Driving the West’s Hidden Utopia of Solitude! (SUV Camping/Vanlife Adventures)

Good morning everyone and welcome to the remote borderlands between Colorado and Utah. I'm in Colorado right now, but Utah is just about 20 feet in front of me here. This cattle guard here marks the border between the two. If we continue on, we are in Utah. The sign here says, Leaving Uinta County, which is Utah. Leaving Utah. And then the sign over here says, Entering Colorado. This video will take place entirely in Colorado, and let me pull out the atlas and show you exactly where in Colorado we are in relation to the rest of the state. So here's Colorado, that familiar rectangle, and that pen is pointing to our location. So you can see that dashed line, that dotted line, crossing the Utah-Colorado border. That's where we are right now, and we're going to be staying in this region around here for this entire video. So we are north of Grand Junction, and kind of in this no man's land that not a lot of people visit in the northwestern corner of the state. We're going to start off the day here driving about 30 miles on a dirt road. So from this location, there are a couple of different dirt roads that branch off, and the one that I'm going to be following is 30 miles to a paved highway. And I've never driven this road before, so it should be fun. I think it's a decent-ish road. I don't think it's like a four-wheel drive high clearance road, but I guess we'll see. And to give you guys kind of an overall feel for the road of what the, you know, what the whole thing is like, I'm going to put the camera on top of the car. I have a GoPro on a magnetic mount that I like to stick on top of the car, and that gives a good perspective of what it's like to actually be driving the road. So we're going to do a time lapse of this 30 mile drive until we get out to paved road. A few dozen miles off in that direction. Here's what that looks like, by the way. So it's just this little magnetic base that's very strong. I have no problems with putting it on top of the car and driving bumpy dirt roads. It doesn't come off or anything like that. And then this is a GoPro Hero 10 Black. Just two and a half miles into the drive here, I've decided to pull over and take a closer look at some of these kind of wild rock formations. actually leaning over. You can see that bend in it. I don't think I've ever seen one like that before. It's like watching it fall over in slow motion. And look at this one. It's like a diamond set in a ring. Beautiful. What a fun little unexpected stop. And now let's get back into the car, load back up into the Land Cruiser here, and keep driving the other 25 miles or so down this dirt road. Driving along out here, I spotted a cabin. An old, it looks like an old log cabin off in the distance. Let's go take a closer look. I'm not in a huge rush today. I'm enjoying just being out here and exploring and enjoying a new area. And I do have a list of things potentially to see and do today, but I'm also open to whatever interesting things we come across. The cabin here seems to be, oh I don't know, 12 feet by 12 feet. Let's see if there's anything inside. Doesn't look like it. Lots of nails in here to hold in some chinking and... is that what it's called? I think that's what it's called, right? And pieces of wood in here. Smaller pieces of wood. I don't know if this was a like an old ranching cabin. Oh look, here's a spot for a window right here. Or if this was a mining cabin. Who knows? Whoever it was that lived here or stayed here, I think we would have gotten along. I like the idea of being out in a remote cabin with no one around for miles and miles around, spending days and weeks by yourself. I think we would have been kindred spirits. Well, I just realized that the GoPro on top of the car ran out of batteries. Sorry about that, but I think you've been able to get an idea of what the roads in this area have been like. And I've been on the main road continuing to go toward the paved highway, which is over in that direction. But I think I'm going to leave my planned route, my planned path here, and I'm going to make a detour to the south. So as I've been driving, I've noticed kind of off in the distance a prominent mountain. And it's got a flat top on it, and it's covered in trees, and it's kind of off by itself. And so it looks like it kind of dominates the surrounding landscape. It's called Texas Mountain, I believe. And there's a road that goes to the top of it, I found out from looking at the map. And so the plan is to drive to the top of that mountain. But first, I'm at this little kind of informational sign kiosk sort of thing. We've got two signs here. And the one on the left says Wagon Wheel West OHV Trail. So that's off-highway vehicle. And it says the trails offer more than 360 miles of trails on public land managed by the BLM. Trail difficulty ranges from beginner to expert. And then this one on the left says Little Horse Draw. And there's a map showing the roads in the area and how difficult they are. So for example, these purple ones are unrestricted, and the difficulty is intermediate. There are these little symbols showing the difficulty there. So anyway, I'm, I guess, right here. And I've been driving this road out to the main highway. But I'm going to turn south and head toward the mountain, which is somewhere, I guess, off the map. Oh no, it says Texas Mountain. So that's where I'm headed. So I'm going to follow this apparently beginner road with the green symbol there, south toward Texas Mountain. And then, according to the map at least, there's a side road that branches up and goes to the top of the mountain. And then it gives you some ideas of other things to do in the area with some pictures and everything. But what I really like is this line here, this sentence here. This area is known to locals and visitors alike as a hidden utopia of solitude and outdoor recreation. Well said. The sign here also says that this area was one of the last areas of the west to be settled with an oil boom in the 1940s. That's neat. Didn't know that. Okay, let's head this way on this and have it all to yourself. And within that, there are two, I guess, subcategories. One is hiking