Today we’re driving from Page, Arizona to Hanksville, Utah. The plan is to see Monument Valley (at least the outside), drive Moki Dugway and visit Natural Bridges National Monument. There’s not much caches along the way, so we hope to be in Hanksville a bit earlier than we’ve been at the previous hotels.
Our first planned stop was in Kayenta, but since we didn’t attempt to find the cache near the hotel yesterday, the first stop was across the road from the hotel. And since we had a bit more time than we thought when we did the planning, we decided to find a couple extra caches in Page. We found one of them, and DNFed the other one.
After driving a long time, we finally arrived in Kayenta, and found the cache – the only one there (GC4XN84 NCLD – Kayenta Community Library). And it was about 50 minutes more before we arrived at GCHHXG Virtual Cache Harry and Mike’s Place, outside Monument Valley. I think this is the first time on this trip that we drive this far (Page-Kayenta-Monument Valley) with only one find!
The view from Harry and Mike’s place was awesome!
We did not go into Monument Valley, but we took some photos along the way. When we got to the spot we’ve seen so many times in various movies, we saw a lot of people standing, sitting and laying in the middle of the road. Turned out they were French tourists taking photos. We had to stop and take some as well. They offered to take one of us, and that’s the one you see in the top of this page.
The next along the way was the Mexican Hat, where we did a few earthcaches and learnt about caprocks and anticlines.
We also had time to visit Goosenecks State Park, and do both an earthcache and a virtual! We’ve found a lot of earthcaches already on this trip, and have a lot more planned. We’ve started to like them, and enjoy all that they teach us about our earth. Rocks will never be boring again after this trip!
After the visit to Goosenecks State Park, it was time for Moki Dugway! Since we’ve read so much about how bad Moki Dugway was, it was almost a bit scary that we were going to drive up in this tiny rental. The huge amount of warning signs didn’t make it better.
But once we got there, it didn’t take long to realize that we’ve driven on roads with worse quality than this road several times back home in Norway. The view from Moki Dugway was amazing, and the road was bumpy, and narrow some places, but we had absolutely no problems driving up!
The view got better and better, and we got to find a cache again! GC10400 Moki’s Moki Dugway Cache was a nice stop on the way to the top. Several muggles enjoyed the view from the pullout when we got there, but most of them continued on their way up or down before we got to the cache.
We found another cache at the top, before heading to Natural Bridges. We attempted to find a cache at the turnout to Natural Bridges, but ended up getting the side of the car full of sticky asphalt instead. Looks like the road was worked on not long before we got there.
We did the loop at Natural Bridges, but didn’t go on any longer hikes. We only found the caches at the overlooks/viewpoints.
On the way from Natural Bridges to the next stop we got some real bad weather. I guess it was a good thing that there wasn’t many caches along the way. But we had to stop at a view point to take some photos, even though we couldn’t see very far.
By the time we got to the next cache, a twofer at Hog Spring Picnic Area, the rain had stopped. Perfect timing! We found the first cache, GC14MAY Take a rest, but there was no way we were able to find the other one. So after taking some photos, we continued towards Hanksville.
After a couple more caches along the road, we arrived at GC10RF3 Welcome To: Hanksville! We looked everywhere, but found nothing – except from “small souvenirs” left by the local animals. We arrived in Hanksville early enough to have time to find all the caches in the area. So we decided to do just that!
We found all the caches (not that many) in Hanksville, except from two – the first one, and the one closest to the motel.
After getting something to eat at the burger shack next to the motel. we decided to get some rest. We still have a lot ahead of us…
