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My mind today kept returning to the message written on my mirror: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”  I twisted the phrase in my mind:  “Drive times are longer than they appear on maps.”   I had estimated about 3 hours of driving today and I was so very wrong.  The day began with my assumption that the east section of the Green River Cutoff Road by The Wedge would be similar to the west section.  What a bad assumption.  The road got narrow and windy, not like the west section gravel freeway.  It was so unlike what I expected that I pulled out my GPS to make sure we were on the correct road and hadn’t made a wrong turn.  Onward, we slowly went.  Up and down and twisting through canyons on a single lane road at times, not encountering another sole.  I was so focused on driving, that below is the only photo I took along the way. 

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The rocks looked like chocolate cake with cream cheese icing.

It took 1 ¾ hours to travel the 30 miles to Highway 6.  Enough bad roads for one day I hoped.

We were then off to Hanksville, then did a quick tour through Capital Reef, and then we turned south heading down the Notom Road hoping to find a place in the Cedar Mesa Campground.  The drive on the gravel portion of Notom Road was slow and we reached the campground in the late afternoon.  We found the campground full without any place for us to simply park for the night.   Southward we went on the road looking for a place to spend the night.   The road got worse, being the worst washboard road I have ever driven.  Deep washboard with no let up. We crept along pulling the trailer at 5 – 10 mph.

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Notom Road

We stopped looking for a camping site, lowering our expectations we started to look for a place to park for the night.  As we were beginning to wonder if we would find anything  before sunset, we found our home for the night.  Yes, after traveling 8 hours we had a home for the night.  And it was a good home.

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Home for the night.  Our camping site

Facts:

  •   The Cedar Mesa campground does not have a turnaround at the end.  I had to do some clever backing up into a camping spot to turn around.
  • It took me 1 ¾ hours to drive the 30 miles of the Green River Cutoff.  Without a trailer you can go faster.
  • The place we camped was the only place I saw to boondock between the Cedar Mesa Campground and the turn south to the Bullfrog Marina.  Location:  N37 48.277, W110 56.890.  It is located on my map.
  • We saw a number of places to boondock north of the Cedar Mesa Campground.