Southeastern Utah Tour, March 24 2026

Early on Tuesday, I drove to the Needles Overlook, and captures some of the sculpted terrain in the rising sun. From that vantage, one can see well into the Island-in-the-Sky District of Canyonlands as well as the Needles District. In between, Lockhart Basin Road  leads down into an active ranch inside the Bears Ears National Monument.

Junction Butte and the White Rim

Next, I turned around and headed back to U.S. 191 and turned off on the Park Highway (Utah 211). I stopped to view the Newspaper Rock, which had some prehistoric petroglyphs as well quite a few examples of idiotic modern graffiti. There was also evidence that people with more bullets than brains had scarred the rock with pot-shots.

 

Sixshooter Buttes

The cliffs near Indian Creek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The road winds down along Indian Creek, which is flanked by picturesque cliffs. Further along, there are views of North and South Sixshooter Buttes.

The Devil's Kitchen

At the visitor center, I indicated my intention to take my bike in to the Confluence Overlook Trailhead and hike to the overlook from there. The ranger issued a permit for the bike trip. I drove to the Elephant Hill trailhead and parked in the lower parking lot. With lunch and 3 liters of water in my knapsack, I rode the short distance to the start of the start of the jeep road.

From the bottom, it was obvious that the truck would never have made it. The so-called road looked like a pile of boulders with some sand poured over it. Normal-length vehicles with 12" of ground clearance were picking their way through. At the top of the first rise, there was a turn-around so jeeps could go up the next pitch. The turn-around did not have enough room for the truck. So if I had made it that far, I would have had to give up and back down.

It would be an excellent road for proving your jeep's mettle. Lots of drivers had also proven that their jeeps contained metal, because there were streaks of metal across the tops of many rocks in the road. Further on, the road passes through a narrow canyon whose floor is a series of rock steps. The formation is called the "Silver Stairs" and one can see why: Most of the steps are adorned with metal shavings.

Where the road goes is not obvious

Yes, that's the road.

At the top of the ridge, the road goes across a level slab of rock some 20' across and then disappears. The Park staff has put up a helpful sign, to indicate that there is at least the intention of a road leading in that direction. It is another steep pitch over a pile of boulders that leads to an apparent dead-end. At the end of that parking space, there is a sign that reads, "Pull in and back down". At the bottom of the second pitch, there is a similar sign that reads "Pull in and back up". So backing over piles of boulders is a necessary part of the fun.

Rewinding the story a little bit: As I started up the first pitch from the parking lot, I noticed a caravan of 4 jeeps behind me. I pulled the bike off to the side and let them pass. They smiled and waved as they drove past. At the top of the pitch, there were two jeeps in the turn-around and two more waiting for room to enter. I shouldered my bike and climbed past the whole troupe. The first jeep started down from the top of the ridge as I was carrying my bike past the boulders. I didn't like the feeling of having 2 tons of steel hanging onto the rock face above me, so I lifted the bike off the trail and let them go ahead. But while they paused to find a likely path through the next set of boulders, I found I was better prepared for the terrain. I said, "I'll just go ahead," and I did.

Very soon, I was at least a quarter of a mile further down the road than the lead vehicle, and never saw any of the four again. As the ranger had warned, there was a lot of sand in the wheel tracks. When it was shallow it made the going smoother, which was nice. When it was deeper, it slowed me down. Occasionally I used the retarding effect of the sand to keep from going to fast. But mostly, it required extra effort to push through. And quite often, I had to dismount and push the bike through deep sand until I found a more solid road surface.

After a mile and a half, the road splits into a loop. It's marked one-way only, clockwise around the loop. On the far side of the loop, the road is two-way for another 4 miles down to the confluence overlook. 

Close-up of scratches on the canyon wall

My bike in The Devil's Pocket

On the first part of the loop that leads to the Devil's Kitchen Camp, there is a slot canyon called the Devil's Pocket that is just wide enough for a car to pass through. Or rather, it is just wide enough to let most cars pass through. There are scratches and streaks of metal on one wall of the canyon, where some drivers have discovered there's not enough horizontal clearance.

A very old juniper

Before reaching the Devil's Pocket, I had stopped at a little pull-out to rest and rehydrate a bit. I found that I was sitting in the shade of a juniper tree. My attention was drawn to the size of the trunk -- which to me suggested that the tree must several centuries old. I felt compelled to take a picture of that fine specimen.

After passing through the Devil's Pocket, I stopped for a short rest underneath a prominent rock formation. Perhaps it is only remarkable because the road passes so close to it, because there are thousands of such rock spires within the few surrounding square miles. Just a short distance away, there is a sweeping view of the Devil's Kitchen, filled with prominent examples.

The Devil's Kitchen

From the narrow passage,  the road heads west through a broader canyon and then meets up with the Devil's Lane. This runs mostly north-south through a broad wash and at the north end arcs around to the Confluence Overlook Trailhead. Much of the Devil's Lane had deep sand in the ruts, so I ended up pushing the bike for about a mile in total. That portion of the loop also contains the Silver Stairs mentioned earlier.

