I'll repeat my previous comments. The drone footage is just superdy duperdy cool.
I'm impressed with both the quality of the footage and the steadiness of the shot.
CK5
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Epic overland trip on the way to Blazer Bash - The S-10 is back on the road!
- Thread starter r3dd0g
- Start date
I'll repeat my previous comments. The drone footage is just superdy duperdy cool.
I'm impressed with both the quality of the footage and the steadiness of the shot.
At the 3min mark another vehicle drives up on the convoy. I'm imagining a surprised look on the driver's face as he comes across what I would call a large convoy of overlanding rigs. I assume such large groups are a rare sight?
He was one of the guys that we were waiting for. If you look at the footage before I turn the drone around and point it down you can see the two rigs coming up the road in the distance. I was looking for them with the drone.
On day 5 of the AZ Run we actually cruised into the main part of the North Rim National Park (the back way of course). We hit Point Imperial and Cape Royal, but more importantly some of us managed to grab a shower at the campsite in the park, it was glorious!
On with the pictures (I think this is Cape Royal):
It was pretty humorous driving around the park with a big group of muddy trucks (we all split up and hit all the spots we wanted to hit and regrouped later). Everywhere you went people were pointing, taking pictures and coming over to ask were we had all been.
Lunch with a view:
I think this is Point Imperial:
(Pre shower pictures):
Then we headed just outside the main entrance of the park for our night 5 campsite. There was another herd of buffalo grazing in the fields just outside the park, but it didn't seem as cool as the one we ran into in the forest. It poured on us for about an hour then let up so we could set up camp. Some of the mud got washed off anyways:
On with the pictures (I think this is Cape Royal):
It was pretty humorous driving around the park with a big group of muddy trucks (we all split up and hit all the spots we wanted to hit and regrouped later). Everywhere you went people were pointing, taking pictures and coming over to ask were we had all been.
Lunch with a view:
I think this is Point Imperial:
(Pre shower pictures):
Then we headed just outside the main entrance of the park for our night 5 campsite. There was another herd of buffalo grazing in the fields just outside the park, but it didn't seem as cool as the one we ran into in the forest. It poured on us for about an hour then let up so we could set up camp. Some of the mud got washed off anyways:
awesome so far. thanks for posting this!
Nobody asked me to and I couldn't tell if it was the person I was looking for from the controller. I was just killing time and happened to catch them on the way in.
This is really cool
! Thanks for sharing and inputting some the history and your thoughts of whats going on at the time. It really helps give it some perspective. Going off road like this probably isn't in the cards for me, but man it is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
! Thanks for sharing and inputting some the history and your thoughts of whats going on at the time. It really helps give it some perspective. Going off road like this probably isn't in the cards for me, but man it is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Hey, Tony, we have a spot for you in next year's U.P. trip if you wanna come. What keeps you away from the fun?
We headed out in the morning for the last campsite through some beautiful canyons and woods:
We made a stop for lunch before we dropped off of the Kaibab Plateau:
Then we dropped down out of the pines and into the high desert:
Marble Canyon in the distance:
When we arrived at our final campsite, right on the edge of Marble Canyon, a storm blew through so we all hid in our trucks for an hour or so till it blew over:
Once it dried out enough we set up camp in the best campsite ever:
We made a stop for lunch before we dropped off of the Kaibab Plateau:
Then we dropped down out of the pines and into the high desert:
Marble Canyon in the distance:
When we arrived at our final campsite, right on the edge of Marble Canyon, a storm blew through so we all hid in our trucks for an hour or so till it blew over:
Once it dried out enough we set up camp in the best campsite ever:
Awesome views out all 3 windows on the tent. We just laid in there and enjoyed the view for a couple hours:
We had a friend guarding our camp for us:
Double rainbow!
A couple drone shots for perspective:
We had different trucks come and leave throughout the week and you can see our group was pretty small by this point, those that left early missed the best campsite.
I uploaded another drone video, but they cut the music track off so I'm going to find a different track and re-upload it. I'll post it later.
We had a friend guarding our camp for us:
Double rainbow!
A couple drone shots for perspective:
We had different trucks come and leave throughout the week and you can see our group was pretty small by this point, those that left early missed the best campsite.
I uploaded another drone video, but they cut the music track off so I'm going to find a different track and re-upload it. I'll post it later.
Awesome views out all 3 windows on the tent. We just laid in there and enjoyed the view for a couple hours:
We had a friend guarding our camp for us:
Double rainbow!
A couple drone shots for perspective:
We had different trucks come and leave throughout the week and you can see our group was pretty small by this point, those that left early missed the best campsite.
