Isolated, beautiful southern Utah

Moving on from Capitol Reef was hard, but we had a shipment to pick up in Boulder, UT. See, a while back Michael had sent his beloved Blundstone boots in for a warranty evaluation. They sent him a brand new pair of boots. Of course, they sent the boots to our mailing address, which is in California (Michael has family there).

Drop ships are tricky since we rarely know exactly where we’ll be a week from now, and so basically we guessed that a good spot would be Boulder, UT. Then we checked on the tracking number for the package and tried to arrive in Boulder at roughly the same time as the package. We’ve done this before and sometimes it worked well and sometimes it didn’t, as you might imagine. Anyway. We passed through Torrey for a resupply – they have a halfway decent, small grocery there. Pulling into the parking lot, we discovered that the grocery also had a laundromat. And showers!

So we got all cleaned up and then headed out towards Boulder. It was a pretty drive, I guess. Up over a small pass, through the trees. But to me it was pretty meh. Maybe it was that the leaves were already fallen up there? Or maybe I’m just attached to those red rocks and slot canyons.

Either way, we arrived at the Boulder, Utah post office at 3:30pm. Only to discover that the “window hours” were literally a window, and a narrow one at that: 9am-1pm weekdays.

Well, shit.

We headed out of town and pulled off on the Hell’s Backbone road. This is a dirt road that will take you to Escalante the long way, 44 miles total. It was actually built in the 1930’s by the CCC, and was the first vehicle road that connected the towns of Boulder and Escalante. Before that the only way between the two was a wagon train.

We didn’t get very far down Hell’s Backbone – within a couple of miles we saw a 2-track turnoff and found a wealth of empty campsites. We picked the one with the biggest fire ring and had a roaring bonfire.

Oddly, very close to these campsites sits a dirt airstrip. At least, the BLM says it’s an airstrip.

Check out what’s next to it:

Yeah, it’s a wind sock. But what’s that below the wind sock? A sculpture?

Oh.

Moving on… we decided to take a little drive into Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument. This place is not like other National Monuments we’ve been to (like Craters of the Moon). There is no entrance, and all the little 2-track roads we saw had BLM signs.

Turns out that Escalante-Grand Staircase was created in 1996 to protect the area from development, mining, etc., and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. At 1.9 million acres, it’s almost as big as Yellowstone. With a fraction of the visitors. Cool!

So we drove out the Burr Trail, which is actually paved for the first 30 miles.

Once it hooked up with Notom Road we turned north, and ended up back in Capitol Reef. There is a primitive campsite on Notom Road, called Cedar Mesa, and despite it’s being part of Capitol Reef, it’s free. I’m also not so sure what was so primitive about it. Each site was level, and had a picnic table and a fire ring. There was even a pit toilet!

We spent the night at Cedar Mesa and it was quiet as a grave, even though the other sites were all occupied. It would have been great stargazing except for the completely overcast sky. With no firewood, we headed up into the tent after dark and watched Hot Tub Time Machine. Hopefully our laughter didn’t disturb the other campers…that’s a damn funny movie.

Completing the loop, I was finally able to get some pictures of these rock formations on Capitol Reef’s northwest side:

This light wasn’t the best but I think these turned out ok. Moving on we found ourselves back in Boulder, since we knew where to camp – and we still had a pile of firewood to burn. Along the way we decided to try out Boulder’s “natural grocery,” Hills & Hollows. This was a tiny store. And Boulder, UT really does feel like the middle of nowhere. But this little grocery stocked Justin’s Nut Butter, cans of coconut milk, and Perrier. They also had a refrigerator full of local organic greens (we picked up a bag of baby spinach).

Utah, I will never figure you out.