Stops between Moab and Cedar City – April 13, 2019

After our White Rim Trail adventure we were faced with the long drive home to SoCal. We did it in 2 days and on the first day we took the slower route to take in some more sights and do a little hike.

We left Moab around 7am. Leaving town we pulled up behind a SUV with a familiar looking bicycle on the back, it was John and Susanna who were heading out for the long one day drive home. After leaving I-70 west of Green river on Hwy 24 we got some great views of the Henry mountains. They look like they might be worth a visit some time when the snow is gone. Then the road took us through Capitol reef National Park. We stopped here for some pictographs and petroglyphs right be the side of the road and paid a short visit to the visitor center.

Our drive continued on Hwy 12 over Boulder Mountain where the road went up to over 9000 ft. Lots of snow still around there. We pulled into a scenic overlook and had our lunch on the tail gate with great views of the Henry mountains. Then we continued through Boulder Town on to the trail head of the Lower Calf Falls trail. This is an easy 6 mile (round trip) hike up this beautiful canyon. Along the way a trail brochure pointed out some granaries way up the cliff, beaver dams, and an impressive, large pictograph of three figures across the canyon. Since we were early in the season the falls had quite a bit of water coming down.

After the hike we continued west through the town of Escalante. When we came close to Bryce canyon and saw that there still was snow on the ground at elevation we decided to take a quick look inside the park to see if we could get some good views of a snow covered Bryce canyon. While there was still lots of snow on the ground, spires were all snow free and not what we had hoped for. I took a quick nap at one of the view points (got to love a nap with a view 😉 ) before we continued our track west.

We were going down the mountain along the winding road east of Cedar City when the sun set. It presented us with some nice views, including of Navajo Reservoir which was completely frozen. We arrived in town just after dark, picked the next best motel and when out for dinner at a little Mexican restaurant withing walking distance of the motel. The next morning we headed straight home experiencing a bit of Las Vegas traffic on I-15.

This concludes our trip to Southern Utah and we are already full of ideas what to do next up there.

(Click on image to enlarge/start slide show)


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.