Ann and Dan's Grand Fall Adventure - Where in the hell are we going?

As we mentioned quite a while back, our strategy this year has been to take a series of long-weekend trips throughout the year so we could save up for one, month-long, grand adventure in the Fall.  Well, Fall is coming and it’s time to start spilling the beans about what is going to be our adventure for the months of September and October.  What better way to start than by discussing where in the world we’ve decided to go - subject to change of course!

I say subject to change because, plan as we might, things all-too-often happen that require a rethinking of sorts, or we just feel like changing things.  For example, in early July we found out that the campground at Cathedral Gorge State Park NV, where the first of our real stops was planned, had been closed due to a flash flood event.  Fortunately, I just got off the phone with the NV State Parks folks and they say they’re hoping to reopen it later in the week.  So we should be good . . . right?

But I get ahead of myself.  I want to talk a bit about our trip planning and route planning process, because I think it’s kind of interesting.  Structured chaos, ordered randomness, call it what you like, but it’s definitely not a linear process.   

Of course the primary focus of all of our trips is photography and getting to interesting places at interesting times of the day and year.  This fall, it’s Southern Utah with a desire to revisit some places we already know of, explore some newly identified locations and fulfill one of Ann’s wishes - to photograph aspens.  The general idea is to find a few fixed locations to stay for a few days, identify a range of possible photography/exploring activities around that location, and routes in-between locations that have a lot to offer.  We’ve found that approach seems to work well for us so why change it?  But other than that, it’s no holds barred.  

Over several months earlier this year we discussed which places we’d like to re-visit, and set about identifying different areas we’d like to explore further.  We’d comb the web looking at photographs and overlanding sites to see where was interesting and how we could get there.  That would lead to more detailed research into particular locations, with locations getting added to, or dropped off the list as time went on.  We talked about how we wanted to travel/photograph, and the tradeoffs between seeing more places versus spending more time at fewer locations, and what that means for quality images.  We’d occasionally chat with friends and acquaintances who have explored the area and found out their favorite locations - and then we’d look them up, following new leads as they arose.  

A few months ago I spent a weekend plotting out on physical maps where the preferred locations were and how we could not only hit them in an efficient manner, but in a way that would make the journey itself interesting.  That meant hitting the detailed Atlas pages that showed non-paved roads, and then investigating the condition of the roads as best we could (thank god for YouTube!). Once I had a rough route, I tried to coordinate the wish list to a calendar.  I’d love to say that we were spot on with our wishes, and we would have been if we’d had a 6-week vacation planned!  And that was for the whittled-down list.  More locations had to go to the chopping block - which meant that South-East Utah, i.e. the Bear’s Ears NM area got dropped from our plans.  The list was still too long.

So off came a few more sites simply to meet a reasonable day count and have time to explore some areas.  We eventually had a rough game plan - locations, and a calendar.  Then I had to start planning where we were staying - and realized that even though we started 6 months ago, bookings started 6 months ago for some locations and we’d already missed out on some reserved camping sites.  As a result, I started calendaring waking up early in the morning to sign in for other in-park campgrounds when they opened up and we wound up with a few “fixed” dates with reservations (at this point, 8 nights out of 30 at 3 different locations).  Those became the hubs we had to work around because, as you can guess, things did change.

The more Ann and I investigated the Paria area of Utah/Arizona (the area where the Vermillion Cliffs NM is part of), the more we decided we wanted to explore that region.  That meant that we had to cut out other areas we’d considered staying at.  Occasionally, that meant cutting a day here, and a day there, other times that meant cutting out a several day stay at a location altogether.  Every new incredible location we found meant we had to drop another location - often one we knew had much to offer photographically.  And it did happen, twice, late in the planning.

One day I was reading an overlanding article on-line about the 5 best campsites west of the Mississippi.  One was Alstrom Point in the Glen Canyon Recreation Area overlooking Lake Powell.  30 miles of off-road driving to have a stupendous view to wake up to.  That meant one day less in the Grand Staircase Escalante.  And the day after I registered for the lottery to get backcountry passes to see the Wave, and for Southern Coyote Canyon in the Paria, a friend mentioned White Pocket in the same area.  We lost on the lottery, but in scouting White Pocket we decided that it’d be great to camp out there for a couple of nights and really explore the area - two more days off the Grand Staircase Escalante leg of the trip!

The locations and the routes have been fairly fixed (though some side routes added) for the past month.  I have a running calendar for trip-prep we’ve been working through, and a calendar for the trip we’ve been updating.  I have a detailed e-itinerary for each stage of the trip with key information such as services, contact information, and side trips we can take when we’re at a location (so we don’t have to come up with ideas of what to do on the spot).  We’ve plugged in when we have to do laundry (at least every 8 days) and where, and where we’ll be able to get a shower (I suspect we’ll be showering from Beast on several occasions this trip).  And, the ever important locations for fuel and water.  

