Utah Off Road Trip - April 2013

At the end of April I went on another off-road trip to Southern Utah.   This one, organized by Tom Ferrin, was going to be a 2 week trip.  I opted for the first week so that I could get back to Sacramento for my planned trip to the UK.   As it turned out, my trip was even shorter than a week.

It was a Saturday morning departure where everything went according to plan - Tom was the first to leave from Mill Valley, Andy and I joined him as he passed through Sacramento and Dan joined us as we passed through Reno.  Four humans, four Land Cruisers, not the most efficient means of transportation, but it is fun.

We drove straight through on the Saturday and reached the far east side of Nevada by Saturday evening.  We camped in the Great Basin National Park in a nice spot we have used before.  It was still cool and there were banks of snow around.  I, of course, was the only one camping on the ground, the others were inside or on top of their well appointed vehicles.

Burr Trail

The next day, Sunday, we crossed into Utah and went down Highway 12 to Escalante.  From there we made for Boulder Town where we joined the Burr Trail.  The Burr Trail is a beautiful road, fairly well paved for most of the way with some absolutely stunning scenery.  We then took a side road into Horse Canyon.  This was all dirt, and dusty dirt at that.  The scenery in Southern Utah never seems to disappoint.  It goes from one spectacular view to another.

Horse Canyon

We found a nice camp spot in the canyon and decided to make camp there beneath the towering cliffs of the canyon walls.  Tom was on cook duty that night and we were treated to some fine crab cakes with the usual trimmings of fine wine and fine cheeses.   Life off-road is certainly tough.

Tom at camp in Horse Canyon

The next morning we drove out of the canyon and wandered around on various trails - possibly the Silver Falls, or Moody Canyon or Wolverine Loop trails.   We lunched by some interestingly colored deposits that I as a geologist could not identify (no surprise there) but Tom took his hand held Geiger Counter out (never travel without one) and found them to have a higher level of background radiation.  Perhaps some sort of Uranium related deposit - there was a lot of exploration for Uranium ores here the 40’s and 50’s.

After lunch we headed back up to join the Burr Trail and that’s when my problems started.  Getting onto tarmac again and leaving the dust behind, Andy commented on a puff of smoke from my exhaust.  Stopping to take a picture at the top of the downgrade, I also saw smoke - not from the exhaust but from the front left brake pads.   Something was seriously wrong.

Of course the other guys just love this sort of problem and pretty soon we were removing the wheel and checking out the damage to the brakes and bearings.  It was not good, the lock washer that basically holds the front wheel on had backed off and the wheel was really being held on by the brake pads - hence the smoke and heat.

Roadside Repairs

Between Andy, Tom and Dan they were able to piece together most of the things that I needed to get moving again.  Andy had a spare spindle, Tom had bearings, I can’t remember what Dan had but I am sure he contributed something.  We were a couple of parts away from a complete repair however as we were missing one lock-nut and sufficient high temperature grease.  It was however good enough to get me down the hill and back onto tarmac in Hanksville.

The trail down the grade was good but the drop was significant.  Fortunately for me that we discovered this problem at the top of the hill and not on the way down.   That could have been a different story altogether.

I crept down the hill - the most spectacular part of the Burr Trail checking the front wheel with some frequency.  It held up just fine and it held up just fine all the way to Hanksville.

Dan, Andy, Tom

In Hanksville we refueled and I had to make a decision.  Search around in these small towns for parts to complete the repair (highly unlikely), go to Moab and find the parts at the Cruise Moab convention (a Land Cruiser Off Road get together), or go to Salt Lake City and visit the Toyota Dealer there.  

I chose the last option and drove very slowly the 230 odd miles to Salt Lake City.  Cutting short my trip but that’s what circumstances dictated.  It was a bit of a tedious drive to SLC but I made it around midnight and got a room not far from the Toyota dealership.

Next morning I took my truck in and explained what had gone wrong.  They investigated and found that even without one of the two lock nuts, things were still nice and tight.  They fixed me up and repacked things with grease and I was all set to continue on by 10:00 am.

Given that I was early and had never explored Salt Lake City I decided to look around.  Of course what do you do in Salt Lake City - you look at the Mormon Church stuff in the downtown area.  I went around the museum, looked at the Tabernacle and then went into the Genealogy Center.  I wasn’t expecting to find much but they were most helpful and they have an entire floor dedicated to UK genealogy records.  What they did provide was free access to Ancestry.co.uk and there I found all sorts of interesting things starting in the 1911 census and going back in 10 year increments to around 1851 when all traces of my forebears disappeared.  I should get more serious about that and dig into things in more detail.  

The most remarkable thing I found was that my Grandfather White was working in a shoe factory when he was 14 years old, and my Olivent Grandparents by 1911 already had 8 children but 2 were already dead.  They went on to have 11 living children I think.

After spending more time than I anticipated researching my ancestry, I left SLC in the late afternoon and made it as far as Elko for the night.   I struggled to find a hotel in Elko.  It is in the middle of a mining boom at the moment and hotels are pretty scarce when you drop in at 8:00 pm at night. Eventually I found a vacancy and I was set for the night.

The following day it was a pretty easy drive from Elko into California and home.