Sand Island, Utah - Petroglyphs and Camping

Just a few miles south of Bluff Utah, you will find a sign on your left announcing Sand Island. It doesn't tell you what it is, just turn left there! You will find a rock art panel easily as big as the one we found on Potash Road in Moab!

From a distance, it is hard to tell how large this panel really is. It extends from the far left behind that big rock to the far right, beyond the frame of this picture.

Remember you can click on the photos to enlarge them to full size, making seeing the rock art easier!

Of course, graffitti is always a problem!

The one thing I have never seen, even in the petroglyph books, is that pair of "oars" top center! Maybe that is modern graffitti, I haven't a clue!

Probably the most amazing thing about Sand Island Petroglyphs is that for many years they were hidden from sight by the pesky tamerisk trees. Non-native, these plants take over everywhere in the Southwest where there is water! Utah is trying an experiment with a worm that feeds on tamerisk (or salt cedar) and it seems to be working! The worms actually cleared out the tamerisk from in front of these petroglyphs, petroglyphs that many folk had forgotten about.

3 strange figures at the top. Human or Alien ???

From a distance, it was hard to tell this panel existed. The fence it below was the clue! There are still some tamerisk trees trying to make a come back here.

The second part of the panel...... this panel was well protected by the rock overhang.

 

Twin Rocks, landmark in Bluff Utah! Also one of the better restaurants sits under the Twin Rocks....  Twin Rocks Cafe and we heartily recommend their Navajo Pizza! Chuck and Sue loved the classic pizza ! Instead of the usual pizza crust, they use Navajo fry bread and YUM!


 

    Our Sand Island camp site!

Hope you enjoyed the petroglyphs from Sand Island. There is a vey nice campground here, right on the river. It is a BLM campground and the rates were very reasonable. $5.00 a night for Seniors and $10.00 a night for you youngsters!There were bathrooms provided throughout the campground. RV Sue had the best campsite, right on the San Juan River watching the float trips go by! We said our sad goodbyes to Sue yesterday... :-(   she is such a very special friend! We will see you on down the road Sue, we love you too!
Crew of the MotherShip signing off for the night!
Chuck, Geri, DoogieBowser and Radar!

 

Headed to Bluff and RV Sue

 

LEAVING T or C AND THE DUSTY WIND

 

SouthWest Bird of Paradise in our alley in T or C.

 

We had planned to leave Truth or Consequences NM on Tuesday May 7th.  It was extremely windy and blowing dust everywhere on Monday so we lost a day of packing The MotherShip, getting her ready for the trip to Bluff and our meeting up with RV Sue. Good thing too! On Tuesday morning Sue called while Chuck was shopping in WalMart. She needed a new inverter, hers had died and she could not get online easily without it.  As luck would have it, WalMart had the inverter Sue needed! If we had left on Tuesday as planned... well, let's just say there are not many inverters for sale on our route to Bluff Utah!

We left late on Wednesday morning headed up I-25N to Socorro NM where we turned West on Highway 60. If you have never driven Highway 60 through NM you should! West of Socorro you end up with the oddest sight.....   huge antennas facing up to the skies! The Very Great Array!

 

The road settles down to wide open spaces when you first see the huge dishes facing skywards for miles! Even in this photo, we were 4 miles away using a zoom lens!

 After passing the Very Great Array, the flat lands gave way to more beautiful mountains. We came to Datil NM and just a few miles past it was the BLM campground of Datil Wells. Boondocking only but beautiful and well cared for. Both back-in and pull through spaces available for $5 for non-seniors and $2.50 for seniors is great rent! We plan to stop for a few days on or way back but for now we were on a mission to get Sue her inverter!

 

 But we HAD to stop in Pie Town NM first!  YES there really is a place called Pie Town!

Entering Pie Town from the East is lots and lots of windmills on display!

 
The next thing you see is the Pie*O*Neer Cafe!  We pulled in for pies! One for Sue, one for us!  Yeah, right!  At $25.00 PER PIE! I settled on 2 slices of apple cranberry pie at $5.00 each! Sorry Sue, she never got a taste!

Leaving Pie Town we saw this sign....

DUH! Ya Think ????

 

 

 When Highway 60 met Highway 191 near Springerville AZ, we headed north to our next night of camping in Chinle AZ at the beautiful Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly AZ.

 

 

 Chuck and I had been dancing around rain showers all day. Shortly after we had the MotherShip all set up, the showers caught up to us! After a brief rain, the sky cleared and a brilliant shaft of sunlight pierced through the dark clouds and lit up the cottonwood trees like magic!  This is no photoshopping, I promise.  Please realize that in normal light, these cottonwood trees are actually sporting bright green, new leaves! But tonight, with a gift from the sun, they turned to pure gold!

I will never understand why Highway 191 south of Chinle AZ is marked as a scenic highway and north of Chinle is not! Highway 191 north of Chinle is totally mind boggling with beauty!

Layers of colors to surprise the eyes!

Rock Monuments around every corner....

 

 Everything came to a screeching halt as a herd of goats walked leisurely across the road!

