overland

San Rafael Swell Trip Sept 2022

My wife and I just got back from a great trip to the San Rafael Swell. We live just 140 miles from the Swell and have been there many times over the years. It has been a while since our last trip, so it was time to get there again. We did a 4 night trip in our Jeep and little DIY adventure trailer. I don't take a lot of photos these days. Instead, I'm mainly making videos now. I'll include a youtube link at the bottom of the report.

We got a late start the first day, so we drove to the Wedge Overlook and camped the first night there. The weather for the whole trip was perfect. We camped on the rim at the west end of the rim road. There was no one else there and we had and an awesome view. In the morning, we rode bikes from the main overlook down to the Good Water Rim Trail.

Next we drove to the Swinging Bridge and had lunch and flew the drone around a bit. The dog had a fun swim in the river. After lunch, we hopped back in the Jeep to head to Temple Mountain. We have a remote campsite there that we love. It's on a little used road that runs from high up on the Temple Mountain Road down to Temple Mountain.

The next day, we spent most of our time exploring around Temple Mountain. We first explored the area at the base of the mountain on the northeast side. My wife insisted we walk up the road to the upper valley. The valley sits on the east side of the mountain. We've been up there a couple times in our Jeep, but that was a long time ago. The road has deteriorated a lot since then. It was actually pretty bad then. We finished off the day by driving down to the reef and driving through the North Temple Mtn Wash. (I think that's what it's called.) From there we caught the Temple Mountain Road and headed back to camp.

In the morning, we drove to Goblin Valley and filled up our 5 gallon water bottle. They have a faucet with potable water at the gate. After that, we drove down to the trailhead for Little Wildhorse Canyon, though we actually hiked Bell Canyon instead. Little Wildhorse was full of water from the recent rain. BTW, you may have heard about the recent flood down there, It caused a lot of damage in Capitol Reef, Caineville and Hanksville. You can still see the mess.

After hiking, we had lunch and then drove over to the Bentonite hills at Muddy Creek. To get there, you keep driving down the Little Wildhorse road. This is one really amazing spot. I got some really cool video of the area with the drone. Once we were finished there we crossed Muddy Creek and headed for Hanksville for dinner. There was still a lot of wet mud at Muddy Creek which made crossing the creek a bit interesting. My Jeep doesn't have mud tires, but it did manage to get through.

In Hanksville, we gassed up (expensive!) and had dinner at Duke's Slickrock Grill, also expensive, but it was really good. That was pretty much the end of the trip. After dinner we drove back to camp and headed home the next morning.

If you would like to the see the video, click here. I also have other videos of trips we've done on my YouTube channel. Several of the trips are ones we discovered on OTG.

Cheers,
Kevin
 

OTG Ben

OTG Principal Explorer
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hit us with some awesome photos, maybe 10k or 20k words worth ;)
 

kevinkem-3607

Trail Grom
Joined
Mar 15, 2022
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11
I don't have many photos since I was mainly doing video, but here are some stills from the drone...

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This is our campsite at the Wedge.


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The view from the campsite.


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This is the view from upper valley at Temple Mtn. In the distance is the Robber's Roost area.

DJI_0376.JPG
Arial view of the Bentonite hills at Muddy Creek.
 
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