I had a pleasant surprise on Sunday. I hadn’t planned to do much last weekend except to drive to Justensen Flats to check conditions on the road leading to where I wanted to camp for the geocaching event next month. When we camped there five years ago the road was very rough and I feared damaging my trailer dragging it over the rocky portions of the road. I know that this year people will be driving cars and at least one motorhome to the event, and if the road wasn’t any better I’d have to look for another place to camp. During the drive down on Sunday, just as I was passing through Ferron I remembered a photo I’d seen on Flickr showing how to get to some dinosaur footprints along the Moore Cutoff Road. I thought I’d try to find them, and it turned out to be very easy to do so.
The dinosaur tracks were the highlight of the trip. Michael and Bradley enjoyed looking for more tracks, and Bradley even found a nice big fossilized dinosaur bone lying on the ground in a wash. We stayed there a little more than half an hour scouring the rocks for more tracks and the washes for more bones. We then went to Justensen and found that the road was as bad or worse than before, so I drove west on I-70 about 10 miles to the next exit near South Salt Wash. There was a broad, flat space about half a mile south of the interchange that would work for camping, but it’s a little barren. That’s not a big deal for me because I hope to spend a lot of time on my ATV and away from camp.
Although I’d found a good enough spot, I wanted to drive farther south to Kimball Draw just to see if there were any other potential places to camp. I didn’t find any, but I did find a decent place to pull off the road so the boys and I could eat lunch. After finishing our ham and cheese sandwiches and apples, we went back to I-70 and stopped at both Salt Wash view/rest areas to find a few geocaches. The boys scrambled around on some rocks at the westbound view area, and we hiked about two-thirds of a mile south of the eastbound view area. I was surprised that the kids said they had a lot of fun on this trip, considering that it was relatively long (from their point of view) and the stops were fairly short.
Hi Dennis, enjoyed your reports on toroweap and justesen flats trips. I went to toroweap point in about 1991 and camped in one of the two campsites right at the edge. Rode my honda xr250 from there to mount trumbull ghost town and back. Went to the copper globe mine area at justesen flats about same year exploring again on my xr250. There were two large stacks of wood you could see from I-70. A book I have says they might have been left from the day when they had a copper smelter there. The rock formations in the sinbad country along that stretch of I-70 are fantastic. Good luck in your travels Dennis!
Mike, I’m glad you enjoyed them. 🙂 I would love to camp at Toroweap, maybe someday I’ll manage to do it. We only spent a few hours there, but I really would have liked to explore the rim on foot given more time.
I’m hoping to get back to Justensen Flats and the Copper Globe area next month–it’s been five years since I was last there, and I was in my truck so I was somewhat limited as to where I could drive. I camped near the Head of Sinbad just this weekend–indeed, those rock formations are amazing.