I uploaded another drone video, but they cut the music track off so I'm going to find a different track and re-upload it. I'll post it later.
Awesome views!
Here's the new video, with new music that hopefully won't get muted:
This is awesome. Definitely how I want to do a trip to blazer bash if I ever get settled down enough to go.
Camping at the north rim park was my favorite part of our Las Vegas trip we did last year, though we weren't as stylish as you camping out of the back of a Kia.
Camping at the north rim park was my favorite part of our Las Vegas trip we did last year, though we weren't as stylish as you camping out of the back of a Kia.
We woke up Saturday and opened the window so we could take some nice sunrise shots. We didn't even have to get out of bed:
We packed up camp and said goodbye to our friends we had spent the last 7 days with and headed into Page. We had made reservations at the newly renovated Motel 6 in Page with the plan of resupplying, doing laundry and heading out again in the morning into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. After talking with the wife, we decided that our tent bed was way more comfortable than a motel bed and we'd clean up, shower, wash clothes, resupply and head back out into the wilderness.
Our original plans were to cruise through the Grand Staircase, meet up with Stephen Watson and family then cruise through parts of the national monument then into Canyonlands. Amber had actually made reservations for all of us at the Dollhouse campgrounds. When she got the permit she read through it and realized that we weren't allowed to take dogs, since we had two and the Watson's had 1 we had to change our plans. All of this happened in the last days prior to leaving when we were in a rush to finish the trailer, shopping and packing so we made tentative plans to just meet somewhere near Escalante on Sunday afternoon and figure it out then. While we were in Page we grabbed a copy of the Utah Gazatteer and a National Monument park map so we could try to figure something out.
While waiting for Laundry and showers, we texted back and forth with Stephen and decided we'd meet up with them at the intersection of Hole in the Rock Road and Left Hand Collet in the "late afternoon" on Sunday. Prior to this point, our trip had been planned out for us, now we were on our own. We flipped through our various maps and decided we'd head out to the Grand Bench to camp. We mistakenly estimated it to be about 20 miles further than the turnoff for Alstrom Point... We were off by quite a bit.
Once we got everything re-packed we headed out towards Big Water again. We swung through the ranger station to check for road closures and snapped some pictures of road conditions in the park so we had a better idea of where we could and couldn't go:
We got to the crossing for Wahweap Creek that we had crossed twice the previous week and were greeted with quite a bit more water than before thanks to the storm that rolled through earlier that morning. There was a JK stopped on the opposite side of the "creek" asking us how deep it was on our side so I decided I'd drive in and find out. It was pretty shallow (less than hub deep) all the way across until we were about 5 feet from the far bank where the main channel was. We were already committed at that point so we splashed through and out the other side to check for damage.
The main channel was about 3 feet deep, but thankfully the only damage was that we tripped the GFC on the inverter and the fridge in our trailer shut off. We dried everything off with an air hose and reset the circuit and were back on our way. We came across Warm Creek and I had Amber wade across this time so we didn't get any surprises. This creek was barely a trickle when we came through before:
Thankfully once we got past that crossing the roads dried out, no more mud or water crossings.
We kept driving and driving as the time ticked on. The road conditions past the Alstrom Point turnoff were significantly worse than prior to the turnoff so our progress was slowed, the fact that we were on our own and in the dark certainly didn't make me drive any faster either. We finally got to the part where the road turned South letting us know exactly where we were and kept trudging on hoping the road would get better. It didn't, so finally at a little after 9PM we found a spot that looked flat enough to set up camp and stopped for the night.
We packed up camp and said goodbye to our friends we had spent the last 7 days with and headed into Page. We had made reservations at the newly renovated Motel 6 in Page with the plan of resupplying, doing laundry and heading out again in the morning into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. After talking with the wife, we decided that our tent bed was way more comfortable than a motel bed and we'd clean up, shower, wash clothes, resupply and head back out into the wilderness.
Our original plans were to cruise through the Grand Staircase, meet up with Stephen Watson and family then cruise through parts of the national monument then into Canyonlands. Amber had actually made reservations for all of us at the Dollhouse campgrounds. When she got the permit she read through it and realized that we weren't allowed to take dogs, since we had two and the Watson's had 1 we had to change our plans. All of this happened in the last days prior to leaving when we were in a rush to finish the trailer, shopping and packing so we made tentative plans to just meet somewhere near Escalante on Sunday afternoon and figure it out then. While we were in Page we grabbed a copy of the Utah Gazatteer and a National Monument park map so we could try to figure something out.
