We were saying good bye to Currant Creek Camp sometime around 10:00 a.m. A new personal best.  This clear morning, the sun is out strong and the temperature climbing as we make our way around the reservoir, up to the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route trail.

The Utah backcountry discovery route is filled with unique visual experiences.  We found ourselves motoring off-road though the hills, where teams of loggers were actively working the stands of Ponderosa Pines and ranch filled valleys with magnificent green pastures.  But around noon we came to the truly strange and beautiful.

There is a reason this is called a discovery route…  we found ourselves rolling through an isolated canyon that put us in the heart of an alien land.  Canyon walls towering hundreds of feet directly above, giant slabs of rock littering the floor to remind us of the cliffs’ fragility. Limestone spinnakers shooting up to the heavens with alternating yellow, brown and white bands as the clouds sailed by. Although we would experience other canyons in the days to come, this was our baptism to a new world of the canyon floor.

Leading up to the start of this off road adventure the news was filled with stories showing Colorado ablaze.  Towns and resorts evacuating, smokejumpers building firebreaks and  waterbombers attacking the treetops.  The news failed to mention Utah’s Church Camp fire which burned over 4,000 acres. Unbelievable desert heat, bone dry trees and kindling for ground cover it is easy to understand how fire quickly devours everything in its path.

This stretch of the route skirted along the edge of the still smoldering, charred remnants of the Church Camp devastation. Ravaged by fire and defined by steep cliffs, driving through the narrow valley brought concerns of flash floods erasing the path we’re on.  We kept one eye on the distant clouds as we gave witness to the devastation of past floods.  Scarred cliffs were water had cascaded down the removing everything in its way. The route through the valley was carved up with swales designed to funnel the floods from one side of the trail to the other with minimal damage.  For the next twenty minutes the swales presented themselves like Tijuana speed bumps to our little convoy.  We’d go from 30 mph to a 5 mph as the rig’s dove in and then climb up the other side of a swale every mile or so.

Coming around the bend in valley, we ran square into history. When our first ancestors wanted to express themselves, they didn’t use paper and pen.  Prehistoric people scratched their history on the valley rock.  The Utah Backcountry Discovery Route winds through Nine Mile which has several significant petroglyphic sites.  Not tourist traps with souvenir shops, t-shirt stands and little petroglyph shot glasses, just cliffs adorn with ancient rock carvings on the side of the route, allowing you to pull off and explore rock faces, as well as the more recent abandon homesteads.

Today we experienced the flatter, hotter, stranger side of Utah before finally rolling into Wellington, the end of the day’s leg and found our way to the Cowboy Kitchen.  Dirty, sweaty and parched (not the worst looking patrons in the bar) we ambled into the cool, air conditioned room and grabbed a table.  I  have been to the Great Wall of China, I have seen the Pyramids of Egypt, I’ve even witnessed a grown man satisfy a camel. But never in all my years have I witnessed something as improbable, as impossible, as what we witnessed here today, a giant basket of greasy, undercooked fries with hair!  Dinner was not the highlight of the day.

Around the table the conversation turned to where we would rest our heads tonight, peppered with memorable quotes from Stripes, Dodge Ball, Animal House and a half dozen of the classics.  We may be the only ones laughing out loud but clearly we’re not the only ones in the bar as locals through odd glances of disapproval our way.  But we’re loud, proud and heavily armed so not much was going to stop us from celebrating our day of wheeling.

The little town of Wellington is not overrun with camping or hotel options.  After ruling out the Pillow Talk motel, we double check our iPhones and found Green River filled with options.  Only 30 miles as the crow files and the next fuel stop on the Backcountry Discovery Route. A little wrangling back and forth, and we decided to cowboy up to Green River, even though it was approaching the nine o’clock hour.  Tonight…  We Wheel!

Less then 20 minutes down the route from Wellington and the sun is gone. The only light as far as the eye could see is coming from our rigs and the stars above. Motoring easily on a comfortable, wide, straight, well graded gravel road, cruising speed, 40 mph. We’ll be bedding down in no time. Then the route turned left.

Apparently, we had not accounted for this section of the route turning into a 4×4 trail.  Flat desert at night on 4×4 trails presents a unique challenge.  No markers to follow, no reference points or land marks visible in the dark night, navigation was limited to tracking our progress against the GPS waypoints. Each turn, fork in the road or disappearing two track was checked against the GPS.  Pick a trail, go 50 yards, and see if we’re still on track or turn around to try another direction. We opened and closed cattle gates, drove through washouts, climbed in and out of swales and crossed land bridges where our wheels hung over the edge.  We drove on, into the sage brush, as we made our way through the desert night.

