tehschkott
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Scott
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2020
- Threads
- 25
- Messages
- 278
- Reaction score
- 380
- Location
- Flavor Country
- Vehicle(s)
- 2020 Ranger Lariat Crew Cab 4x4
- Occupation
- Cat herder
- Vehicle Showcase
- 1
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- #1
9 days
3010 miles
No hotels
No restaurants
100% wildcat camping (dispersed)
My wife and I do a lot of outdoors activities, mostly pivoting around bikes. This time we're going to Utah to ride Cathedral Valley near Capitol Reef in Utah. We've not taken the truck on a road trip or camping affair of any seriousness yet. This is the first and we're still sorting out some of the details.
Weather's good, early fall has started in. Crossing the Columbia River here heading east. Taking a slightly roundabout way to get down there, I want to take her through Montana and Yellowstone and the Tetons. She's never been through any of it. The Tetons and the Wind River Mountains are some of my favorite places on earth. We won't be able to do more than drive through but the hope is by glancing through it'll inspire us to get back in there next year.
Come nightfall we camp out up Fish Creek Road in Montana, just short of Bozeman. First night.
.
Next morning it's rain/sleeting. It's pretty but nothing you want to hang out in.
Found this great hat at the gas station.
Whole rig is icing up pretty good. Bikes are iced up. Truck is iced up. Have to turn off parking sensors and adaptive cruise control, they are going haywire.
FOORRRRRRRRRRRRD
Yellowstone is as you expect it to be. It's still majestic as hell. Fortunately very few people in the park due to the borderline weather. Crowds annoy me.
Alright well so much for the Tetons and the Wind River Mountains. The sleet/snow/rain really started dumping. Couldn't see a thing. I was pretty disappointed. Seriously, you didn't really want to set up camp in it, and weather forecast said it was going to turn into snow in the night and dump a foot and a half. Pushed on through to Jackson Hole. The rain/sleet finally stopped but was due there in a few hours too. Had a quick talk and decided to crush it through the night and straight into Utah.
Welcome to Capitol Reef, Utah.
Found a great little wildcat site on BLM land just outside the national park along the Fremont River (I think). I racked out in the shade of the truck to catch up on sleep and my wife bedded down in the tent. High altitude desert in the fall means it's 85 degrees in the sun and 65 degrees in the shade. Darn pretty site.
Shower tent is fun and useful. But we will be using a different shower tent in the future. lol
Next day got up and drove into Moab. My dumb ass forgot to grab sealant for the bike tires and Moab was the closest place we could source it. We were really trying to stay out of Moab, the place is a madhouse tourist trap. This would take the day to go out and back but eh, this is what adventure is made of. Might as well.
Picked up tire sealant and a great little bike shop called Poison Spider Bikes, talked bike shop with one of the guys there - my wife is a bike mechanic and I've been wrenching for 15+ years (unprofessionally) so we can generally talk shop. Always good to say hello and make friends. Thought eh, might as well hit Arches National Park since we're there. The wife had never seen it. Got there, there's a line 3 miles long and a sign at the end that says "come back in 3 hours". We bagged it, hit a few small bike trails outside Moab and then headed back to Capitol Reef to make camp.
This is as close as we got to Arches. 25 miles away in the distance. Thanks telephoto! Whatever. Arches is great but staying out of the tourist mess that is Moab is better.
Ran into this fantastic oasis of awesomeness. It was absurd and whimsical. My favorite combination.
That night we camped out at a different site I'd spied the day before, woke up and got ready to do a 2 day bikepacking trip up Cathedral Valley near by.
Hey little buddy!
It was pretty hot and I started having... a bit of a water problem.
Hyponatremia occurs when the concentration of sodium in your blood is abnormally low. Sodium is an electrolyte, and it helps regulate the amount of water that's in and around your cells.
There were no water refills on this trip. You carried everything you needed from start to finish. and in short, I overhydrated to a dangerous degree. Drank 50% of my water 25% of the way through the trip, got the dry heaves. Bad business. I was using a different nutrient powder than normal and... never mind. My system got all thrown off. That's the jist. In any case it put me in a bad state. We would not be bike camping this trip after all. What a bummer. It was a pretty nice dang ride but if we were just going to do an out and back we didn't need to bring all our bikepacking gear. Bleh.
Next morning got up feeling quite a bit better. Made breakfast. Truck kitchen/camping kit is pretty good. Truck is awesome.
Plan for the day is to drive back out the Cathedral Valley and try to reach something called the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. No idea what these are but if we'd continued on the bike trip we'd have visited them yesterday. The road seems plenty drivable, though there are parts with big sand pits that might get you stuck if not careful. Plan is to drive out as far as we can and take bikes the remaining way just to see what we can see.
Cathedral Valley lives up to it's name. Man.
