So if you read my last diary (Some Things to See in CO While Driving Through to Bears Ears), you probably figured out what was coming next. Be prepared for a metric shitload of pics. Also, don’t plan a vacation that requires you to drive 4,500 miles in 11 days, as you’ll start crying whenever you look at your car.
After the disappointment of a closed Four Corners Monument (seriously, what kind of monument closes at 4:30 PM, with hours of daylight left? It’s just a spot on the ground, FFS), we headed for our next destination. Around 8 PM on whatever day it was, we arrived at our hotel in Mexican Hat, Utah, our base of operations for the next few days. I’ve read that Mexican Hat is not even a dot on the map, but according to the maps I use, that just isn’t true. It most definitely exists, with a gas station that sells salty snacks and watered-down beer (don’t get me started on Utah’s alcohol laws), several hotels, and several restaurants attached to those hotels (some of which weren’t open yet for the season). And absolutely nothing else. Seriously, you couldn’t get any further into nowhere without starting to come out the other side.
Keep in mind that due to this isolation, groceries and other such sundries are hard to come by. For this reason, on the way out, we made sure to stop in Durango, Colorado, and stock up on sandwich supplies, drinks, and a boatload of snacks. If you’re heading this way through Colorado, know that the town of Cortez (a bit west of Mesa Verde National Park) also has a good-size grocery store.
Before I get too far into it, allow me to give a yell to fellow traveler Thinking Fella, who recently posted I Went to Bears Ears National Monument Yesterday. Vicariously Join Me? and Valley of the Gods, Bears Ears National Monument-Join Me? (both are very photo heavy, and amazing). His travels and ours overlap a bit, although he brought his dogs, while I brought my kids. I’ll bet his dogs listened better.
Anyway, let’s start by noting that Bears Ears National Monument is freaking HUGE, as in 1.35 million acres. The namesake mesas rise about 2,000’ above the surrounding landscape, and they are visible for miles (we could see them from south of Monument Valley in Arizona, more than 60 miles away, if my estimations are correct, and they probably aren’t. I just wish I had gotten a pic of that). In the map I stole from Wikipedia (below), they are just to the northeast of Natural Bridges National Monument and just south of the Dark Canyon Wilderness. There was no way we could explore the entire thing in the time we had (we only get so much vacation time each year in this stupid country), so we did our best.
I’m assuming that the town (ha!) of Mexican Hat is called Mexican Hat due to it’s proximity to Mexican Hat Rock, an interesting rock formation outside of town. Or maybe the reverse is true?
The next morning, we headed to Valley of the Gods, just to the northeast of Mexican Hat. According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, parts of several episodes of Doctor Who were filmed here, if that interests you. A 17-mile dirt road runs through the valley, connecting US-163 with UT-261. As Thinking Fella noted, there is a wash the start of the road, along with warning signs that the road is impassible during rain. The weather was less than ideal, with a low cloud deck alternating between light rain, sleet, and snow, but the wash was fordable (I got out and checked), so we pressed on.
We spent the next several hours in total sensory overload. Everywhere we looked, we saw amazing rock formations surrounded by lush vegetation (by desert standards, of course), with the clouds scraping the rocks in all directions. There were campers and RVs parked here and there, and our envy of those travelers’ vacation planning and preparation bordered on pain. Also, all of these formations have names, but for the most part, we didn’t bother learning them.
And so on. I could post endless pics of amazing rock formations, but instead, you should just go there yourself. Better hurry, before the whole place is turned into the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine. Of course, I realize that most people can’t just take off for Bears Ears, which makes me feel extraordinarily fortunate that I could share it with my kids, as well as whoever might read and view this. Maybe someday I’ll put up a diary just with all of our Valley of the Gods pics, as there’s like 300 of them.
I’m a dork for plants, and I drove my people crazy stopping anytime I saw a flower or other interesting plant. We were either a bit early for the desert bloom, or more likely, we just missed it (judging by all the spent flowers), but there was still some interesting stuff to see.