to the top of a mountain. One is driving to the top of a mountain. You guys know I like hiking up mountains. I like climbing mountains. I've climbed hundreds of them. I think I'm nearing 300 mountains at this point. But there's really something to be said for driving up a mountain also. It's equally magical, just in an entirely different way. And I've often thought that someone needs to write a book about mountains that you can drive up in the western United States, and maybe even break it up by state. I think that would be really neat. But regardless, however you get to the top of this particular mountain, it's worth the effort. This mountain really is an island. Kind of standing by itself high above the surrounding terrain. Just remember where we were at the beginning of the video. How desert-y that was. And now, you know, we're a few thousand vertical feet above that and it's just a little oasis up here. I don't know what this stuff is. So we have solar panels and and equipment sheds. I mean, I assume this is some sort of radio or communication stuff. Well, let's go walk over to kind of the other side of the mountain here and I'll show you the view in the other direction. I think this is as good as we're going to get. The bulk of the mountain itself kind of precludes better views. But looking out into desert out that way and there must have been a fire up here at some point. Some of these trees look blackened by fire. Like that one in the middle there. I don't know anything about that. What a cool place. Again, there's just something wondrous about being able to drive to the top of a mountain. Oh man, I've had this salad in my fridge in the car for the last four or five days and I kind of forgot about it and it's not very good anymore. That's kind of a bummer. I remembered it this morning and thought, oh I'll have that for lunch. That'd be a nice midday snack. But I don't think I really want to eat it now. I do want to just sit here and relax and enjoy this view for a little bit. Take a wild guess at the number of people or the number of cars that I've seen today. If your answer was zero, you are correct. I have not seen a soul out here. No cars, no people, nothing. Which is just mind-blowing to me because it's a Saturday. It's a Saturday morning and there's just no one here. I think that if you were to come out to this area midweek in like the fall maybe, you'd see more people because the reasons that these roads are so good, like for example, I think basically any SUV or any truck, anything with medium clearance could make it up here. The reason these roads in this area are so good is that there's a lot of natural gas extraction. In fact, you might have seen in some of the drone shots like just below where I am. So this is the top of the mountain. This is the summit. Just below here and off to the side there's a big cleared open area and that's some sort of natural gas well or pump or I don't know what it's called. And there are hundreds of those in this area. I've passed just a ton of them. So I think that during the week there might be more like truck traffic out here. I don't know, but it's just mind-blowing to me that there's no one out here. I have thousands of acres to myself out here. I think that also because it is mid-summer, the people who might normally come to this area are in the mountains, you know, at the higher elevations. Places that aren't accessible for most of the year. I don't know. It's interesting. This area off to my right, let me show you. Over in this direction, which I think is the east, you can see it's fairly green. There's quite a bit of green on those hills, on those mountains out there. But then as we cut back to the left, this is where we get back into the desert more. This is the area to the west where I started. I mean, I started kind of over here more, but you can't really see it from the top of the mountain. But yeah, look. There's another example. Much more barren. Much drier out there. This video is not going according to plan at all. I had not planned on spending so much time in this area. I thought I would just drive that 30 mile long dirt road in, like, an hour out to the paved highway and then, you know, spend the rest of the day doing some other things. But I just keep coming across interesting things and beautiful places. And, you know, this is an area that definitely warrants more exploration. I think I'm gonna just kind of relax up here a little bit longer. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the cooler temperatures. Enjoy the little breeze that we have up here. And then I'm going to retrace my steps. I'm going to head back down the mountain, back to that main dirt road that I was driving. And I don't remember the name of that road off the top of my head. I'll put it on the screen. It was like the Dragon something road. Dragon Douglas, maybe? The Dragon Douglas Road. That's that 30 mile long dirt road that I keep referring to. So anyway, I'm gonna get back down to that road and drive out of here to the main highway. And if I come across anything interesting in the meantime, you know, between here and the highway, great. I'll stop. If not, there is something a few miles up the highway that I wanted to see and show you guys. So yeah, let's go to that point. I'm now at a place called Canyon Pintado, which means Painted Canyon in Spanish. I've been here a couple of times before in previous videos. This area, this canyon, is known for its rock art. There's a highway out there and there are a bunch of different interpretive sites along the way where you can stop and look at different kinds of rock art in this area. This particular spot is called... let me see. I have to think. East Four Mile Recreation Area. I think that's what it's called. It's a little rest stop. There's a bathroom and everything. There's also a little trail that leads around this little side canyon. And there are these interpretive signs along the path, along the trail. It says Canyon Pintado National Historic District. The first spot is above and to the left of the trail here. If we zoom way on in, we can have a good look at it. A bunch of different figures. Unfortunately, we also have a bunch of bullet holes along with some