Overland Southwest Roadtrip

Climbing around The Cistern, Gold Butte National Monument, Nevada

Nutter Twist Road, Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument

Bar10 Ranch near Mt. Trumbull, Arizona

Holy shit we made it The River Overlook, Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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:

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.

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.

I may have asked of this Jeep all it has to give.

Headed from Bar10 to St. George, and the Trumbull Schoolhouse

Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Staircase.

Today was more rapid-fire than we’d intended.

This morning, Evan went off to get his flat tire repaired so he’d have a spare again. The only tire shop in Hurricane had a two hour wait, so he headed back and got pulled over on the way. The officer noted that the plates showed no insurance. Evan explained that it was a recent purchase. That set the cop off; in Utah it is illegal to display the tags from a previous owner. Evan tried to counter that in California, Oklahoma (and, for that matter, in Texas, if this had happened to me) that the plates travel with the car, and thus what he was doing was actually legally required of him in the origin state of the car and his own home state. “Well, when you re-register the car at home, they’ll give you new plates,” he said, and removed them from the Rover himself. That inspired some nervousness in George and me, feeling like we’re sitting on this time-bomb.

Back at the house, we packed up and headed out for Zion National Park. On the way, we made lunch stop at a cute little diner that was incredibly slow. Then we got gas for the time since Mesquite and surveyed the damage. Surprisingly, the 4Runner won for fuel economy, but set an embarrassingly low bar to do so.

As we approached Zion, we got stuck in a helluva traffic jam outside the park in a resort town on the edge of it, and it was filled completely with cars. As we approached the entrance gate, an NPS sign read, “All Parking in Zion Full. Return to town for shuttle.” That would have probably taken an hour or two to find parking on the far side of town, get to a shuttle stop, and get into the park. So we decided to take our chances, since we had to pass through the park anyway. We were able to pull off at a few scenic overlooks to look around and make a plan. I started to miss the Parashant where we would go hours without seeing another soul; this place was packed with people.

Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the majority of the trailheads and all the hikes I had starred are along a road that is only open to NSP shuttle busses, you can’t drive your own car up there. That was incredibly deflating, since I feel like that’s something I should have been able to find out on my own. The road proceeded directly to the east exit, but there was one last trailhead there for the East Rim Trail. We stopped and explored. It’s a one-way five mile hike toward a junction which splinters off toward other trails, but even the modest distance we walked offered beautiful views and highly nerdy conversations of a “technology meets automotive hobbies” variety. Not as much of Zion as I had hoped, but better than I feared given what things were like at the entrance. And it did give us two opportunities we hadn’t planned on.

First, we had yet another picnic luncheon that featured Evan’s squeeze-cheese in a shady thicket by the car park. Then we decided that instead of heading directly for Escalante, we should stop at Bryce Canyon!

It was about an hour from Zion to Bryce, and it was getting pretty late. Pushing the speed demonstrated increasing death wobble problems in the Jeep. These cars aren’t dead, but they have had a rough couple days. Also the 4Runner is developing a squeaky brake, which George reminds me is small-potatoes.

For fear of another dead-end shuttle service fiasco with less than two hours before dark, we didn’t go in the main Bryce Canyon National Park entrance. Instead, we continued on UT-12 to the Mossy Cave trailhead. It’s a beautiful little half-mile trail next to a white river of snow-melt, trees growing out of rocks, a really cool big waterfall, and the Mossy Cave which was not what the signs had cracked it up to be because it was no longer frozen, but it was cool. After exploring the waterfall area, we strolled back down to the cars and headed out.

The evening drive took us through the edge of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument area and offered stunning views of cliffs, valleys, canyons, and rocks of many colors, illuminated by sunset orange. It was a beautiful way to close out the day. We stopped briefly at an overlook for the tail end of sunset before heading into Escalante.

Then we discovered a problem. Escalante is tiny and a late-check-in mixup at the motel meant we had to call the owner in from home to sort out that, first, someone was in our room, and second, that our keys didn’t open our room nor did they seem to open any other room. Not a major problem, but enough so that by the time that got sorted, the only restaurant in town had closed. So we raided the snacks in the Rover for dinner and used a little whisky to wash it all down.

So all in all, it was a long day that made up for in quantity of parks what it lacked in thoroughness of parks explored, but it was a beautiful day that gave me a taste of what southern Utah has to offer. I will be back here some day.

Tomorrow, we head out from Escalante to Ferron via Capitol Reef. It will be our final overlanding day.

You just poked a hole in my headlight!