving forward to not stall, so if I came up against a part that I had a hard time climbing and my speed went to zero, I’d stall and have to do an uphill start, trying not to roll backward at all, and try again. We all made it up, and I can’t wait to see video of it, but we all shudder and drink a little bourbon when we think back on it.

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The drive proceeded slowly due to rocks and the sun slowly set over the cliffs as we descended toward the Bar10 Ranch which was not inside the canyon but lower than I had expected. Our second white-knuckling event was a long, steep rocky downhill after dark. George installed some foglights, and the Rover has one (not two), but I just have regular headlines. So that means I can’t very clearly see the ground immediately in front of me which is where the rocks were hiding.

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Not long after that, we reached the Bar10 Ranch, three hours late. But that didn’t matter to them. The four staff members there that night rolled out the red carpet. I had hoped they’d save plates for us in the fridge, but no, they fired the grill back up and made us a great dinner, then threw more logs on the campfire out back.

Our accommodations for the night were covered wagons out back in the circle, which we retired to pretty quickly.

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This morning we woke up to birds of all kinds, the sunrise, and aspen trees. The snooze-button was powered not only by the ranch triangle kitchen call, but also a helicopter!

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They put together a breakfast feast and then we got on the road down from Bar10 to the River Overlook on the edge of the canyon. It was an incredibly rocky drive. The ten miles or so took us over an hour and a half to get down.

Despite the rough going, the view was well worth it. Today was a day to be proud of all seven of us.

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We hiked about a third of the way down into the canyon from there to a lower overlook before heading back up and driving back to Bar10 on the way out.

We bought a little fuel from them and took a quick break before heading out to St. George on unpaved, but thankfully undramatic roads. But the Canyon wasn’t done with us just yet, on the way up the one steep hill today, Evan developed a minor issue:

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I’m proud of us, though: we had it changed in ten minutes and got moving again. On the way out, we stopped for another picnic at an abandoned schoolhouse in Trumbull that closed in 1964 because it had too few students. The residents of the area renovated it in the 90s to be a museum of the school, and it is left with the doors just open to who ever drives by to take a look. I was pleased to see that it’s clean, the inside is cared for, and it’s undisturbed. I imagine it gets very few visitors.

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After lunch in the gazebo out back, we drove on into St. George, following dusty but mostly smooth roads for most of the journey, and finally rejoining I-15 for the last mile or so. In true fashion, our first stop was an AutoZone.

The shock in the Jeep’s steering dampener is shot, making death wobble even worse than before, so George is going to try and replace that in the morning. I wanted to buy another quart of 5W-30, and Evan needs a new bolt for one of his brake calipers which it only attached at one end and clangs like a cowbell when he hits a bump.

From there, we had a quick dinner and drove on into Hurricane (“HURR-uh-c’n”, we’re told) for the night. Tomorrow will be some repairs in the morning, and an afternoon at Zion National Park.