footprints and handprints and other petroglyphs. And to the right of that we have a horse and a lizard. Cute little guy. Then here's the next panel a couple hundred feet over to the right. It's unfortunately split by that harsh line of shadow and light. But we can get an idea of what the figures there are like. To me, the neatest thing here though is this giant piece of petrified wood that's sticking out of the rock. You can actually see where a piece of it used to be. You can still see the indentations of the bark. And lots of bird nests. This is neat. This is what's called a line shack. And this was essentially a dry cabin for cowboys in the area. So that while they were out tending to their cattle, they wouldn't have to just, you know, lay out a bedroll and camp. They'd have these nice little dry spots to to get out of the weather in and have some shelter. And so this one would have had... it would have been just a little building with a little lean-to next to it. The lean-to is where the horse would have been. And this was built up against the cliff as you can see here. And so the back wall of the shack would have been the cliff. And then they ingeniously used the natural cleft in this cliff as a chimney. They used this as a chimney. You can see the the base of the fireplace right here. With some stone still sticking out. And so the smoke would have just drifted out of the chimney that way. How cool. There's one more thing that I wanted to see here and I think it's the highlight of this particular site. This is called the sun dagger and it's right here underneath the overhang. Let's zoom in. And at certain times of the year, I believe it's the summer solstice. So late June at 10 a.m. the shadow from the the overhanging ledge above this spot perfectly bisects all three of those circles there. Isn't that cool? So it's thought that this is this was some sort of celestial observatory site. We have those circles and then we have some people there also. This reminds me of another similar site at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Again, during the solstice, like a dagger of sunlight points to the center of one of the circles there. I think there's another one in Arizona at Petrified Forest National Park or whatever it's called. Yeah, what a neat site. Let's go get a closer look. That's so cool. I love seeing sites that use a mix of different pigments. I love seeing the different colors. There's another fainter figure on the right side here. It's like a figure with horns of some sort. It looks like parts of these are also scratched in. So not only are these pictographs that are painted on, but petroglyphs that are scratched into the rock like these over here. Like I said, I have been to a few of these sites in the southwest, but I've never been to one on the solstice or equinox or whatever it is that it's supposed to mark or signify. I think I'd like to do that at some point. Maybe next year. Maybe next year we'll make a special trip to see that. And that's about it for this area, but I do want to show you something inside the car. I have a new fridge that I've been using on this trip and it's been working well so far. No complaints. It's a fancy kind of avocado green and cream color. So the the short version is that I spent a few days with my mom in Salt Lake at the start of this trip. So I went from where I live in Wyoming to Salt Lake and then from there I left on my trip. Well, I didn't bring my fridge, my normal fridge, to Salt Lake and so I thought, well, I could use a second fridge to keep one in the RAV4 and one in the Land Cruiser. And so I looked at online classifieds in Salt Lake and I found this one. I don't remember the brand. I'll put it on the screen, but here's what's in it. It's nothing too exciting. This is the the last day of this trip. So there's water, yogurt, pickles, miscellaneous sandwich stuff. But the interesting thing about this fridge is that it can be configured to open in either direction. So right now I have it so that I can open it this way. But it can also be configured to open this way. And this was only $75. Just a screaming deal. And it's new or was new or refurbished or a return or something. If it wasn't new, it was like new. Still in the box and everything. Still in the original packaging. So pretty happy to have a in the family. And that is a 12-volt fridge that is currently running on my Jackery Explorer 1000. And right now I'm at 99% battery life. It's charging via the solar on the roof, or more specifically the solar on top of the cargo box. And it's all working great. I've said this before but I'll mention it again. I think that having one of these 12-volt fridges in your car is one of the best, one of the biggest quality of life improvements you can make for your your car camping setup. It's so nice to not have to deal with ice. Not that having a cooler and having to deal with ice is like that big of a deal. But once you go to a fridge, man it's hard to go back. That's why at the start of this week when I realized I didn't have my fridge with me, I was originally thinking, oh I'll just buy a cooler. But I really didn't want to buy a cooler just for this trip. And so I thought, let me look for fridges. And sure enough I found a great deal on this little guy. And it is hot outside and it is hot in here. Sorry if I'm sweaty and nasty but I think this is gonna wrap it up. I'm gonna drive the three and a half or four hours, I think it's about three and a half hours, home from here. And again I had a lot of other things planned for today but we're gonna save that for another adventure, another day, another video. There's lots of cool stuff in this area and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks for watching, let me know what you think, let me know if you have any questions, let me know what your favorite part was, and I'll see you in the next one. Be sure to check out Adventure Know How, my new site where you can gain access to a map of all of my free campsites plus monthly bonus videos that you won't find anywhere else. Learn more at AdventureKnowHow.com and for links to everything else SUV RVing related visit SUVRVing.com. Links to these sites and more will be in the video description.