Glamping and Uraling in the Valley of the Gods, Utah -

Thursday, Oct 3, 2019

I displaced from Hermosa, CO and drove almost three hours to a BLM camp ground near Bluff, UT and set up camp there, intending to spend the night.  Not a bad site, not crowded but small camp spots and a bit far (20+ miles) from sights such as the Moki Dugway, Valley of the Gods and Mexican Hat.

Bad map reconnaissance on my part led to the above choice.  I discovered this when after setting up camp, I rode Scarlett over to Gooseneck State Park for pictures:

Along the way to the park, I found the secondary entrance to The Valley of the Gods and upon going in found some great open camping spots!  So I raced (at Ural speed anyways) back to Sand Island BLM Campground and packed up.  I returned to the Valley of the Gods and someone had grabbed the first choice site!

Dammit.

So I went with my second choice, which turned out to be the best choice due to the views from this location at Sunset:

Friday, Oct 4, 2019

I managed to wake early enough to capture some pics as the sun rose this morning:

 The nearest camper, that's the Seven Sailors Rock formation

on the right

 A view of my campsite

 A cager driving by, gives you a sense of scale

 The road that leads out of the valley and onto UT 163

That's Flag Butte on the left

After breakfast, I spent about an hour topping off the air in the URRV's tires.  They all were down about 5 PSI.  I'd forgotten how long things take when dealing with the TPMS sensors, and reaching the hard to reach sensors on the inner dually tires!

That chore done, I went on a small hike to get a shot at the "nearby" rock formation called the Seven Sailors.

Here's a pic of my campsite from across the road and up a small hill:

Past the hill above, one can get pretty close to the Seven Sailors:

After lunch, it was time to cruise through the road that circles the Valley of the Gods, offering views of its several rock formations:

 Castle Butte

 De Gaulle and his troops

(interesting name...)

 Battleship Rock

 Lady in a bath tub

 The rock formations on the left are named

Santa Claus and Rudolf

I had a hard time picturing Rudolf and Santa Claus, De Gaulle and Castle Buttes but Lady in a bath tub did make sense to me!.  I stopped short of doing the entire valley road to where it adjoins the road to Moki Dugway.  Saving that for tomorrow.

Rested for a bit in the afternoon and then headed out to capture what is hopefully a familiar looking set of rock formations to some of you:

 Monument Valley?

I am about 20+ miles from Monument Valley and some of the names of the formations per the PeakFinder app did correspond to rock formations in that valley.  

Returning to the campsite, I tried for some long exposure pics as there were some nice clouds glowing in the late lighting provided by the sun which was well past the horizon.

These two shots were 30 second exposures and much post-processing was involved to get them to come out.