Boulder, UT
From Capitol Reef, we went to Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument, which is basically preserved wilderness under the protection of the Bureau of Land Management. 
Highway 12 cuts through the cliffs and plateaus between Boulder and Escalante, UT. A brief section called The Hogback switchbacks over a ridge with sheer drop-offs on either side. It was unbelievably beautiful and exhilarating. Who needs Six Flags? 
When we first passed through Boulder we ran into a variety of temporary signs with cryptic labels like Incident Command Post, Incident Site 2mi, and Incident Communication Center. It took us a minute to discount an alien landing and connect the signs to the fire department putting out some regional wildfires. We found a campsite at Deer Creek and spent a lot of our time at the Mesa Grill in Boulder, Utah, and even more at the coffee shop across the parking lot. Boulder is also home to the Anasazi State Park Museum, a largely unexcavated Anasazi village with pithouses
and a six room, life-sized replica of a pueblo, complete with firepit. The cottonwoods were blooming at the time and it felt like we were wandering around the village in the snow.
There is an amazing fine dining restaurant called the Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder, which uses local organic vegetables and meat along with some indigenous ingredients. The food was fantastic and it was our waiter that evening who kindly gave us her campsite at Deer Creek the next day while she packed up to go back to Idaho. Good food, good coffee, good scenery and kind people. If it weren't for the hypocritical eco-Nazis spoiling the hippie vibe, I could definitely like this place.
Capitol Reef National Park
San Rafael Swell
An old river guide, who had lived in the area for ages, suggested some places to camp. As I recall, this was what he told us as we drove past the San Rafael Swell on the way back to Moab: "See that grove of cottonwoods down there? That oasis? You can reach that from the cattle road and set up camp there. Then, if you just hike back toward the notch three or four miles, you see that notch? In that notch in the rocks, there's a bunch of swimming holes. The water gets nice and warm, sitting in the sun all day." We looked out the window, frantically taking mental notes.
A few days later, we took the dirt road with the cattle guard out to a wash encrusted with some kind of white mineral. Sure enough, there was a little oasis of greenery in the middle of the yellow shrubbery that dominates the landscape. After setting up the tent and packing as much water as we could hold, we headed out for the Swell.
The San Rafael Swell is an upthrust of rock 75 miles long, created 60 million years ago. The years of subsequent erosion have created a whole mess of canyons and potholes and washes that would take ages to explore. Despite the baking heat, we picked the closest notch in the rocks and headed for it. And what would you know? We found the swimming holes! We were probably two weeks too late to go swimming because even the larger pools were infested with mosquito larvae. But we found some strange looking creatures populating one of the smaller pools. They looked like tiny horseshoe crabs, with a swimming tail instead of a spike. Same carapace though, with eyes on the top of their heads. Very strange. We also found a bighorn sheep skull, almost picked clean and bleached white.
Indian Ruins
Jim and Leigh run a shuttle service in town and Tim and I helped them run some trucks down to Lake Powell. On our first trip out, we stopped by a viewpoint that had a bunch of welded steel tubes that looked like T's with signs underneath. When you looked through the tube, voila! Gopher Rock!
One my favorite parts about Utah is how unadulterated history remains. National parks are wonderful, and I fully support them, but you feel like a pioneer when you find an ancient pictograph that isn't being pointed out or protected. A million people drive by the rock wall where either A Boy And His Dog or A Princess And Her Goat (depending on who you ask) is painted without ever knowing of its existence. It's somewhere between Hanksville and Lake Powell on the right side of the road.
After a quick drive through Natural Bridges National Monument, they remembered an unmarked ruin off to the side of the highway. So we parked the car in the middle of nowhere, got out, and started wandering around. And sure enough, there was an Indian ruin by a wash, under a cliff! The walls were crumbling, but people who had been by the site before cached some pottery and rope and thousand year old corn cobs. 
Canyonlands National Park
Canyonlands National Park is amazing. It actually looks out over the same canyons as Dead Horse Point. In fact, you can see Dead Horse from Island in the Sky, the only paved section of Canyonlands. (And the Island in the Sky road is great for a motorcycle - lots of twisties, hardly any cars.) It reminded me of the Grand Canyon with a 270 degree view. And nothing quite puts you in touch with your humanity like sitting on the edge of a cliff, knowing that a huge drop is mere feet away.
We then attempted to take the Schafer Trail down into the canyon. My bike hit a patch of deep sand and down I went, taking off part of my brake lever in the process. So we scrapped the Schafer Trail idea for this trip. I don't know if I could have made it down all those switchbacks anyway. They're pretty steep. (Ha ha - now I have to do it next time, or I'm going to be a wuss for life.)
And this is Monument Basin, as seen from the Grand Viewpoint. The National Park Service actually has some really nice interactive panoramas that capture the impressive splendor better than one measly photo.
