<– Day 51 – Mon. Jun. 1st: Black Canyon of the Gunnison | TRIP OVERVIEW | Day 53-54 – June 3rd-4th: The Journey Home –>
Intrepid photographer at work.
There’s an area of eastern Utah just north of I-70 called the Book Cliffs that has remained pretty remote. On Tuesday, I decided to go from I-70, north along dirt roads through the Book Cliffs, in hopes of reaching State Highway 40, which crosses Utah from Salt Lake City to Vernal. The biggest problem I had was that my 50-page Utah map marked non-paved roads with dashes and the dashes, as they intersected at odd angles, made the map’s roads tough to read. In addition, the roads weren’t marked well on the map. So, I expected it might be a challenge.
Overall route.
Closeup of our route across the remote planes and up the book cliffs.
On Tuesday we left later than planned, due to my sleeping in. We traveled west on I-70 from Grand Junction until we reached the exit for Mack, Colorado. From there, we followed State Highway 6 hoping to find a road called the Book Cliffs Ridge Road, which we never found because Colorado didn’t mark the road that way. Instead, they used some number that didn’t appear on any of the maps we had. Still, by process of elimination, we figured out which road was the Book Cliffs Ridge road.
Entering the cliffs.
