Mile Marker: Day One in Utah (Phoenix, AZ to Grand Gulch Wilderness Area, UT)
A journey begins without a destinations.
We are on the on-ramp to summer as the temperatures climbs and Beltane begins. To celebrate, I pack the dogs and camping gear into the truck and head north. I planto drive from Phoenix to the Valley of the Gods tonight, just north of the Navajo Nation along the Arizona/Utah border. I’ll figure out the next four days from there.
It takes longer than it should to clear the outer reaches of Phoenix but as I finally break free of the urban sprawl a sense of levity takes hold.
Over the last several days, an online flirtation has begun to turn into something more, and I think about the brawny, beautiful man with whom I am chatting as I drive north. My playlist—the Endless American Road (2026 Edition)—ticks away after months of careful curation. It’s a thousand songs long at this point and will steer me safely on this journey and back home. Dare I say I feel young again, hopeful like I did before too much life happened.
Landscapes shift as towns drift by: Flagstaff, Page, Kanab. Desert gives way to high desert, to pine forests, back to desert, and finally the Martian red rocks of southern Utah.
I reach the Valley of the Gods in the afternoon but still have some drive left in me, so I drive past the west entrance and enter Bears Ears National Monument.
A mile past the entrance, the pavement ends, and the long straight highway I’ve been following transforms into three miles or dirt switchbacks that climb straight up the side of the mesa, crookeder than a television preacher. I think about all the car chases along mesa roads in Edward Abbey’s 1970s novel The Monkeywrench Gang, and they make sense to me now. I drop the truck into low gear and ascend. This could end badly, but I’ve gotta know what’s on top of that mesa.
I make it to the top alive and the highway is paved again, speed limit lifting from 10 to 55 mph.
With a couple of hours of daylight remaining, we explore several dirt roads in search of a campsite. Most sites are either occupied or unremarkable. I stop at a closed BLM ranger station where an off-duty ranger kindly gives me a map and suggestions. We find a slide-rock road, barely discernible from the highway. I pull onto it and bring the truck to a stop, getting out to scout the “road” ahead. We discover a fire ring in the tree line, set along the slide-rock and below it a small valley with cottonwoods populates a dry desert wash. This is where we’re making camp. We explore, make camp, and build a fire.
The next morning we wake at dawn and enjoy a leisurely walk along the slide-rock as the sun rises. This is so much better than where I had planned to stop last night, and I embrace the reality that where we end up is often better than where we’d planned to go.
I consult the map the ranger gave me yesterday and estimate that I am two hours from Canyonlands National Park.
For a moment I consider leaving my tent here and using this spot as a base of operations for the long weekend, but I decide against it. This was a fortuitous decision, for I had no idea how much better the trip was about to become.
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Bonus: One of the things I like most about huskies is their closeness to nature, no matter how domesticated they become. Jones never misses a sunrise, and I love this little clip I took of him taking it in.