After going to bed with heavy clouds and rain showers outside, we woke up to a beautiful day with clear blue skies, a good omen for the day ahead. We were up early (for us) as we had a long day ahead of us. After breakfast, we packed our lunch and were on the road before 9:30. Today we are driving the Burr Trail that starts in the town of Boulder.
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| The Burr Trail is marked in red while the Wolverine Loop is blue. |
Boulder is about 30 miles north of Escalante and the drive from Escalante to Boulder on SB12 is spectacular. You go down into canyons and up into high plateaus with incredible scenery all along the way. You even go through a stretch where you are on the backbone with deep canyons on both sides.
We arrived in Boulder, made the right hand turn onto the Burr Trail and we were on our way. The Burr Trail is named after John Burr, an early rancher in the area in the mid 1800's who needed a way to get his cattle from the high country down to a lower altitude for the winter. It’s hard to believe how he found a way through this desolate and rugged landscape, but he did and now we have a beautiful scenic drive to enjoy.
The Burr Trail is 66 miles long and is paved for the first 31 miles until you reach the boundary of Capitol Reef National Park. The main part of Capitol Reef is further north, but the Burr Trail cuts through the southern and lesser traveled part of it.
The first part of the drive was lined with cottonwood trees with their beautiful fall colors. After driving through one short canyon we drove through Long Canyon that is one of the highlights of the Burr Trail. It is about 10 miles long with towering red cliffs on both sides with cottonwood trees at the base of the cliffs.
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| Fall colors in the Cottonwoods. |
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| Long Canyon |
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| Driving into Long Canyon. |
I had read in a photo guide about a slot canyon with easy access along the road. It is not named and not marked on most maps, but is pretty well known and is called Singing Canyon by the locals because of the acoustics inside the canyon (I have also seen it called Long Canyon Slot on some topo maps). There are no signs on the road, but we knew about where it was so we started our search. We stopped at spot we thought it was, but after hiking around a bit we couldn’t find it.
I had the book that I read about it in and checked again and saw he had mentioned it was 0.8 miles past a bridge over The Gulch. Val and I just looked at each other and laughed, we had parked at the bridge he was talking about. We got in the car, drove the 0.8 miles and sure enough; there to the left was what looked like a slot canyon. The entrance was hidden by a large cottonwood tree, but it was a short walk down to it and there it was. It was not very long and not as narrow as some of the slot canyons, but it was very beautiful and sure enough, the acoustics were wonderful, though neither Val nor I wanted to expose the world our singing. We were the only people there for a while, but a couple of people noticed where we parked and soon there were a few other people so we thought that was our sign to move on.
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| It was a short hike to get to Singing Canyon. |
We continued through Long Canyon and drove up out of the canyon to a large plateau. Just as we exited the canyon we saw the turnoff for the Wolverine Loop, a 28 mile dirt track that ended back up at the Burr Trail. I had read about it and thought it might be interesting to drive so we decided to at least start it and see what it was like. It was a rough road and went through many creek crossings, but could probably be done by a 2-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle, but I definitely felt more comfortable having 4-wheel drive.
We were traveling through a high dessert plateau area that, while beautiful, was not really very interesting and after about 8 miles we were considering turning around, but decided to press on and have some lunch before deciding. We found a beautiful spot to have our lunch and decided to continue the loop.
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| This seemed like a nice place to stop for lunch. |
Wise decision, just after lunch we started passing through a deep canyon and then rising onto plateaus and going right back down into another canyon. The road was pretty rough in places and slow going, but it was a great drive and we were glad we pushed ahead.
We got back to the Burr Trail and continued on into Capitol Reef National Park where the road turned to dirt and got a little rougher, but not bad. The Burr Trail goes all the way to a road called the Norton Bullfrog Road that runs north to the main highway leading to Capitol Reef and south to the Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell. The road that runs to Bullfrog is considered part of the Burr Trail. We had driven to Capitol Reef on our last trip, but we decided it was getting late in the afternoon so we would just drive to the Muley Twist, turn around and head back.
The Muley Twist is a very steep series of switchbacks that drop 1000 feet into the valley below. It is a bit of a harrowing drive, but very interesting. When we were here last time, I had found a spot where I could take a picture of the switchbacks and the route down, but I couldn’t find the spot this time. I think it must have been after we had already started down, but oh well, we were ready to start back.
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| The top of the Muley Twist. |
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| Looking down the Muley Twist. You can't see much of the switchbacks from this viewpoint, but you can see the bottom of the Muley Twist far below. |
We made the drive back along the Burr Trail to Boulder and then SB12 back to Escalante and our tiny house. We made it back by 5:00 and it felt good to sit down and relax for a bit, but we had dinner to think about.
There is a fire pit out back of our house and we had decided that we would relive our childhood and roast hot dogs on sticks over an open fire and tonight was the night. I went out to start the fire while Val got things ready, but I didn’t do very well so Val came out and rescued me and took over the fire starting and soon we had a roaring fire going which felt good as the evening was getting pretty cool. We roasted our hot dogs (actually Polish sausages) to perfection and had a great dinner of our hot dogs and potato salad.
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| Val has jut gotten a good fire going and is ready to roast the hotdogs. |
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| It was a bit cool, but not as cold as I look in this picture. |
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| These hot dogs tasted great after being roasted over an open fire. |
It had been a long day and we have another long day tomorrow so after getting thing cleaned up and relaxing for a while, we called it a night. Tomorrow we are driving the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, another off-road adventure.
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