Capitol Reef...Complete

 We woke up to a beautiful morning with just the tiniest chill in the air. We saw (and heard) that the underneath side of Joon was filthy with caked on mud from the roads we traveled yesterday, so we decided to hit a car wash before doing the park. While out and about yesterday we came across a Visitor's Information Center, we stopped and got maps and booklets, but we also saw in the same parking lot there was a self carwash, so this is where we came back to. We pulled in to air up the tires and get things clean, we also washed our floor mats! 

I saw this sign, it made me giggle! I guess it's a real big problem! haha

Today we are going into Capitol Reef National Park. We looked at the map but once again it doesn't look like there's any (really) long hikes, but maybe I'm just not reading the maps right...?

  

While we were at the entrance sign, we were talking to a real nice couple and one of their little boys was watching this (picture below) go down and finally pointed it out to the rest of us. 

Now that's one way to be part of the food chain, eh!!

We saw about 3 or 4 Artists, painting or sketching the beauty in nature that is all around us.

The waterfalls were gone since there was no rain today, I guess we got lucky seeing them yesterday. Still a beautiful day!

 

We decided to pull over into a few places and take some pictures and maybe even hike a little bit to see stuff. Now you think I would learn from the first hike I did with my flip flops...? Thinking this was a different part of the park (with a flat wood bridge), I wore some flats, more or less like slippers and carried no water. Yep, I said no water.

 The hike wasn't too bad, it seemed like a lot of uphill at first, but once you come up on top, its pretty easy. The only time I had trouble (due to my shoes) was when we were 'climbing' (used very loosely) at awkward angles, they got a little slippery. I promised Jamie that I would wear the right shoes no matter what from now on! 😝

 We saw a sign at the top of the 'big climb' that said 

<--Hickman Bridge  .7

Rim Overlook  2 -->

Navajo Knobs  4.2 -->

Since we had no water, we decided for the .7 to Hickman Bridge. Hickman Bridge is a little treasure, for you have to find it on the backside of a loop! It's cool.

  

I love all of the variations of rock and colors...just nature, period, in this park, it's much different than the other parks.

  

We made it, with silly shoes and no water...now time to get back to the van and get some water!

  

The view is just as great going back as it was hiking to Hickman Bridge!

We met another super nice couple, Andy & Cathy, in the parking area of the Petroglyph's. They travel in a Tiger Motorhome that's been converted from an Astro van chassis. Their rig was sweet, the inside was very roomy...it was pretty neat seeing what could be done with an Astro, it had so much room in it! Turns out that we are doing each others trips backwards; they are on their way to Moab/Canyonlands and we were headed down Scenic Byway 12 after the park.

The Petroglyph's is where the flat wood bridge is...now that I had my Reebok's on! 

The bridge is beautiful, you can walk lazily down it while trees canopy over you, providing shade while different colors dance on the rocks.

 

  

We were both excited to get on Scenic Byway 12 so we didn't do much else in the park. I believe Scenic Drive (in the park) is a good 8 or 9 miles and we were ready to go drive "The Most Beautiful Road in America"!

PEACE

Leaving Moab to continue our National Park Journey...

The morning of June 11th, we woke up at our BLM camp spot on Yellow Circle Road, which we camped at (I think) 3 times during our stay in and around Moab (15 days). Yellow Circle Road is a few miles outside of Moab, off of Highway 191, and is a great go-to if you're passing through or if you want to be closer to town. We wouldn't use it as a long-term (2 week) spot, we used it kind of like how we use Wal-marts, it's nice and convenient. Here are the coordinates:
GPS: 38.435474, -109.427631

We hit the road around 9-9:30 a.m., heading to the next park...Capitol Reef. The rain danced around us all night with major lightning and thunder storms, it was the first time we had had a rain storm like that, while we slept, since Georgia. I'm so glad Joon doesn't leak!
The rain clouds were still circling around Moab as we drove through town to get on the highway out of town, it looked like hell was about to drop in on Moab! 

 This was the moment that we were both so happy that we busted ass to get out of the Canyonlands spot, for as we looked up the mountain where we were parked, you couldn't even see the mountain tops! All of the mountains were covered in heavy rain mist or blackish grey/blue clouds, we were glad to be leaving!
We had rain the entire drive to Capitol Reef. It was a nice cool drive, but wet and rainy the whole way.  

We drove into the park without even knowing we were actually in the park. This park doesn't have an entrance gate that you pay at, it's just a road that goes through the park...we were wondering if you pay at the Visitor's Center, but since we bought a (N.P annual) pass we weren't too worried about it. I did learn later that you were charged a fee for traveling the park's Scenic Drive beyond the Fruita Campground: $5 for bicyclists/pedestrians & $10 for vehicles, the pass is good for 7 days.