While waiting for Laundry and showers, we texted back and forth with Stephen and decided we'd meet up with them at the intersection of Hole in the Rock Road and Left Hand Collet in the "late afternoon" on Sunday. Prior to this point, our trip had been planned out for us, now we were on our own. We flipped through our various maps and decided we'd head out to the Grand Bench to camp. We mistakenly estimated it to be about 20 miles further than the turnoff for Alstrom Point... We were off by quite a bit.
Once we got everything re-packed we headed out towards Big Water again. We swung through the ranger station to check for road closures and snapped some pictures of road conditions in the park so we had a better idea of where we could and couldn't go:
We got to the crossing for Wahweap Creek that we had crossed twice the previous week and were greeted with quite a bit more water than before thanks to the storm that rolled through earlier that morning. There was a JK stopped on the opposite side of the "creek" asking us how deep it was on our side so I decided I'd drive in and find out. It was pretty shallow (less than hub deep) all the way across until we were about 5 feet from the far bank where the main channel was. We were already committed at that point so we splashed through and out the other side to check for damage.
The main channel was about 3 feet deep, but thankfully the only damage was that we tripped the GFC on the inverter and the fridge in our trailer shut off. We dried everything off with an air hose and reset the circuit and were back on our way. We came across Warm Creek and I had Amber wade across this time so we didn't get any surprises. This creek was barely a trickle when we came through before:
Thankfully once we got past that crossing the roads dried out, no more mud or water crossings.
We kept driving and driving as the time ticked on. The road conditions past the Alstrom Point turnoff were significantly worse than prior to the turnoff so our progress was slowed, the fact that we were on our own and in the dark certainly didn't make me drive any faster either. We finally got to the part where the road turned South letting us know exactly where we were and kept trudging on hoping the road would get better. It didn't, so finally at a little after 9PM we found a spot that looked flat enough to set up camp and stopped for the night.
We got up the next morning to a landscape that looked like we were on another planet. The Glen Canyon Recreation area has quite a variety of terrain, and it's like nothing else I've seen.
We had heard coyotes a few times through the night, but were surprised in the morning when one of the packs sent a puppy in to try to lure our dogs out. In bounded in to about 10-15 yards from our campsite bouncing in a very playful way until my big dog Slick took notice and started walking out to greet him. We called the dogs back and the puppy just waited there, hoping we'd stop watching long enough to get our dogs back to his pack. I fired off a .45 round to scare him off so we could finish packing in peace. After the coyote was gone it's spotter (a big black crow) started circling us calling for about 10 minutes. Then it landed on a hill and kept calling trying to get the coyotes to come back for our dogs. It was a very weird way to start the day...
We decided that since we had the whole day we should continue on our mission to get onto the Grand Bench. On the way we found out there was a canyon crossing just past this little corral:
There were a couple people there in a truck and they said they had gone out in a side by side earlier so I figured we would be fine (I was wrong...). We dropped into the canyon and started up the other side:
Nothing like doing a little rock crawling while your 50 miles from pavement, on your own, towing a trailer
...
We quickly ran out of traction and jackknifed the trailer so we couldn't back up. The only way out was up at this point:
We had to winch one more time to finish the climb out of the canyon. Now that we made it through that, we were determined to get up onto the bench. We continued on through terrain that reminded me of going through Golden Spike in Moab, lots of slick rock, and no way to go fast. We continued climbing until we got up onto the bench:
The views were spectacular, but we weren't anywhere near the Lake Powell overlook. We decided it would be a bad idea to try to drag the trailer the rest of the way to the overlook alone and that we shouldn't have even come as far as we did, so we turned around and headed back towards Escalante. We crossed back through the canyon relatively uneventfully (scratched up the fender on the trailer a bit) and headed back into the national monument. We took Little Valley Road back to the intersection with Crotan Road and took that North up onto the Kaiparowits Plateau.
There were some spectacular views as we made the climb:
We managed to find a shady spot to stop for lunch off a side road (Reese Canyon Rd):
In the 70-100 miles we'd driven offroad from Big Water, we'd only seen the two rigs. This was Labor Day weekend so you'd think someone else would be out there, but you'd be wrong. This place was desolate and empty, and we were on our own. After lunch we finished the climb, it was amazing that as soon as we crested the plateau the landscape changed:
We had heard coyotes a few times through the night, but were surprised in the morning when one of the packs sent a puppy in to try to lure our dogs out. In bounded in to about 10-15 yards from our campsite bouncing in a very playful way until my big dog Slick took notice and started walking out to greet him. We called the dogs back and the puppy just waited there, hoping we'd stop watching long enough to get our dogs back to his pack. I fired off a .45 round to scare him off so we could finish packing in peace. After the coyote was gone it's spotter (a big black crow) started circling us calling for about 10 minutes. Then it landed on a hill and kept calling trying to get the coyotes to come back for our dogs. It was a very weird way to start the day...