The crow may fly a straight line to Green River but the Backcountry Discovery Route meanders back and forth to keep you off the concrete. In stead of 30 miles, we’d already logged 60 miles of sand, gravel and 4×4 trails…  and we were pointed away from Green River.  This is where you separate the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff, the awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian.  Did I mention we were on movie quote roll.

Desert nights are cool, still, dark and full of sound.  We were stopped at another cattle gate, passing from one ranch to another and we could feel the sense of adventure we’d taken on. Driving off road in the dark is like taking a trip down memory lane.  You can’t see anything outside the glow of the lights and your brain starts to fill in the blanks.  Memories of past road trips, long lost thoughts of a child’s first step, your embarrassing high school date and fallen friends filled the dark shadows beyond the reach of the rig’s lights. Closing the gate behind us and saddling back up in our rigs, we knew we could cowboy through whatever else there was between us and Green River.

Sometime around 2:30 a.m., six hours and 87 miles from when we started, the glow of Green River came into view.  Driving by the state camp ground and up to the Holiday In Express we bargained with the front desk in order to get the, you know we don’t have a reservation, AAA, its your last chance to rent these rooms to anyone rate.   Hot showers, soft beds, electricity to charge up batters and WiFi to check in…  not a bad way to end the longest day of this off road adventure.

Next : Utah Backcounty Discovery Route Day 6

The sun came up and the air went out. Laying there on the cot under a shadow of doubt… Not knowing what time it is but certain I’m late…

We’re not greeting this morning well.  Tired and still chilled…  The drug of choice, caffeine.  We shuffled slowly about camp,  steam rising from our tin (ok titanium) coffee cups.  Breakfast was the left overs from dinner.  Sleep still stuck in the corner of our eyes, we are communicating through grunts and groans when from behind the trees we hear, the silence of the lambs.

Cellophane wrapped chops in your butcher’s freezer make a slight squeaky sound as the white Styrofoam bottoms scratch against one another.   An entire flock of sheep descending on your camp as the sun rises over the hills makes an incredible racket. Rams snorting as they mingle, the dams grunting and blatting to their lambs who respond with the familiar bleating at the same volume a two year old uses to express their unfulfilled desires at 2:00 am.  All around our camp the forest is alive.  Sheep everywhere advancing like an army taking the high ground.  We’re awake now.

If you follow our adventures…  and you’re here so you must…  then you know, we may be up early…  but get going occurs sometime after 9:00 (ok 10:00) am.  That may have to do with not wanting to leave this beautiful spot but more likely it’s the hassle of packing up camp.  We keep experimenting with different shelters and sleeping configs looking for the perfect compact, lite weight, easy up, easy down combo that barely separates us from elements.  The current Noah tarp, bivy sack, down bag and supper compact cot seems to be easy enough but that’s still 20 minutes we’ll never get back.

The day before we pulled 30 some extra miles so this should be an easy day on the trail….  But math doesn’t work that way.

Toyota built the FJ Cruiser choosing to use a independent front suspension (IFS).  The weak point on the IFS is the CV joint.  A CV joint is a collection of bearings and cages that allows significant axle rotation and power delivery on a number of different angles but requires vigilance on an off-road adventure. Checking the shafts on the rig’s morning walk around, it became apparent one of the inner boots protecting the CV was oozing lube.  Grey joint grease was escaping from the boot because of a loose retainer.

Now we have choices:

1. pull the half shaft and replace it with the spare in the rig (don’t wheel an IFS rig without carrying a spare!!!)
2. bandage it up and hope the leaking stops

The grease was fresh so we probably caught it early but there was a bunch of it. No chirping sounds indicating metal on metal grinding of the CV. Until Moab we don’t expect too much stress on the CV.  Deciding on the first aide approach, we grabbed a trash bag, zip ties and duct tape.  The idea was to wrap the leaking area with the plastic trash bag, zip tie it and the boot where the lube is oozing and than secure it all with duct tape. Now keep a close eye on it and hope for the best.