 

  We drove straight through the entire park in about 10 minutes, maybe less, until we hit the small town of Torrey. Surprised that we just drove through the park and didn't even know it, we saw a visitor's information building and decided to stop in to get some maps and all the touristy stuff. We grabbed some great booklets and maps as we talked to the woman running the place, she told us about some roads (Scenic Drive) in the park that were closed due to the rain flooding the roads! 
 We got back in the van and drove another 10 miles or so down the road to see what the town had to offer in ways of groceries and fuel, then headed back toward the park to find a spot to camp for the night.

We had found a place on www.Freecampsites.net but as we drove to it, found it was right off of the main highway, so that was a no-go for us due to wanting privacy and not worrying about the dogs. We drove a couple more miles and found another road that went back into the rocks a little bit, so decided to take it and found about 8 "campsites" or so it seemed with all of the firepits. 

There was absolutely noone else there and was a perfect place for us to stop for the night. I'm not sure what the road name was called but it's easy to find, right off of the main road that leads into the park, from Torrey side. There was no wifi and we didn't check to see if there was any TV since it was going to be dark soon and we were just going to leave in the morning anyway. We pulled out our chairs, had a cocktail and looked over our maps and booklets until it started getting a little dark. It was a beautiful spot!

 More about this part of our N.P. journey in the next post
Until then...
PEACE

Canyonlands Overview

Sitting in a reclining chair, overlooking an amazing view while typing this, no internet connection so will have to be posted at a later date.
We drove out to Canyonlands N.P. a little over a week ago.

 We thought we were much further away from the park than we actually were. Canyonlands is divided into 3 districts; The Needles~South, The Maze~West and Island in the Sky~North, but there are only 2 entrances; The Needles and Island in the Sky. When I put Canyonlands into the GPS, four different locations came up, I wasn't sure which one to pick, so I picked the closest one from Moab; 32 miles away which turned out to be Island in the Sky. We were planning on doing much more driving so this was an unexpected surprise. We drove into the park, taking a map at the entrance gate but also stopping in at the Visitor's Center to ask some questions about camping and to buy a sticker for our board. The Visitor's Center has become one of my main favorite stops...the Rangers are super helpful in giving you great information about the park and the surrounding areas. I talked to a ranger for about 20 minutes about camping in the park, primitive camping, points not to miss, etc. The things I learned about this park that stood out to me were; this park is HUGE at 336,000 acres, the road through the park does not go all the way through to the South entrance (The Needles) due to a canyon running through the middle of it, for backcountry/primitive camping they book up about 4 months in advance and requires a permit, and it can take days on most of these 4wd roads to complete 100 miles. After leaving the Visitor's Center, we talked about camping in the campground for a couple of nights, it was only $10 a night and would save us the gas money, coming and going every day, back to wherever we could find BLM camping. We decided to drive through the campground and see if there were any open spots. We were surprised at how small the campground was, due to how big the park is and since it was a Saturday, it was already full...BLM here we come! We stopped back by the Visitor's Center to ask them about BLM camping around the area and I actually got some really good answers. The map that we got from the BLM office was the same map the Ranger gave me, but also accompanied it with a Utah map! Now, we were getting somewhere! He pointed out some places that we just camped at a few nights ago, then some places closer like Gemini Bridges Rd. and Mineral Bottom Rd (About 6-8 miles away from entrance of the park). *Sidenote: We took Gemini Bridges Rd. yesterday on the dirt bike and it is a really rough road with only 6 campsites, it is free but good luck getting up or down that road. It would be a fun 4x4 drive in a Jeep or ATV but I would never bring my Joon van down that road, especially with the trailer on it.* The Ranger had told me where to find Mineral Bottom Rd., which he said was the 1st left out of the park....no it's not. We turned down 2 different roads, that said No Camping, then turned down another road that had a sign that said NO CAMPING in big letters, then in really small print beneath it said, for the next 1/2 mile... gotta read that fine print! We drove down it, calculating how far we were going and found a couple of okay spots but then Jamie wanted to keep on looking further down. I was a bit hesitant due to the looks of the road but I trust him and his handling of the van so, I give in every time. We ended up down this road that turned into mostly rock with some trees and cactus, it was an amazing spot, so we drove down the scary road and are parked here now. 

Our view

We have views of the Canyon that is separating us from the park and we're only 4-5 miles from the entrance, not too shabby! 

 We've been here about a week now and went into the park last night for the first time since arriving here. 

 It was an interesting drive on the dirt bike due to a few things. First off, it rained here for a good 3 days, due to all of the storms around the U.S., but this wasn't your average rain...we had a frickin' deluge, which we saw last night pretty much washed out the scary road we came in on, now making it really scary!