When I reached the far side of the loop -- where the road back to the parking lot is one-way once again -- I found a small, scalable rock formation. There were two bikes parked at the base of the rock, so I thought I might find the riders and joke about being so far from any water source on such a hot day. But after climbing to the top I found noone, so I decided to press on. I wanted to prove that I could reach the Confluence Overlook Trailhead faster than anyone in a jeep, so I decided to have my lunch only after I reached there.

It was easier going and mostly downhill from the rock formation. In another 30 minutes, I covered the last 4 miles and ate my lunch sitting at the picnic table there. As I was snacking, a family of 4 came back from the overlook. They said that the overlook was just beyond the rocks visible at the top of the bowl to the west. I joked about how I could have left my bike lock back at the trailhead, given how remote the trailhead was. The dad and younger son got into the diesel Touareg that was parked there, while the mother and older son started off on bikes. The Touareg does not have near the ground clearance of some of the other 4WD vehicles that were attempting the drive, so I was amazed that they had managed to get it all the way down to the overlook trailhead. 

Confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers

After my lunch, I hiked out to the confluence overlook and took pictures. The Green River has an obvious greenish tinge compared to the Colorado, so it is obvious where the former got its name.

 

The short one-way section heading back toward the parking lot passes through Devil's Canyon. There are more of the rock formations characteristic of the area, which can be viewed close-up. (One can also hike into the Devil's Kitchen, but that wasn't in my plans for the day.)

It was about 3:30 when I got back to the camper. I thought I might see if there was a spot open in the Needles Campground and stay within the Park for the night. But as I drove back toward the junction, I saw the same white VW Touareg parked in a pull-out with its hood up. I pulled the camper off the road, and offered to help. The dad said he recognized me from the trailhead earlier, and introduced himself as Jared. He said that the serpentine belt had slipped off the front of the engine, and he was trying to get it back into place.

I watched for a bit as he tried to figure out its path among the pulleys. We both believed that it needed to make nearly a full turn around the crank pulley and water pump, but it was not obvious where it hit the idler pulleys and the tensioner among those and other accessories on the engine. Some cars have a diagram inside the engine compartment to show the path that the belt should follow. This was not one of those cars. After a while, I said, "Let me try."

I proceeded to work at the problem logically, explaining my reasoning as I went along. Some of the support arms were place so that the belt could loop around the nearby pulleys in only one way. I soon had the belt properly positioned on the driver's side of the engine. We tried a few possibilities, and finally decided that the belt passed over an idler and around the tensioner before picking up the alternator on the top of the engine.

Just routing the belt correctly took about half an hour. Then came the problem of getting it to actually pass over the idler and tensioner. Jared used a Torx driver to compress the spring on the tensioner. But even with it fully compressed, there was not enough slack to move the belt easily onto the idler. (We had decided that it would be easier to add the idler last, since trying to move the belt onto the tensioner as the last step required too many hands in one place.) We tried a number of methods -- including looping some strap around the belt and using that to pull the belt onto the idler pulley. But every attempt failed. We were also getting concerned that the hex cavity in the tensioner and/or the Torx driver were getting stripped out, and we would soon lose the ability to move the tensioner at all.

However, I noticed while pulling on the strap that I could compress the tensioner spring using the belt itself. I suggested that we both pull up on the belt and brute-force it into place. That method worked.

After that success, Jared invited me to join the family at their campsite for dinner. I recognized the desire to repay my kindness and I thought it might be nice to become better acquainted, so I agreed. I also mentioned that it was getting late and I had not yet secured a campsite. I suggested that I might share their campsite, and this idea was accepted. Finally, I said that I had planned to drive to the end of the Big Spring Canyon Overlook. So we arranged to meet back at their campsite around 6.

I drove out to the overlook, but found that it did not offer much in comparison with the views I had taken in earlier in the day. So I drove back to the campground. I treated sharing the family's campsite as a last resort, so I cruised the other loop in the campground, to see if there were any sites open. There appeared to be two that were vacant, so I went to the campground host to see if that was true. He evidently loved to chat, and in the course of the conversation divulged that the ADA site became available for general occupation at 8pm. If I returned at that time and found it still vacant, then I could stay there for the night (after paying the fee, of course).

Armed with that knowledge, I returned to the family's campsite and had dinner with them. I shared my Spindrift sodas and potato chips, and we had a simple dinner of macaroni and cheese with salad and green beans. I got to know the family a bit: they had driven over from Colorado Springs during the schools' Spring Break. The two boys were 11 and 14, so probably not yet in high school.

After dinner, I said that there was a possibility that I could get my own campsite so I didn't have to impose. But I would return within a few minutes and let them know either way. Evidently, the ADA expiration time was common knowledge, and there were already two other campers occupying the ADA site at 10 minutes before the hour. So I gave up that idea and returned to the family from Colorado Springs.

As they were finishing setting up their tents and sleeping bags, I mentioned that I had brought along my telescope. I set up the instrument so that everyone could see Jupiter with its 4 inner moons. Jupiter is close enough at this time that the bands can be seen clearly at maximum magnification (50x). My other go-to astronomical stunt is to bring the Horsehead Nebula into view. This I did, so the boys could see that interesting object in the sky. I explained the physics behind absorption spectra and how that could be used to determine the chemical composition of such a cloud.

After that, I packed up the telescope and we all went to bed. I promised to be gone by 7  the following morning.