Day 12: July 17 Monday — Doll House to Moab

Highlights: Depart camp at 6:30 a.m.; drive to Hite; buy more beer; swim at Farley Canyon; return Jeeps; pick up cars; pack luggage; Grand Old Ranch House

An hour after I finally got to sleep I heard Ed starting the coffee in the blackness. It was 5 a.m.— time to get up! Within minutes the rest of us were awake and packing our last items into the jeeps. Those who could stand it had a hearty ham and beans breakfast, and by 6:30 a.m. we rolled out of camp.

On the drive out, we saw people sleeping in the vehicle that was parked at the little lot for the last couple of days, now with kayaks lying next to it. Their tailgate was open and they waved to us as we drove by. Now it’s all clear: these people had come here days ago with their kayaks and carried them down to Spanish Bottom to do the most challenging stretch of Cataract Canyon. They took out at Hite, where they were picked up and driven back here to their car, which is the noise I heard last night. The vehicle that dropped them off had turned around and drove right back out. To me this dropoff service was incredible: how much would you want to be paid to do a six-hour round trip drive from Hite to the Doll house, going twice around Teapot Rock at night!?

An hour later as we drove through the Land of Standing Rocks we saw people camping at one of the sites near a standing rock. Now that’s a little more reasonable: the people that dropped off the kayakers didn’t return all the way to Hite, but stopped here last night.

For the return trip around the terrible Teapot Rock trail, Ed and I walked most of the way while the others drove. I used the opportunity to take videos of the jeeps, while Ed used the opportunity to yell at Mark. We both remarked how it was more fun to watch the jeeps than to drive, especially the second time on this trail. Of course, our walking didn’t slow the jeeps down a bit.

At one place I tried to make Terry drive Pequod up a sharp step while I filmed the tire getting squashed. Unfortunately the approach to the step was sand, so the only result was a deep trench dug by the spinning wheels. Mark tried in Harpoon, too, with the same effect.

After the Teapot Rock area the rest of the drive was high clearance 2WD. We were hoping that the mud of Waterhole Flat that plagued us on the way in would be dry by now, but much of it remained, resplattering ourselves and our jeeps. The puddles ended an hour later as we moved to rockier terrain. The final 30 miles to Hite beyond Waterhole Flat is an easy, but occasionally bumpy ride across open spaces in the five to ten- mile wide plateau at the 5000′ foot level, between the 7000′ highlands to the northwest and Cataract Canyon to the southeast. The road to Hite hugs the base of a row of small cliffs of an intermediate 5500′ plateau, and we were too far to see much of Cataract Canyon, but we could sense there was a chasm out there.

This road to Hite is a refreshing ride with interesting sandstone formations along the way. At a couple of points the road is forced to make extremely long jogs to skirt the heads of Cove Canyon and Rock Canyon. I think that it should have been possible to shortcut across these with 4WD trails, but probably that wouldn’t be any faster.

On the last straightaway before the highway, near a small corral, we stopped for our last beers. One of the precious beers was banged up beyond recognition and leaking, but since the morning was overcast and the temperature only in the low 80’s, we didn’t miss it that much. Terry and I put up our windshield for the last time, as we said good-bye to jeeping for this trip.

By 10:00 a.m. we reached U.S. 95 in a two-mile segment between the Colorado and Dirty Devil River bridges, just north of their confluence. From here we could see the vast expanse of Lake Powell with the Hite Marina and its houseboats. U.S. 95 immediately crosses the deep gorge of the Colorado River, which is not really a river here, but a northern arm of Lake Powell that extends 25 miles north into Cataract Canyon. The southern limit of Lake Powell is 175 miles south at the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. Beyond the bridge we turned right on a two-mile spur to Hite, where we stopped at the store to buy some beer and drinks and dump our trash. The forecast temperature for today according to the sign in the store was 100°, but I doubted it would get that hot unless the clouds dissipated.

A few miles on U.S. 95 beyond Hite I insisted on the Greenshit tradition of taking a final swim in Lake Powell at Farley Canyon, at the end of a three-mile spur. The gravelly shore of Farley Canyon was crawling with family campers with their trailers and Winnebagos. The scene was not very attractive, but the swim is usually very welcome after a long, hot drive. Ed violently objected to this stop as a waste of time that could be better spent sipping mai tais by the pool at the motel. But since the pool was many hours away and we were here now, I opted for immediate gratification. We all took brief dips and then posed along the water for the “after” group picture of the trip.

The 125 mile section of U.S. 95 south of Hanksville was a gravel road until the late 1960’s, and I believe there was a ferry across the Colorado River here in the Hite area. When Lake Powell was formed, the small village of Hite on the west side of the river was flooded, so they moved the town to the east side and built two large bridges across the Dirty Devil and Colorado Rivers for the road. Sometime later the road was paved and dubbed the Bicentennial Highway. It is a very scenic highway that forms the southern boundary of Canyon Country, with buttes, cliffs, and mesas in all directions.