Doesn't look too bad in the picture!

 Jamie is out on the dirt bike right now, as I write this, to see if the sand/mud has packed down hard enough for us to be able to get out. The road that was at a slight angle when we came in, is at an extreme angle now and we just don't want to get stuck sliding down into the muddy ravine. So, he's checking it out and if we have to stay for a few more days, then we will for safety, but the weather is calling for rain for the next 3 days, so we'll have to see! The other interesting thing about that ride last night was, even with what we thought was a couple of hours of sunlight, we pretty much rode into the park, drove about 15 miles and had to turn around due to the sun dropping super quick all of a sudden and it getting pretty darn chilly. We got back to the van and it was dark...so weird! So tonight we plan to go in much earlier than 7 p.m.! 

Making up shit on how Canyons are formed

From what I gather, this part of the park doesn't have many big mile hikes but there are a lot of observation and viewing points. 

We decided we would go back into the park the following day, we geared up around 5 p.m., got on the bike and headed toward the entrance, all the while seeing gigantic rain clouds and black skies forming. Before we even got to the main road, we both decided it would be best to turn around right now, pack up the van and get out of our spot before another storm hit. I had heard on the radio (since we have no wifi) that it was supposed to rain for 3-4 days, meaning that would keep us at that spot for at least another week, so the road could dry out enough for us to drive on and get out. Since we were ready to leave, we went back to the van and packed everything in record time...45 minutes!

We were a little worried about a few spots in the road, due to the last rain washing out half the road....but we were determined to not hurt the van and at least get on more solid ground for the night.

We did it, while I filmed, Jamie drove. We made it past all of the tough and scary spots and stopped to sleep for the night on the same road but much more solid if it did rain that night....which it did (as well as the next 5 days)! 

If you want to see the video of us getting out of that road, click the link here:

 The next day we went into the park for the last time and while the storm was building around us while we were there, we only got a few hard sprinkles. 

Island in the Sky ~ Potash Road

Grand View Point Overlook

 

The Orange Cliffs

 I'm sure this park has much more to offer than what we saw, but I guess we'll just have to come back to see what we missed at a later date.

PEACE 

If you are interested in seeing what Potash Road is like, Jamie did the ride on his dirt bike and you can see that video here:

Video links for Info on Free Camping in Moab

Hello there!

I wanted to put some links up to a couple of videos that Jamie has made while we've been in and around Moab.

Some of you may have already seen these, but for those that haven't we hope these videos to be helpful to you if you are in the area.

  

2015 MOAB FIRST IMPRESSIONS | Where to Camp for FREE  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAAGnhh9WXc

Free Camping in Moab (Yellow Circle Rd.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxb8BheOKcs

I will do my best to post more as they are made. Every little bit of help counts!

PEACE 

 

'Tis Many Tramps Among Us

Hello 2015!

We have had quite a good start to the new year, and we are hoping you have too!

I can't believe that January is almost over, although it seems to have lasted quite a while. Sometimes I can't believe how many memories just one month brings...and to think we get 12 of them, how cool is that!

Over the past two weeks, we have met some really great people, as well as getting to see some old friends whom we've made new memories with. This time of year always brings a sense of "home" as we gather in the desert, around camp fires, telling stories, having coffee & brekkie together, building things materially as well as emotionally, and all the while, hearing music & laughter echo through the washes. It's an amazing time for us dwellers and those that are just starting out or just have the itch.

For our little corner, most of the afternoons of the first week were spent working on our dirt bike, well...more like working on getting the motor OUT of the dirt bike! The bike stopped running and with a ton of research and forum talk, it was decided that we needed to have work done on the piston and head. So our "RTR Army of Men" got the motor out and shipping boxes built for send off. Everyone was so helpful and I think the boys even had a little bit of fun doing it! Boys and their toys!!

Throughout the gathering, there were morning "classes" on various things such as; solar, tune-ups for your vehicle, boondocking, stealth camping, Vision & Dental services in Mexico, gadgets, cooking & work-camping. The afternoons & evenings included everything from jam sessions, hula-hooping, wire wrapping, "family" dinners, walks, drinks and firepits. For some, there was much more and for others, much less but all in all we are quite the festive bunch!!

I have to agree with Bob that this was the best RTR yet. We networked much more this year, and like I said at the beginning, met an array of amazing people. At this time, we are all starting to move on in different directions; some going home, some going to work-camp, some going to Mexico, many to their Winter destinations. We may all be going to different places but we all hold the memory of good food, awesome company, a great gathering and friendships that will last a lifetime.

Thank you for being part of it for us and we hope to see you next year, down the road or anywhere else in between.

PEACE