Exiting the Valley of the Gods, we had a choice. Turn south on UT-261 and go back to Mexican Hat (COP OUT), or turn north and ascend the Moki Dugway to the top of Cedar Mesa (YOU’RE NUTS). Despite the intermittent rain/snow, we decided to try the ascent in our seven-year-old Honda minivan (yeah, dumb, I know, but it has new tires, so sod off). A sign at the bottom said the road was impassible during rainy conditions, but what the hell do they know? Here’s another sign:
So we drove up the Moki Dugway, which ascends 1,200 vertical feet over three miles of switchbacks at 10-percent grades. It wasn’t a smooth ride and the minivan didn’t like it, but it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. Nevertheless, the van probably needs suspension work now. My wife captured the ascent with my phone, and nobody spoke during the first few minutes of the drive, as the kids were all a little freaked out. But it got better. (I think I mispronounced the name at the end of the video. Moe-Key is how the locals said it, so you should go with that.)
Once up the Dugway and on top of Cedar Mesa, we cruised north and out of the clouds, for the most part. Our next destination was Natural Bridges National Monument. Along the way, we pulled off to get a shot of the nearby Bears Ears, shrouded in low clouds.
Natural Bridges National Monument was the first national monument in Utah, created in 1908 by President Ted. There are three stone bridges in the park, as well as evidence of the collapse of several more. Natural Bridges is surrounded by Bears Ears National Monument, and I’m not sure if that makes it part of Bears Ears, a separate monument within a monument (my guess), or a monument engaged in eternal warfare with a ridiculously sized yet extremely dispersed occupying force (these are the kind of conversations my kids start while driving endless miles: Who would win in a fight, the Everglades or Mammoth Caves? Pictured Rocks or Indiana Dunes? etc.). Anyway, some pics:
After Natural Bridges, we drove east along UT-95, which apparently was not even paved until the mid-70s. The scenery was pretty (and foggy) but not noteworthy until we approached Comb Ridge, an 80-mile-long ridge (technical term: monocline) that is basically impassible except where construction crews blasted through to build the few roads that allow east-west travel. Comb Ridge was designated a National Natural Landmark (there’s that classification again) in 1976, with parts of it inside Bears Ears National Monument. That basically exhausts Wikipedia’s knowledge of this particular rock formation.
Another impressive site in the area, although not technically within Bears Ears National Monument, is Goosenecks State Park, which opened in 1962. This small yet amazing park is just a few minutes outside of Mexican Hat, and it highlights a series of meanders (the goosenecks) of the San Juan River, which caused a complex 1,000’ deep gorge with amazing rock stratification. Wow, I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about. There isn’t much in the park aside from the view (no trails, a few campsites), but that view more than justified the $5 admission.
So that ended out visit to Bears Ears National Monument, short but sweet. Considering its size, there’s no way to fully explore this place in less that a week, if not two weeks or two months. We tried to do it in less that two days, which meant we had to prioritize what we wanted to see. This caused us to miss some (no doubt) amazing sights, so maybe we’ll have to go back. I’d love to bring some of our more heavy-duty gear and spend a week really getting lost in the back country, but that just wasn’t realistic with three young kids and our time constraints. Next time.
Onward to Moab, Utah, the self-proclaimed mountain-biking capital of the world (there’s a lot of places that make that claim, BTW). And I left my bike back in Indiana, goddammit. I would have loved to do some rockhopping and smash myself into raspberry jam. Anyway, if/when I get around to it, I’ll share some sights from Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, which are awesome. Especially Canyonlands, our best national park experience (so far), with the possible exception of Shark Valley in the Everglades.
But first, in between Bears Ears days, we made a quick (seven-hour round trip drive, hahahaha) side jaunt to some enormous hole in the ground in Arizona. I’d never visited the Grand Canyon, and now that I have, I’m not sure I’ll ever go back. Yes, the scenery was amazing, and we got to drive through a town called Tuba City (I didn’t see any tubas, blatant false advertising), but ye gods, the crowds! The traffic! Lots A-D are full, additional parking available 2 miles down the road! Ugh, what a tourist trap. As my wife said, four to five million people visit the Grand Canyon every year, and about a million of them were there when we were. Maybe we’ll go to the North Rim, which is supposedly much less visited. Whatever, that’s all for now. Enough.