Potash
After Dead Horse, we headed over to Potash, which isn't actually a town but a place where they mine... potash. Of course. The road to Potash follows the Colorado River and passes through a section of sheer rock cliffs, nicknamed Wall Street. Indian petroglyphs survived on the red rock of the cliffs for hundreds of years, only to be scratched over by stupid kids who think "Morrison High 2006" is an important cultural statement. A lone pronghorn antelope barely stands a chance competing against all those adolescent couples who have long since broken up, school slogans and curse words.
Past the potash plant, about a mile and half into the 4WD dirt road, a fossilized coral bed is a playground of ancient sea creatures turned to stone. We found fossilized shells, coral, agatized clam tubes, and tail sections from crinoids embedded en masse in sandstone. A scientist working for the US Geological Survey told us our fossils from Potash are over 300 million years old.
That evening, Jim and Leigh took us out for a barbecue at Ken's Lake. The weather was perfect, the mosquitoes actually left us alone (sort of), and the food tasted great after all that riding around.
Dead Horse Point State Park
Dead Horse Point State Park derives its friendly name from an old cowboy legend. From Utah.com:
Before the turn of the century, mustang herds ran wild on the mesas near Dead Horse Point. The unique promontory provided a natural corral into which the horses were driven by cowboys. The only escape was through a narrow, 30-yard neck of land controlled by fencing. Mustangs were then roped and broken, with the better ones being kept for personal use or sold to eastern markets. Unwanted culls of "broomtails" were left behind to find their way off the Point.
According to one legend, a band of broomtails was left corralled on the Point. The gate was supposedly left open so the horses could return to the open range. For some unknown reason, the mustangs remained on the Point. There they died of thirst within sight of the Colorado River, 2,000 feet below.
Bummer!
These are potash evaporation ponds. I had originally thought they were tailings from uranium mines, leftover from the rush for nuclear material from the 1950s. Utah was full of military mystery. Unmarked flatbeds carrying uncovered tanks occasionally rolled down the highway. A missile testing ground used to fire rockets to White Sands, New Mexico. One misfired and landed in the nearby town of Green River where it now pokes phallically at the sky in the middle of town.
The impressively large Gemini Bridges. (Yes, there is a second one, just not in this picture.) You can barely see Tim trying to give me a heart attack by crawling toward the edge.
Castle Valley
Highway 128, Castle Valley, UT
La Sal Mountain Loop Road (looking into Castle Valley), UT
Free-range cattle, La Sal Mountains, UT
La Sal Panorama, UT (looking west)
Ashcroft Ghost Town
Loads of old mining towns dot the Colorado mountains, miniature paeans to human greed and ecological destruction done in charming clapboard and shingle. Ashcroft went bust around the turn of the century after the silver veins in the mine gave out. The Aspen Historical Society took the place under its wing in the 1970s and it is still open as a nice little reconstruction today.
The mountain pass eventually ends up in Crested Butte, but even in June there was too much snow to make the crossing.
Somewhere in Iowa
... is The World's Largest Truckstop! 
Boasting a store the size of Costco brimming with chrome and mud flaps and those seven pitch air horns that play La Cucaracha, this roadside stop has its own website and is home to a Trucker's Jamboree. And all I wanted was a place to spend the night. Preferably with bunnies. 
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Tim and I are summering in Utah. With motorcycles. Six thousand miles. One hundred and five degree heat. Death just may ensue.
Highway 12 cuts through the cliffs and plateaus between Boulder and Escalante, UT. A brief section called The Hogback switchbacks over a ridge with sheer drop-offs on either side. It was unbelievably beautiful and exhilarating. Who needs Six Flags? 
When we first passed through Boulder we ran into a variety of temporary signs with cryptic labels like Incident Command Post, Incident Site 2mi, and Incident Communication Center. It took us a minute to discount an alien landing and connect the signs to the fire department putting out some regional wildfires. We found a campsite at Deer Creek and spent a lot of our time at the Mesa Grill in Boulder, Utah, and even more at the coffee shop across the parking lot. Boulder is also home to the Anasazi State Park Museum, a largely unexcavated Anasazi village with pithouses
and a six room, life-sized replica of a pueblo, complete with firepit. The cottonwoods were blooming at the time and it felt like we were wandering around the village in the snow.
There is an amazing fine dining restaurant called the Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder, which uses local organic vegetables and meat along with some indigenous ingredients. The food was fantastic and it was our waiter that evening who kindly gave us her campsite at Deer Creek the next day while she packed up to go back to Idaho. Good food, good coffee, good scenery and kind people. If it weren't for the hypocritical eco-Nazis spoiling the hippie vibe, I could definitely like this place.
