Just a short 2 1/2 hour drive from the campground at Lake Powell is the quaint little town of Bluff, Utah. My brother had visited Bluff while on a job and really loved the area. He insisted that this be one of our stops and I’m so glad he shared this little piece of heaven with us!
We stayed at Coral Sands RV resort- it was nice enough. We only slept there so I can’t really tell you much about it! As soon as we had our campers set up, we headed out to see the Petroglyphs at Sand Island, along the San Juan River. Having read about these, it was really cool to see them in person. You can actually get pretty close to them! The Sand Island Petroglyphs are on the National Register of Historic Places. You can read more about the Petroglyphs here :https://bluffutah.org/sand-island-petroglyphs/.
When you are trying to pack in as much sightseeing as possible, you make the most of every moment! After moving campsites and viewing the petroglyphs, we packed a picnic dinner and headed out to drive through the Valley of the Gods, which is a scenic sandstone valley in Mexican Hat, Utah. It’s a short drive from the campground. What a unique treasure this is! You just turn off the main highway onto a dirt road and drive through an amazing landscape. It was almost like going on a treasure hunt, and around each bend in the road, just over the next hill, was another unbelievable view!
As we planned the trip, my brother told us about this road he really wanted to take us on: The Moki Dugway. Since I research everything, I soon discovered that this road is considered one of the most dangerous roads in the United States. Here is one resource I found if you want to read more about it: https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/783-mokee-dugway-usa.html. I learned to drive the “W” road so I felt pretty confident that I could handle it. It consists of hairpin turns but has NO guardrails. As soon as we finished driving through the Valley of the gods, we headed for the Moki Dugway. I was prepared to close my eyes and be terrified. The views from the top were really amazing! We passed other vehicles on the narrow road, but over all it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We turned around at the top and headed back down, trying to make it back to the Valley of the gods to drive through the valley again and have a picnic dinner at sunset.
We headed back into the Valley of the gods for a fun family game of Bocce Ball in the desert. We enjoyed a delicious picnic dinner of Bacon Avocado Chicken Salad as the sun set in the valley. It was a beautiful end to a pretty perfect day!
I’m not going to lie, I was so completely exhausted by the end of this day! It was so much fun and even now I would love to drive back into this valley! This is one of the public lands that you can boon dock on but it would be difficult to get our camper into this place- some of the hills were straight up and down. A 30 foot might be the maximum I would recommend if you wanted to stay overnight here- no bathrooms, water or electricity. You just basically pick a spot to pull off the road and set up camp! I’m sure the stars are amazing out here at night!
After enjoying a good night’s sleep, we prepared to drive to Moab! This is what we came for! What an amazing adventure we’ve already had on this trip!
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