We thought they were sheep at first, we had just seen sheep being herded by a man in a car. It wasn't until we noticed the horns that they were all goats!

 

 

 After driving about 2.5 hours from Chinle, passing some of the most amazing scenery, we arrive in Bluff Utah.

RV Sue and Crew arrive to help Chuck set up!

 

 

 Our campground at Sand Island is near Sue.... plenty long for The MotherShip and crew!

Now we are gonna go spend some time with Sue and Crew, taste testing the local restaurants while ya'll eat your hearts out because we are in this beautiful spot and you are not! LOL not really! We all really love you and we will share our blogs with lots of photos about where we are and what we are doing! Sue writes her blog almost daily when she has a good signal, me ??? maybe once a month but I will try to do better! Sue's blog is:

www.rvsueandcrew.com

 

Happy Trails to you from Chuck, Geri, DoogieBowser and Radar!

 

 

BOONDOCKING IN ZION

BOONDOCKING / DRY CAMPING

Our friend Sue ( http://rvsueandcrew.com/ )  is a boondocker.  That is she doesn't have to plug into power because she carries her power with her! She has a very large solar panel attached to her Cargo type van that supplies all the power she needs to run her TV, her computer, her lights and some to spare. This means Sue doesn't have a need for campgrounds. She camps on BLM land, or Forest Service land for free! She can camp on any one space for up to 14 days, then it's time to move on.

Sue is coming here to visit. Yesterday was our day off. We are trying to find suitable land for Sue to camp on here in Zion Canyon. Since this is gonna be hard work, we decided to go to our favorite town, Springdale UT (10 miles east of here) and have a late lunch!

Springdale is the home of Zion National Park! What a beautiful town! To your right is Wildcat Willie's! Our favorite place for yummy food! One of our favorites is the buffalo meatloaf! Yummy!

Everywhere you look in Springdale, you see amazing mountains!

The town is beautiful beyond words.  OK, enough scenery... on to the food!

Stuffed baked potatoes with a yummy chipotle sauce!

My new favorite, prickley pear margarita made with real cactus juice and mmm mmm good!

Lots of local beers made around here too.... this is Chuck's quest... to flavor test all the local beers to find his favorite! So far, Cutthroat Beer is his favorite!

The buffalo wings at Wildcat Willie's are to die for! We are so addicted that we ate more than 1/2 before I remembered to take a picture!

If you look closely, you can see Chuck and I reflected in the window!

FINDING SUE A PLACE TO CAMP

We had heard there was some good camping areas on the road to Grafton! We turned at Rockville and headed towards Grafton. (Grafton area is where much of the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was shot! Remember the bicycle riding scene??? Shot in front of the old school house/ church in Grafton! The road to Grafton is beautiful!

 Scenery peeking through the bluffs and buttes....

Here, we took a left turn off the Grafton road as we saw some possible off road camping sites!

Then we see this sign! 1/2 mile on either side of the road usually means a steep drop off! In AZ they want you close to the road, right?  We found several campsites that folks had used just off the road that would be perfect!

 Good roads and beautiful scenery so far. so we kept going hunting for that perfect spot for Sue! But the paved road left and the rough dirt roads began....

But the scenery continued as awesome!

We found several campsites up ahead, and after using 4WD and one steep climb up a sorta rocky road, and seeing another steep road ahead, I decided we were gonna turn around! The road wasn't real bad, just more than I was in the mood for!

So we decided to head on to Grafton.  There was a sign almost immediately that said no camping beyond here....  Sorry Sue, but the road is beautiful and worth the drive!

We had to laugh at this sign. There was a small community down the hill, so I am sure they had their share of dust from folks heading to Grafton!

The road dead ends at Grafton... it is such a visual journey that we highly recommend you take it.  I will show more about Grafton in my next post, but this post is to show off the scenery in the area and find RVSue a campground!
We got back up to the highway (Highway 9) in Rockville and turned left.

THE ALMOST PERFECT SPOT!

 The reason I say "almost perfect", if you see behind the tent you will see a tour bus and behind the tour bus, another car. That is highway 9! But BUT BUT BUT SUE!!!! THIS IS THE BEST WE COULD FIND!

Nice dirt roads with several good camp sites. There were 3 occupied tent sites when we were here.

 The best campsite was up under that tree, but a tenter already claimed it!

There was even a hiking trail out of this camp area..
this area is known as Coalpits Wash!

 Another good campsite!

And another possibility....

AND NO RUTTED ROADS THERE! Several of the roads where we went looking for campsites were almost impassible without a high clearance 4WD vehicle! Coalpits road might have been near the highway, but most of the camp areas were a bit away from it and the road in and out was easy access.

Ok Sue, and everybody else interested.... here you see some choice as to where you can camp for free near Zion! Most are not easy to get to but the rides to find them are amazing journeys into beautiful wild country! And there is always Wildcat Willies at the end of the day! :-)

Hope you enjoyed the roadtrip with us! Happy Trails from the MotherShip and her crew... Chuck, Geri and the hound herd Scotty, DoogieBowser and Radar!