A weekend in the San Rafael Swell | Sunday

Sunday, April 27, 2008


On Sunday, our destination was to do some exploring South of I-70. Since Clint and I had to head home that afternoon, and I-70 was the easy way for us to get there, we towed our Jeeps back to Huntington where we filled up with fuel and then headed down the Moore Cutoff Road to I-70 where we were able to park our trucks and trailers.

We started out on Temple Mountain Road until we reached Tan Seep, where we turned off and headed down into Reds Canyon. This was a very cool canyon with a lot of great scenery. Much of the trail followed the wide sandy wash and was fun to drive pretty fast though. We stopped in a few locations for some photos along the way.

In Reds Canyon

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Eventually we made it to the short side trip to Lucky Strike Mine. While it was cool seeing all the old mines and equipment, we continued down to the end of this short side canyon, and the scenery here was just amazing. While at the end of this canyon, Ryan noticed he was missing a bolt on one of his front shocks. Luckily, he was able to steal a bolt from his roof rack that just happened to work quite well.

Canyon near Lucky Strike Mine

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After exiting the Lucky Strike Mine canyon, we continued up Reds Canyon towards Tomsich Butte. Along the way we passed an old truck cab that I had to stop and take a picture of. We finally made it to Tomsich Butte where we stopped at the Dirty Devil mine and did a little hiking and exploring. There were also a lot of great photo opportunities to be had here.

Went exploring in this mine

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Just around the corner from the mine was the spectacular Hondu Arch and the Muddy River. We stopped for a short while at the Muddy Creek before heading back over McKay Flat. This was mostly high speed off-road driving, but we did manage to stop for a picture when we came across a wild horse along the trail.

Hondu Arch

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Muddy Creek

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Wild Horse

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Finally we made it back to our trucks, loaded up, and headed home. I was lucky enough to have to drive back through Spotted Wolf Canyon through the San Rafael Reef, so of course I had to stop and get a few pictures of I-70 snaking it