Day 12: Highway 12 to Hanksville

We packed up last night, but still managed to have a slow start to our day today. We headed out for our drive north at 11 a.m. and pulled into Duke’s Slickrock Campground around 4 p.m.

I had read that highway 12 was well worth the extra 20 minutes to get here, and it did not disappoint. It was an exhausting drive that Rob and I split due to the narrow windy roads, but the views were spectacular.

We traveled from layered rocks to the top of one pass covered in aspens with fields of blue, yellow, purple, and red flowers. It looked like what we imagined the Swiss Alps to look like. We had our first run in with ‘open range’ cattle alongside and even on the road. This was followed by a very windy but incredible view of more colored rocks. During the drive we were close to several thunderstorms, but managed to avoid the rain for the most part. It definitely presented quite a show, complementing the incredible scenery.

Once at the site, Rob had an incredibly productive evening making dinner, cleaning up from dinner, unloading bikes, disconnecting the car, cleaning the car windows which were caked in mud from the wet drive, changing out a new GFCI outlet, and writing a document for work. I did laundry (3 hours’ worth) but it is now done, and we have clean sheets and clothes 🙂