The route this day took us back into the higher elevations.  Through the ponderous pines, aspens and up above treeline cresting somewhere around 10,000 feet.  Until now the rains had always been off in the distance but as we approached the top, the clouds unloaded. Thunder and lightning announced Mother Nature’s anger as she lowered the boom.  The temperature plummeted to 40 degrees. Rain fell like a cow pissing on a flat rock.  The sound of hail hitting the rig resounded through the cabin like gravel tossed on a tin roof.  Mud immediately took on a consistency of slippery goo as we serpentined along the mountain’s edge. This was the first time we engaged four low to ensure  everything stayed under control as we kept going at a snails pace to avoid sliding off the mountain. Through all of nature’s furry we stat dry.  The Oher Paul is experiencing this storm in his Defender 90 with only a canvas top for protection as the water blew in the sides. An hour later we had moved off the mountain, left the rains behind and found the Other Paul mostly dry as we took a break for lunch and some free WiFi.

This is why we love Metal Tech 4×4  Somewhere in the eye of the storm I devised a longer term plan for the leaky boot.  Having a little cell coverage in a clearing, I quickly sent a text to Metal Tech asking if they could get a half shaft or boot kit over to Ouray, CO where we planned to meetup for their party.  A couple of texts back and forth, and Mark was running over to pick up a boot kit that he would drag with him across the country for us…  Yeah lots of shops are helpful but I don’t know any shop who truly cares about customer the way Mark and LT do…  And we’re not the only ones with a Metal Tech story like this, one includes Mark pulling a shock off their truck and handing over to a customer so they could make it back home a couple hundred miles away.

After we’d eaten, dried off and put a few more miles behind us, the adventure began to transition back into a lazy romp through hills filled with cattle and the occasional dear. The miles seemed to effortlessly roll by as we made our way to where we would call home for the night.  The sun was high in the sky and the ground bone dry as we dropped off the route heading down to Currant Creek Reservoir to find a camp site.

Sitting around a camp fire with friends has to be one of the best things in life.  With summer in full swing and the fire danger set at beyond extreme (Colorado is on fire) we’ve been sitting around the camp lantern at night.  But this evening we were having a fire (approved by the camp host in designed fire pit).  Before this adventure, Brad and the Other Paul didn’t really know each other well.  However by the time the fire and whiskey were just about done, we were all peas in a pod. I sat by the glowing embers with a smile knowing this off-road adventure was already a success, now as the two of them teamed up to direct their sarcastic wit in my direction. Something about my spelling, arbitrary punctuation and random missing words…  but they still keep reading the my stories…  I personally like to think my “writing style” allows the reader to fill in the blanks and create their own story.

Currant Creek Camp sits right on the reservoir at 8,000 feet elevation tucked into the hillside. Still early in the night, the long day had us ready to hit the bunks.  The Other Paul headed into his tent while Brad and I crawled into our bags under the stars. Earlier we’d decided to doubled down and test our luck, deciding to go without tarp above us so we could now drift off under the twinkle of the stars.

Next : Utah Backcounty Discovery Route Day 5

You would think with two different maps and the GPS waypoints we could find the trail. It’s obvious once you know… but it wasn’t until the third drive by that we made the correct turn to start the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route.  So lets talk maps…

If you are going to drive the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route please purchase the map and show your support! The map sales help to keep these BDR projects going as a sponsored, community driven effort. When you receive the map, look at it…  smell it… frame it and then leave it at home.  This is not a good map.  An entire side of the map is dedicated to the state while the route takes up a small portion along the eastern edge of the state. The detailed sections are not that detailed and you can not fold the map into any configuration that will align the state view and the detailed sections together.  The road numbers don’t jive with the DeLorme Gazetteer or the forest road signs along the trail. It appears their scheme for assigning forest road number is based on the lottery’s quick picks. Don’t count on the map for route finding.  Absolutely download the GPS waypoints.  The waypoints are dead on, extremely detailed and free. Before you start the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route, grab a Gazetteer, overlay the route with a yellow highlighter and load up the waypoints into a GPS. Now you have the tools you need to find your way.  Still, buy the map…  it is pretty and it comes with nine pounds of dual sport gear catalogs that you’re bound to find a use for…  even if it is only as a wheel chuck.