This is what our trip looks like drawn on Google Maps.  The best part of it all is that once we get to the area, we generally don’t have more than 2-3 hours of driving between locations - though the off-road routes will take longer, but should also be much more interesting.  I suspect we’ll be stopping more to photograph on those routes than the paved ones.  Still, the distances between stops isn’t that great - we will be traveling at a measured pace!  Remember, we’re doing this over a full month.

The map starts out with our first location at Cathedral Gorge State Park, NV off to the left.  We’ll scout it out to see if we want to photograph there at the beginning and/or end of the trip, so we could be there for a couple of nights.  Next we’ll head to just east of Cedar City where we know there are plenty of aspens (we know because we’ve photographed there before).  Hopefully, they’re in color.  After a day or two there, we’re headed to Bryce Canyon.  They’re repaving the park this year so you can’t make reservations at the campground.  Hopefully, folks will be leaving on Sunday right as we’re arriving.  All we need is one spot!  We’ll be there a couple of days and possibly taking a hike into the canyon.  I say hopefully because I sprained my ankle a few days ago - saved from terrible damage only by letting the rest of my body take a beating.  The bruising on both sides of my ankle is greatly surpassed by the bruise on my hip - which is a good thing (I think) because the weight didn’t go on my ankle.  So we’ll have to see about long hikes early in the trip (I’ve got two and one half weeks to work on recovering before things kick off).

After Bryce, we’ll drive up lovely Highway 12, and after having lunch at Hell’s Backbone Grill, we’ll spend a few days photographing the aspens north of Boulder, Utah.  That thin red line on the upper part that runs to the left is an optional trip we may make on the last day to the Panda Forest.  It’s an aspen forest that is, technically, a single tree (a clonal grove to be precise).  Covering over 100 acres, it’s one of the world’s largest organisms.  From there we’ll make our way over to Goblin Valley State Park for a couple of nights at a reserved site, and to explore some of the near-by canyons in the San Rafael Swell during the days.  In that stretch we have to find cell access to try and make reservations for Zion NP (2 weeks in advance limit).  Then we’ll take a slow back-country loop through the Capitol Reef NP’s Cathedral Valley, spending the night there as well.  Then back down to another of our reserved camp sites at Capitol Reef’s Fruita Campground to explore the area for a few days. 

From there we’ll take a back country route back to Boulder for dinner, and then breakfast at Hell’s Backbone Grill (our favorite!) and down to the Grand Staircase Escalante and Devil’s Garden.  From that greatly shortened stay, we’ll head back towards Bryce, but turn south and take Cottonwood Canyon Road (not paved) down to the Paria area, spending the night wherever we want on that route.  It’s then off to Alstrom Point (the red line at the very bottom right) for a night, and then back and around to White Pocket (the very bottom red line that leads to nowhere on the map) for two nights.  We’ll spend a fourth night somewhere in the Paria - it’s all BLM land chock full of areas to pull your rig over, so finding a site shouldn’t be a problem.  

Next stop is Zion.  If we’ve been lucky, we’ve reserved a campground (or will get one as a walk-in) for three nights, giving us time to explore the park a bit.  If not, we’ll photograph for the day as we drive through the park, and camp on Smithsonian Butte overlooking Zion, and spend additional days at photography locations near St. George before we hit our last reserved area - 3 nights in Snow Canyon.  After that stay, if we haven’t photographed it yet, we’ll travel to near-by Yant Flat to spend a night or two before heading home, stopping again at Cathedral Gorge if there is time.

That should pretty much take us from September 19 through October 20.

One of the things I love about today’s technology is that it is so much easier finding out information about these locations than ever before.  We’re not limited to paper maps or guide books telling us where to go.  We have a slew of paper maps of course (for safety purposes) but also electronic maps that we can annotate.  The image above is taken from Google Earth, where you can set pin points with data, that we can transfer over to our other electronic maps.  So using a program called Avenza that geo-locates PDFs of paper maps, all of our maps can have the same points, because we often buy the electronic version of our paper map as well.  

The pins in the photograph above not only show the destinations we’ll be heading to, they also show multiple areas that I’ve drilled down into the Google Earth photo to determine is an off-road location we can camp.  On our trip, at most we’ll spend 18 or so nights in formal campgrounds.  The other nights will be free in areas where there are no campgrounds.  And no nights in a hotel.  In some instances, I went looking for a campground because, face it, sometimes a hot shower feels really, really good.  

Well, that’s our trip.  All subject to change of course, especially given that if there is a heavy rain, all of the off-road routes we’ve scouted become impassible for a few days.  Fortunately, on average the area gets 2-4 days of rain per month this time of year, much of it very light, so we may not have to take any of the alternative routes (listed on my detailed itinerary pages).  And if we’re out and it starts pouring - we stay in place for a couple of days before heading out.  We have our home with us and it becomes an excuse to stay in one place and photograph!  

Like I said, everything is subject to change!