Author: Joanna and Piotr

After breakfast at our best camp of the trip, we slowly made our way to Green River UT (couple of photos in previous post) to resupply. The neighborhood looked familiar – we stopped in town on our way back to Chicago from California in 2021. We arrived at ☞ Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands NP just after noon. Small Willow Flat campground was full (Friday). We decided not to look for camping alternatives, but instead head to Moab at the end of the day (stayed at Adventure Inn). This way we had entire afternoon to check-out a few spots/overlooks: Green River Overlook, Upheaval Dome (short walk), Grand View Point (Joanna walked the rim trail, Piotr took driver’s nap), Mesa Arch (short trail). Views were beautiful but this is the most popular section of the park and the only “crowded” place on our trip. We often looked down at different sections of 100-mile White Rim Road (one rim lower) and wondered, if we could drive on it in our Subaru (?). First section down Shafer Canyon looked OK and was very tempting (next time).

Grand View Point

Mesa Arch

Next morning we drove around to ☞ The Needles District of Canyonlands NP – enjoyed the views on the way, but without stopping to get to the Squaw Flat campground early to reserve a good site for two nights (Saturday and Sunday, we expected many visitors for the weekend). It worked – the campground is large and there were many spots to choose from when we arrived. Our spot was spacious and nice, not too close to neighbours, so we decided to sleep in tent for a change. With campsite in the bag, we were ready for short walks: Pot Hole Trail, Big Spring Canyon Overlook, Slickrock Trail, Roadside Ruin Trail. Despite the weekend, Needles District was not too crowded, far less so than Island in the Sky the day before. It looked like more people come here for longer hikes and spread out through quite large area.

Our last full hiking day of the trip: 12-mile Chesler Park/Joint Trail loop. We drove short distance from our camp to Elephant Hill trailhead, followed easy trail up on open rocky terrain passing across some impressive looking rocks on the way. Chesler Park is a large meadow that sits on small plateau with rock “monuments” standing all around. At some point we descended a bit from the plateau (one “level ” down towards Colorado River) through a maze of slots in sandstone to dry wash only to go back up different way to close the loop and return to the trailhead. It was quite hot in Devils Kitchen. Yes, some of the standing rocks look like “needles”.

Canyonlands is vast with open vistas all the way to the horizon, the Horseshoe Canyon quite far away (north-west) on the other side of Green and Colorado Rivers. We had good sunny weather, quite warm and just a few drops of rain one night. In the short time we saw the main features (Piotr visited Canyonlands briefly years ago), perhaps could come back for backcountry hiking in Maze district or camping along White Rim Road.

We stopped at Newspaper Rock on the way out of Canyonlands, filled-up the tank and started serious driving back home. We made it to Colorado Penitente Canyon Campgroud (disappointing) on the first day, Salina KS and Chicago over the following two days. Somewhere after Colorado Springs a big storm started gathering on the horizon behind us and followed us (literally) for some 400 miles as we were driving east. We could not stop or slow down without it catching up with us quickly. Piotr did not want to waste time waiting it out and we were a bit afraid of driving in strong wind with the cargo box on the roof. Wind and heavy rain did catch up with us shortly after we checked in to Roadway Inn in Salina, but at that time severe weather and shelter in place warnings were just cancelled. Easy (boring) driving the rest of the way.

Change of focus: our main objective for the day is to explore rock art in ☞ Horseshoe Canyon – different than other sites in the Southwest as it contains mostly pictographs rather than petroglyphs. It is 7-mile hike 240 m down to the canyon floor with yellow and red rocks around, hot and desert-like (there was same water and green vegetation in the creek). The day started by quick drive on Hwy 24 past Hanksville followed by slow ride east on unpaved road to the trailhead. The road was in good condition, but the area had good remote feel. We started descending slowly into the canyon on trail which runs in part on old jeep road. There were a few signs of past human activity (water tank and remains of old rancho). As well as some dinosaur prints. Just when we started walking towards first rock art site, we met volunteer ranger on patrol. He showed us around and answered many questions – we enjoyed our private tour. We saw only one group of school children in the canyon, nobody else the whole day. We spent entire afternoon hiking, checking out the galleries with the ranger and then on our own. The Great Gallery is the most spectacular, with life-size and larger figures. Rock paintings are from different times, 2000 BC to 500 AD, but some artifacts found around were from 11000 years ago. On the way back, we stopped at Alcove Gallery. Around 7 pm we started heading north on Lower San Rafael Rd for 9 miles and then 5 miles east on dirt road to amazing wild campsite on high rim of Green River Labyrinth Canyon (found by Piotr studying maps and satellite images before the trip). Beautiful sunset, no wind, no people anywhere. Perfect end to a beautiful day. And then relaxing breakfast before heading north on Lower San Rafael Rd to Green River on the way to Canyonlands NP.

Resources

☞ Cotonwood Rd BLM map
☞ Burr Trail Wolverine Loop Rd BLM map
☞ Cottonwood Canyon Road
☞ Cottonwood Wash Narrows
☞ What’s like to drive Cottonwood Canyon Road?
☞ How to loop fold in Capitol Reef NP?
☞ Headquarters Canyon

After good night rest in Page, regrouped, resupplied and triple-washed, we are heading north towards ☞ Grand Staircase-Escalante NM and ☞ Capitol Reef NP . This 3 day section was a slow road trip on scenic byways and dirt roads. We started with a short walk to visit ☞ Toadstool Hoodoos, just off Hwy 89. We spent the rest of the day driving on ☞ Cottonwood Canyon Rd . The gravel surface was much better than we anticipated. We stopped briefly to check-out Paria River (still with some flowing water at this spot) and then stopped for 2-hour easy walk up and down Hackberry Canyon. Driving slowly we checked out possible camp sites and settled in between small trees on sandy bank of Cottonwood Creek. We wanted to be close to the ☞ Cottonwood Wash Narrows trailheads – we walked almost the entire section starting from and returning to the north trailhead next morning (3 miles), including short but quite impressive slot section. The scenery around this part of the road is very interesting. We had lunch at picnic area near Grosvenor Arch and short walk along the impresive rock formation. We were then driving on Hwy 12 past Escalante towards Boulder. We did get a few good views of Escalante and Calf Canyons, but only from the car. Viewpoint bays were horrible (bad design) and we were running out of time. After short drive on ☞ Burr Trail Rd we camped at Deer Creek campground. Piotr discovered that his credit card disappeared, decided to drive back in the morning towards Boulder until cellular signal to lock it.

The following day we continued on Burr Trail Rd, first through Long Canyon and then across plateau towards Capitol Reef. We stopped at the top end of the canyon and then for lunch at the top of Burr Trail Switchbacks. Very nice views from both places. After the switchbacks we turned south on Notom-Bullfrog Rd just for a short distance to ☞ Headquarters Canyon trailhead, our main 7-mile walking exploration of the day. Joanna practised taking “vertical panos” to capture impressive heights of narrow slot canyons. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving slowly north on Notom Rd. After a short drive into Burro Wash we just camped in the middle of nowhere, well near an old abandoned corral. It was too late to drive any further to look for wild campsite as we originally planned. We tried to help stranded motorists late in the afternoon, their van broke down and would not start. We managed to send messages asking unsuccessfully for help (non-emergency; messages were delivered but resulted in unhelpful automatic response) using Zoleo (there was no cellular signal in the area). In the end it was other motorists passing by who were able to help them after we left. Joanna prepared fancy salad for dinner and we watched another orange sunset over reddish hills.

Slot section of Headquarters Canyon (video clip)