Mesa Verde to Moab

We said goodbye to Mesa Verde after three nights in the same campsite – most unusual for this trip and a welcome rest from going, going, going. But we didn’t drive too far.  Just north of Cortez, the next town down the road, we decided to follow some directions in our free/low cost camping book and wound up in Bradfield CG in the Dolores River access area.  Pretty, but we thought we were headed for a campsite called Mountain Sheep Point, also on the Dolores River, so the next morning we decided to try to find it.

We did find the river access signs we were looking for and drove through farmland on dirt roads until we reached the entry to the BLM land where the camp was located.  Now we have definitely tested the boundaries of what the ZIon can do, driving over mountain passes, going miles on unpaved roads but nothing compared to what we did here.  The road into the canyon was steep and winding, barely wide enough for the van to drive on and pretty much covered with fallen rock.    At least a dozen times I said we shouldn’t be down here but there was absolutely no place to turn around.  One side dropped down into a creek and the other into rock filled ditches.  With hearts in throats we finally reached the river at the  bottom and pulled into a gravel-covered circle, barely big enough for three or four cars, with a sign saying Mountain Sheep Point.  Although it was early in the day we turned off the van and declared our intention to stay the night, postponing the  inevitable trip back up the canyon. It seemed from the limited signage that these campgrounds on the river are for the use of kayakers and rafters, with pullouts and launches marked but not the roads.  But it was beautiful and silent; the only other vehicles that passed through was an ATV late in the afternoon and a jeep that drove the loop the next morning then disappeared back the way it had come.

We left relatively early to avoid any weekenders that might be coming down the road and drove to Moab for breakfast and a well needed motel stop for laundry and showers before beginning our tour of the Utah Mighty Five.