I didn't really stop and picture any of the sandpits unfortunately. There was a fair degree of 4x4 required, and a little rear locker action at another point. Eventually we hit a sandpit I wasn't sure we'd get through so stopped and pulled bikes off. That's the Temple of the Sun there. We'd just ride the remaining distance.
It was majestic. Both it and the Temple of the Moon were just stunning.
and then light caught our eye and we headed over to this - I give you the Mountain of Glass. Which was more of a weird warty hill but... by god it was made of glass alright.
Weird, but neat. Then it was time to head out. Actually, below is one of the sand pits, but the picture isn't really doing it justice. You'd step in it and it'd come to above your ankles. That's why I'm on the side of the road there, I'm pushing my bike around the sand in the road. My wife took this of me. Probably best I didn't get the truck stuck in that. No telling when someone would be by next. I had recovery gear sure but... well if you've done this before you'll know why I didn't push it. Best thing you can bring is someone else and everyone was a long ways away. It's not like there are trees to latch a snatch-block and a come-along to out here, and I didn't have a sand anchor. Wasn't worth getting stuck over. No regrets.
Good thing I stopped to get sealant. See all those spots on the side of the tire? Each of those would have normally been a flat tire. Tubeless bike tires rule.
And the drive out was great! I can't embed it here but if you want to see a little hyperlapse video you can see it here:
Driving out the Cathedral Valley - short vid
Coming out of Cathedral Valley, we stopped at Carls Critter Garden in Hanksville
Afterwards went over to explore a nearby valley called Goblin Valley. Never heard of it, sounded interesting. We had no idea what was in there.
Boy, were we in for a treat.
Whole place is just magical.
It was dusk so went and found a killer little nearby wildcat site up this red rock gulley to stay the night. We'd be back in the morning.
Truck kitchen is still a little haphazard but it gets the job done.
Back into the Goblin Valley before hitting the road for home. We should have lit out at daybreak but we slept in, had pancakes and rode bikes through Goblin Valley instead. No regrets.
And then suddenly we rounded a bend on this trail called "Dark Side of the Moon" and....
It is hard to tell but that is a 1000+ foot drop to the right and wind is gusting and... and... and...
It is I think, the prettiest, most incredible place I've ever been. And I've been some great places. We took a bazillion pictures trying to capture... well everything. the beauty. The power of it. The sheer drop you felt like you were on. I mean, our little cameras just couldn't do it. But boy we tried.
And then wildfire smoke started rolling in so we said our goodbyes and hit the road. You can see the smoke on the right coming in on the below pic.
It's a 2020 Ranger Lariat I bought July 20, this year. I crested 11,000 miles today, Oct 29. I just can't say enough good things about this platform. What a fantastic vehicle. I am really looking forward to the next 90,000+ miles.
3010 miles
No hotels
No restaurants
100% wildcat camping (dispersed)
My wife and I do a lot of outdoors activities, mostly pivoting around bikes. This time we're going to Utah to ride Cathedral Valley near Capitol Reef in Utah. We've not taken the truck on a road trip or camping affair of any seriousness yet. This is the first and we're still sorting out some of the details.
Weather's good, early fall has started in. Crossing the Columbia River here heading east. Taking a slightly roundabout way to get down there, I want to take her through Montana and Yellowstone and the Tetons. She's never been through any of it. The Tetons and the Wind River Mountains are some of my favorite places on earth. We won't be able to do more than drive through but the hope is by glancing through it'll inspire us to get back in there next year.
Come nightfall we camp out up Fish Creek Road in Montana, just short of Bozeman. First night.
Next morning it's rain/sleeting. It's pretty but nothing you want to hang out in.
Found this great hat at the gas station.
Whole rig is icing up pretty good. Bikes are iced up. Truck is iced up. Have to turn off parking sensors and adaptive cruise control, they are going haywire.
FOORRRRRRRRRRRRD
Yellowstone is as you expect it to be. It's still majestic as hell. Fortunately very few people in the park due to the borderline weather. Crowds annoy me.
Alright well so much for the Tetons and the Wind River Mountains. The sleet/snow/rain really started dumping. Couldn't see a thing. I was pretty disappointed. Seriously, you didn't really want to set up camp in it, and weather forecast said it was going to turn into snow in the night and dump a foot and a half. Pushed on through to Jackson Hole. The rain/sleet finally stopped but was due there in a few hours too. Had a quick talk and decided to crush it through the night and straight into Utah.
Welcome to Capitol Reef, Utah.
Found a great little wildcat site on BLM land just outside the national park along the Fremont River (I think). I racked out in the shade of the truck to catch up on sleep and my wife bedded down in the tent. High altitude desert in the fall means it's 85 degrees in the sun and 65 degrees in the shade. Darn pretty site.
Shower tent is fun and useful. But we will be using a different shower tent in the future. lol
Next day got up and drove into Moab. My dumb ass forgot to grab sealant for the bike tires and Moab was the closest place we could source it. We were really trying to stay out of Moab, the place is a madhouse tourist trap. This would take the day to go out and back but eh, this is what adventure is made of. Might as well.