We decided that since we had the whole day we should continue on our mission to get onto the Grand Bench. On the way we found out there was a canyon crossing just past this little corral:
There were a couple people there in a truck and they said they had gone out in a side by side earlier so I figured we would be fine (I was wrong...). We dropped into the canyon and started up the other side:
Nothing like doing a little rock crawling while your 50 miles from pavement, on your own, towing a trailer
...
We quickly ran out of traction and jackknifed the trailer so we couldn't back up. The only way out was up at this point:
We had to winch one more time to finish the climb out of the canyon. Now that we made it through that, we were determined to get up onto the bench. We continued on through terrain that reminded me of going through Golden Spike in Moab, lots of slick rock, and no way to go fast. We continued climbing until we got up onto the bench:
The views were spectacular, but we weren't anywhere near the Lake Powell overlook. We decided it would be a bad idea to try to drag the trailer the rest of the way to the overlook alone and that we shouldn't have even come as far as we did, so we turned around and headed back towards Escalante. We crossed back through the canyon relatively uneventfully (scratched up the fender on the trailer a bit) and headed back into the national monument. We took Little Valley Road back to the intersection with Crotan Road and took that North up onto the Kaiparowits Plateau.
There were some spectacular views as we made the climb:
We managed to find a shady spot to stop for lunch off a side road (Reese Canyon Rd):
In the 70-100 miles we'd driven offroad from Big Water, we'd only seen the two rigs. This was Labor Day weekend so you'd think someone else would be out there, but you'd be wrong. This place was desolate and empty, and we were on our own. After lunch we finished the climb, it was amazing that as soon as we crested the plateau the landscape changed:
We got to the intersection of Crotan Rd and Left Hand Collet Rd at about 2PM. We were feeling pretty good, we only had to go about 10 miles to meet up with the Watsons and had a few hours to figure it out. We had scoped out a few nice campsites up on top of the plateau surrounded by shaggy juniper with tons of wood laying around for campfires then we headed down the trail to meet our friends.
Left Hand Collet Rd turned out to be a very neat canyon road, 4 wheel drive was required, but it wasn't bad. I started hearing my trailer chains dragging and figured one of my d-rings fell off or something so when we stopped at a cool balanced rock for pictures we got out to check it out:
Apparently the offshoot rock crawling adventure put a bit too much strain on some of the bolts holding my bumper on and they sheered off:
Thankfully I had my Ready Welder with us and with a little work we were back on the road. We got to the intersection with Hole in the Rock road at about 5 and headed towards Escalante until we got cell service.
Bonus tired dad and dog picture (I was just happy he wasn't coyote food):
After getting in contact with Stephen, we decided we had time to head into Escalante for Dinner since they were running late. We ate, refueled, did some shopping and destroyed a car wash with about 250 lbs of mud. The roads coming down through Boulder UT and down into Escalante turned out to be a lot slower than Stephen anticipated, combine that with a late start and it was a little after 9PM by the time we met up with them at the intersection of HWY 12 and Hole in the Rock Rd. It was too late to get to the campsites we had scoped out, so we just headed back into the park and stopped at the first spot we could find that would fit us all. We traded stories and beers for a couple hours and crashed after a long day for all of us.
Left Hand Collet Rd turned out to be a very neat canyon road, 4 wheel drive was required, but it wasn't bad. I started hearing my trailer chains dragging and figured one of my d-rings fell off or something so when we stopped at a cool balanced rock for pictures we got out to check it out:
Apparently the offshoot rock crawling adventure put a bit too much strain on some of the bolts holding my bumper on and they sheered off:
Thankfully I had my Ready Welder with us and with a little work we were back on the road. We got to the intersection with Hole in the Rock road at about 5 and headed towards Escalante until we got cell service.
Bonus tired dad and dog picture (I was just happy he wasn't coyote food):
After getting in contact with Stephen, we decided we had time to head into Escalante for Dinner since they were running late. We ate, refueled, did some shopping and destroyed a car wash with about 250 lbs of mud. The roads coming down through Boulder UT and down into Escalante turned out to be a lot slower than Stephen anticipated, combine that with a late start and it was a little after 9PM by the time we met up with them at the intersection of HWY 12 and Hole in the Rock Rd. It was too late to get to the campsites we had scoped out, so we just headed back into the park and stopped at the first spot we could find that would fit us all. We traded stories and beers for a couple hours and crashed after a long day for all of us.
epic reading man. Glad to hear the dogs made it through the coyote scare.
Thanx for sharing. I have a lot more living to do i see. :0) Whats the story on the lighted pole?