Blue sky, fluffy white clouds, 70 degrees.  You would be hard pressed to have a better start for any off-road adventure. The northern most leg is wide, easy, graded and graveled forest road allowing us to casually shed the tensions of the 900 miles of asphalt that brought us this point. Heading south on FR056, we passed lines of pickups hauling trailers back from a weekend of family outdoors. As the miles passed, the road thinned down as did the parade of rigs and quads. Soon the luxury of gravel gave way to rock, hardpan and potholes filled with the water from yesterday’s thunderstorms but we had the forest road to ourselves.

Utah, like most states in the west, is large. The terrain depends on where you are within the state. In the north, picture mountains, evergreens, stands of aspens and open sage brush. Back home in the northwest we have tight twisty trails through dense forest. Here we’re treated to open views above tree line. When we drop into the forest, it is open mixed with meadows, the smell of sage and pine filling the rig. This is an adventure for all our senses.

We motored through this leg effortlessly, spotting humming birds, eagles, prong horned antelope butterflies and a pallet of wild flowers.  We also saw countless free range cattle and sheep.  We were driving between eight and nine thousand feet above sea-level. At this elevation the temperature remained cool even in July.   And while the puddled trail and darkening sky threatened to dampen the day, the rains remained across the valley while we enjoyed the drive.

The Utah Backcountry Discovery Route is intended to be driven south to north so this leg is expected to be an short, easy last leg.  For us starting out…  a little too short. Before we knew it we were done. As we fueled up in Evanston, two things became apparent. The Other Paul had left his gas cap back at Bear Lake and we still had lots of day light in front of us.  A quick trip through the isles of Walmart solved the first issue.  Guys are goal oriented. Attain one goal and then they’re off on the next one. We’re no different. Continuing down the second leg we took advantage of all that extra day light.

These adventures are about finding the unusual… the different…  the little things you wont see driving 75 mph on the tarmac.  Coming around a corner stood a small stone marker.  Nothing special and I’m sure we’d of blown by if not for a long forgotten memory that fired off in the recesses of my brain.  When I was 14, I went on a road trip with Dad across the country.  Somewhere around midnight on that trip we stopped at Four Corners to see the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico come together.  On that night under the stars I stood in four states at once. (sorry I’m back)  While this marker only defined the edge of Utah and Wyoming, I found myself hopping between states like a giddy school girl who’s name was just called out for prom queen…  “I’m in Utah…  I’m in Wyoming…  I’m in Utah… I’m in…”.  No way for a grown man to act, but this is Ferris Bueller’s day off.

Up to now the route took us through  state forests and BLM land.  The trail now started to carve through private ranch land. The public may have easement, but that doesn’t mean the ranchers have to like it.  Crossing the cattle gate you are visually accosted by signs that scream “Stay on the road.  Do Not get off the road.  Do Not hunt, fish, hike or camp.  Do Not do anything but drive through and stay on the public easement.”  And those nice gravel roads…  this is a road in name only.  One lane, unmaintained, rocky, muddy and traversed by more cattle than cars.  The reward of this track through the ranch land…  Unbelievable vista’s and complete solitude. This is a big…  big ranch. The route went on for miles, carving through the mountains, exposing view of valleys and the mountains beyond.  Angus beef on the hoof often stood in our way, challenging us in a game of chicken as we inched forward encouraging them to give passage.

The sun was beginning its long decent as we finally reached the other end of the ranch, several hours later.  Marked by another cattle gate and stream we were now free to look for a place to call home for the night. We hadn’t seen a soul since Evanston until when we came across a sheep herder rounding up his lost flock just beyond the ranch’s boundary.  This is working BLM land with men who live with their livestock.  Modern times has them in trailers instead of old canvas bedrolls but they still work their herds on the back of horses and their tanned leather skin has the story of the west written in their sun dried wrinkles.  Gruff at first but when we swung back to let him know we’d spotted some sheep up ahead, the old guy immediately warmed up and was eager to chat.

I enjoy dry camping and that is exactly what we found…  a spot under the trees 100 yards off the trail. Dry camping means you have to bring everything you need (and hall it back out). No water, no outhouse, no manicured walk ways.  For this minimalistic flat spot under the trees you avoid the RVs with their generators, satellite dishes and families trying to stay connected to the coconut telegraph.

The lantern and headlamps illuminated camp as we fixed dinner and talked over the day.    The middle of July and we’re bundling up in layers and beanies as we crawl into our sleeping bags exhilarated and exhausted from 100 plus miles of dirt roads through an amazing section of the county.

Next : Utah Backcounty Discovery Route Day 4