Picked up tire sealant and a great little bike shop called Poison Spider Bikes, talked bike shop with one of the guys there - my wife is a bike mechanic and I've been wrenching for 15+ years (unprofessionally) so we can generally talk shop. Always good to say hello and make friends. Thought eh, might as well hit Arches National Park since we're there. The wife had never seen it. Got there, there's a line 3 miles long and a sign at the end that says "come back in 3 hours". We bagged it, hit a few small bike trails outside Moab and then headed back to Capitol Reef to make camp.
This is as close as we got to Arches. 25 miles away in the distance. Thanks telephoto! Whatever. Arches is great but staying out of the tourist mess that is Moab is better.
Ran into this fantastic oasis of awesomeness. It was absurd and whimsical. My favorite combination.
That night we camped out at a different site I'd spied the day before, woke up and got ready to do a 2 day bikepacking trip up Cathedral Valley near by.
Hey little buddy!
It was pretty hot and I started having... a bit of a water problem.
Hyponatremia occurs when the concentration of sodium in your blood is abnormally low. Sodium is an electrolyte, and it helps regulate the amount of water that's in and around your cells.
There were no water refills on this trip. You carried everything you needed from start to finish. and in short, I overhydrated to a dangerous degree. Drank 50% of my water 25% of the way through the trip, got the dry heaves. Bad business. I was using a different nutrient powder than normal and... never mind. My system got all thrown off. That's the jist. In any case it put me in a bad state. We would not be bike camping this trip after all. What a bummer. It was a pretty nice dang ride but if we were just going to do an out and back we didn't need to bring all our bikepacking gear. Bleh.
Next morning got up feeling quite a bit better. Made breakfast. Truck kitchen/camping kit is pretty good. Truck is awesome.
Plan for the day is to drive back out the Cathedral Valley and try to reach something called the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. No idea what these are but if we'd continued on the bike trip we'd have visited them yesterday. The road seems plenty drivable, though there are parts with big sand pits that might get you stuck if not careful. Plan is to drive out as far as we can and take bikes the remaining way just to see what we can see.
Cathedral Valley lives up to it's name. Man.
I didn't really stop and picture any of the sandpits unfortunately. There was a fair degree of 4x4 required, and a little rear locker action at another point. Eventually we hit a sandpit I wasn't sure we'd get through so stopped and pulled bikes off. That's the Temple of the Sun there. We'd just ride the remaining distance.
It was majestic. Both it and the Temple of the Moon were just stunning.
and then light caught our eye and we headed over to this - I give you the Mountain of Glass. Which was more of a weird warty hill but... by god it was made of glass alright.
Weird, but neat. Then it was time to head out. Actually, below is one of the sand pits, but the picture isn't really doing it justice. You'd step in it and it'd come to above your ankles. That's why I'm on the side of the road there, I'm pushing my bike around the sand in the road. My wife took this of me. Probably best I didn't get the truck stuck in that. No telling when someone would be by next. I had recovery gear sure but... well if you've done this before you'll know why I didn't push it. Best thing you can bring is someone else and everyone was a long ways away. It's not like there are trees to latch a snatch-block and a come-along to out here, and I didn't have a sand anchor. Wasn't worth getting stuck over. No regrets.
Good thing I stopped to get sealant. See all those spots on the side of the tire? Each of those would have normally been a flat tire. Tubeless bike tires rule.
And the drive out was great! I can't embed it here but if you want to see a little hyperlapse video you can see it here:
Driving out the Cathedral Valley - short vid
Coming out of Cathedral Valley, we stopped at Carls Critter Garden in Hanksville
Afterwards went over to explore a nearby valley called Goblin Valley. Never heard of it, sounded interesting. We had no idea what was in there.
Boy, were we in for a treat.
Whole place is just magical.
It was dusk so went and found a killer little nearby wildcat site up this red rock gulley to stay the night. We'd be back in the morning.
Truck kitchen is still a little haphazard but it gets the job done.
Back into the Goblin Valley before hitting the road for home. We should have lit out at daybreak but we slept in, had pancakes and rode bikes through Goblin Valley instead. No regrets.
And then suddenly we rounded a bend on this trail called "Dark Side of the Moon" and....
It is hard to tell but that is a 1000+ foot drop to the right and wind is gusting and... and... and...
It is I think, the prettiest, most incredible place I've ever been. And I've been some great places. We took a bazillion pictures trying to capture... well everything. the beauty. The power of it. The sheer drop you felt like you were on. I mean, our little cameras just couldn't do it. But boy we tried.
And then wildfire smoke started rolling in so we said our goodbyes and hit the road. You can see the smoke on the right coming in on the below pic.
It's a 2020 Ranger Lariat I bought July 20, this year. I crested 11,000 miles today, Oct 29. I just can't say enough good things about this platform. What a fantastic vehicle. I am really looking forward to the next 90,000+ miles.
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