Leslie and David's Wanderings: 21 June 2023 Hole in the Rock Road

We had heard of the Hole in the Rock Road for the last several years. The road was built by the Mormon Settlers to move goods from the Colorado River into this area of Utah. The Mormons chipped and blasted a path through the cliffs down to the river. The road was only used for a year before easier routes were available. The road is 58 miles long with 51 miles of it going through the heart of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The stretch in the NM is somewhat maintained by Bureau of Land Management. The last 7 miles are in Lake Powel National Recreation Area and is high clearance four wheel drive. Bill, Pam and David (Leslie decided to saty home) headed out early to Escalante. We stopped at the visitor center in Escalante to pick up information and check on the road conditions only to find it closed. The poster with the “latest” road conditions which said it was being graded. The first few miles of Hole in the Rock Road were not too bad. There was some washboard, but the ridges were low enough and the spacing close enough that if you got up to 30 miles and hour it was not to bad a ride. But the washboard got much worse the farther you went, with the ridges getting tall and spaced far apart. We could not find a speed that we could go over them without shaking the truck, and us, violently. So we ended up slowing to 5-10MPH and crawling along. We stopped at the Devils Garden at mile 34 and walked around the incredibly shaped rock formations. Then continued on to Dance Hall Rock where we stopped to explore some more. Dance Hall Rock was a stop for the Mormon Settlers on the road where they would play their fiddles in the dome for the acoustics and dance on the flat area in front. Lacy had fun chasing jack rabbits here. At this point we were 38 miles in and it was 2:30 in the afternoon. Facing another 20 miles of slow going and then have to turn around and drive the 58 miles back out was going to take 7-8 hours. So we decided to head back out. We hit pavement around 4:45 and headed back to Escalante. We stopped for dinner in town before returning to Hatch to find Leslie spent the day deep cleaning the 5^th wheel.