This stretch of highway has only one spot of civilization besides Hite, Fry Canyon, 30 miles away, where we chose to have lunch. The “town” of Fry Canyon is little more than one building containing a store, motel, and small restaurant. Inside, the handful of tables were occupied by customers and two guys with cowboy hats and torn blue jeans were in charge. The six of us sat at the counter and ordered cheeseburgers and beer. I had Slickrock Lager, which I think is brewed in Salt Lake City. The food was prepared slowly and inefficiently, but with great care. One gets the impression that running a restaurant isn’t their day job, that they would rather be riding their horses in the canyons, yet I’m sure this is what they do for a living. We were told that the population of Fry Canyon is 5 people, 4 horses, and 1 dog. I had been to Fry Canyon several times in the last 15 years, and it hasn’t changed a bit, the level of maintenance being just sufficient to make it look perpetually run down but livable. Perhaps that’s part of the image that they’re trying to preserve.

It got cooler as we drove down Hwy. 95 to higher elevations near the Abajo Mountains, passing the landmarks Cheesebox Butte and The Bears Ears, the entrance to Natural Bridges National Monument, a couple of Indian ruin sites, and the amazing escarpment, Comb Ridge. We turned north onto U.S. 191 and soon passed through Blanding and Monticello, two towns that always blur in my mind. They are small towns (but large by southeastern Utah standards) lying at 7000′ elevation at the base of the Abajos, with forest to the west and prairie to the east. Driving north beyond Monticello we descended to lower elevations where the terrain reverted back to the desert we were used to.

A half hour before Moab we passed through an intersection that maps call La Sal Junction, which has always had zilch, except for an abandoned gas station, as long as Greenshit has been visiting. I find it hard to understand how a gas station could have been profitable 20 years ago and not today, considering the tremendous increase in tourism in this area since them. Perhaps it was never profitable, or perhaps it’s just waiting for the right entrepreneur. The highway east of La Sal Junction goes to Colorado toward places like Telluride and Ouray where we used to rent our jeeps.

The scenery became more interesting further north as the red sandstone walls and buttes closed in and the road twisted between them. We passed by the very large span of Wilson Arch, which is a good place to stop for an hour if you have time. In an area with very close sandstone walls the Hole n” the Rock (sic) gift shop suddenly appears. We stopped here a few minutes just to see it: a store and large home carved into the sandstone. You can’t see the home unless you pay for a tour, which I have never done, but I think seeing the store is sufficient to get the drift of it. A few yards beyond is a state rest area with a nice high pressure well, which Greenshit used in the old days to fill jugs when arriving from Colorado.

By 4:30 p.m., ten hours from when we left the Doll House, we reached Moab. The crow’s distance is 35 miles. Last year this drive took us 13 hours, but we spent much more time stopping at sights on the way.

At the Greenwell Motel, I was nearly devastated when they could not give us the two rooms we reserved, because the people before us didn’t move out when they were supposed to and, by law or maybe by policy, guests can’t be kicked out as long as they pay for another night. But we did get two other neighboring rooms on the first floor, which was almost as good.

As usual, everyone jumped to action, unloading the jeeps, stripping them of our modifications, picking up the rental cars, cleaning out the coolers and jugs, and sorting through the hundreds and hundreds of items. We returned the jeeps to Slickrock and reported all our problems to Rick: Pequod’s broken steering wheel, Great White’s brakes falling apart, Harpoon needing a tuneup, Harpoon’s lug wrench the wrong size, one destroyed tire that we replaced, a tire that we plugged, and a few hundred pounds of caked-on mud. Rick thought that these incidents were perfectly normal for this type of trip, and from my experience, I agree. At least we got back just fine and the problems did not significantly affect our trip. I never buy the $5/day tire insurance that Rick offers, but because we ate the $20 for the tire and cost of the patch he didn’t charge us for the lost tire. He also didn’t charge us $10 to clean the mud off the jeeps.

Back at the motel, with items strewn randomly over an acre of parking lot and filling up both rooms, the job of packing seemed daunting. Unlike previous trips where we had time to pack the next morning, this year we had an early flight and needed to pack tonight. I always feel especially pressured at this point in the trip. Nobody knows how to begin packing, so they stand around waiting for me to give directions, yet I’m as much at a loss what to do as anyone. Nevertheless, it took us only 2½ hours to pack all 12 duffels. There was a brief moment of panic when we realized that we accidentally packed 13 duffels, but the extra one was readily unpacked and redistributed. For some reason it was much harder to fit everything into the 12 duffels than it was on the way out. Perhaps we picked up a lot of sand or things had bloated in the heat. We gave away about $30 worth of leftover food to the motel manager to donate to the needy.

After packing we all had our first real showers in ten days. Remarkably, it was only 7:30 p.m., enough time for dinner at Moab’s five-star restaurant, the Grand Old Ranch House. The restaurant used to be known for its German cuisine, and in my past visits I found the food mediocre, but I was willing to give it another chance. The restaurant looks like a large old house and in front are a life-size plastic animated couple of old folks rocking on a swing. When you walk by, a motion detector activates a recording welcoming you in a cowboy accent and telling you about the good food. The menu was much more varied than before, and this time, everyone thought the food was excellent. I had a delicious stuffed salmon and others liked the sauerbraten. The appetizers were exotic, and the deserts were artistic creations.

We were back at the rooms and asleep (on real beds!) by 10:30 p.m.