Thursday morning brought us to Day 2 of our trip. So after a quick breakfast at the Hotel, we headed to the gas station to top off the tanks and grab some Subway for lunch.

We then headed south on Highway 12 over Boulder Mountain to the town of Boulder, which is the start of the Burr Trail Road. Heading east out of Boulder we traveled though Long Canyon of the Burr Trail, named after the Cattle rancher who blazed the trail to drive his cattle between ranges and to markets.

 

After leaving Long Canyon, we drop down into the White Canyon Flats, and turn off onto the Wolverine Loop Road, to air down. Following the Wolverine loop Road we headed south into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. To get out of the Dust cloud of a Truck that passed us while we aired down we turned right and explored a portion of the Horse Canyon Trail. This trail warrants a more thorough exploration, but since we had other trails planned for the day we turned around and headed back to the Wolverine loop. We arrived at a scenic hike to a petrified wood forest just before lunch, and headed off into the desert to find some. After hiking for a couple of miles and not seeing anything that resembled Petrified wood we turned around and headed back to the vehicles for lunch.

I guess it pays to know what you are looking for because on the way back we started to notice things we had missed that looked a lot like Petrified wood. Oh well it was nice to stretch the legs.

After lunch we headed back onto the Wolverine Loop Road and finished the loop reconnecting to the Burr Trail just outside of the Capitol Reef National Park Border. Taking a right onto the Burr trail we ventured into the National Park headed for the Muley Twist canyon Road and the Strike valley overlook. While cruzin’ down the very washboard dirt road we were passed by a park ranger going the other direction. She must have thought that we were driving too fast on this bumpy road and flashed her red and blue lights at us. Apparently <25 MPH is too fast.

Missing the Muley Twist Road sign we turned around and headed down this, high clearance 4×4 road though a wash, with amazing views of many arches and holes in the sandstone walls towering over. Arriving at the Strike Valley overlook trailhead we discovered a new model Toyota Rav4 Crossover that could not be described as high clearance. After taking in the amazing view of the Strike Valley over look we headed back to the vehicles. Upon arriving back at the trailhead we met one of the owners of the Rav4 who exclaimed she would rather have driven a higher clearance vehicle down that road than a Rav4, but that she had humored her husband and after a very slow drive and lots of boulder spotting they had made it with only a little scraping.

Wishing them well on their drive out and with the shadows getting longer in the canyon we headed out to complete the Burr trail switchbacks and on to the Notom bullfrog road then back to Torrey on Highway 24.

On the way back out of the Canyon we developed an annoying squeak from the rear, after a quick investigation we determined it was not a failing universal joint like first thought but the squeal strip on the rear breaks and too much dust from the trail. Video/time-lapse of the day is below.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vfqflZG5XkM

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zLqprBfsp44

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tx4BY3Hv40Y