Wild camping in Utah

Today was a great day! Leaving Hanksville, we had 125 miles to traverse before we got to the next location with services (ie a place to get food and water). This is (hopefully) the last long stretch that we’ll have without services.

We were on Utah State Route 95 all day. For some reason, “no services” made me expect “boring” but that wasn’t the case at all. The scenery was consistently remarkable, on par with any of the National Parks we’ve ridden through.

For most of the day we were riding through a canyon next to the remnants of the river that carved out the canyon through the red rocks over millennia. It was a lovely, meandering ride (mostly downhill) until we crossed the Colorado River. That felt like a milestone for our trip.

We planned to boondock somewhere between miles 60 and 70. Mike found a great place a bit off the road around mile 65. While walking around exploring the area, we initially lamented that the van isn’t able to go off-road, because we thought it would be cool to be farther from the road. And then we remembered we have tents! So we decided to leave the van and wild camp.

While exploring to find a place to put our tents we came across a very obvious fire circle. It was built out of rocks and someone had even left firewood next to it. We took that as a sign that it was a good place to spend the night. So we ended the evening sitting around a campfire and looking at the stars. We each agreed it was the best view of the stars any of us had ever seen.

Highlights

• beautiful ride through a canyon
• campfire and stargazing, including seeing multiple shooting stars

Lowlights

• I became slightly less enthusiastic about wild camping after the sun went down. All of our conversations around the campfire seemed to resolve around “things in the Utah desert that could kill us”, “things that might be in the Utah desert that could kill us”, and “bats” (because there were a lot of them and I really dislike bats).

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: oatmeal and coffee
• First Snack: Clif bar, hummus and crackers
• Lunch: peanut butter banana sandwich
• Second Snack: Clif bar
• Appetizer: cashew cheese and crackers, potato chips, pretzels, beer
• Dinner: Mexican pinto beans and rice

Stats

• Total distance: 67.04 miles
• Elevation gain: 3,960 feet
• Weather: hot and dry, high probably around 80 degrees Fahrenheit