March 30, 2025

Our last week here in Page, AZ. This past week we headed west of Page to check out an area we visited before. It was the area we spotted the guys looking for gold. This time I took my metal detector along. We took a lunch and the lawn chairs. Diane took her tablet so she could read an E-book as I explored. 

made up of sediment and stones

wavy stone I had to climb over on the trail.

 I headed back into the canyon (above) where we spotted the guys earlier. Easy walk up and down the rocks and back into the gorge about a quarter mile. Always amazed at the rock formations. One rock was made up of mud and stone, layer upon layer, and I bet over thousands of years to create. 

In the one arched cut out in the mountain there was a tree, picture on previous blog, that I figured if you are going to bury gold, mark it with a tree. I took my metal detector there and started to search for treasure. A couple of minutes in and it started to beep. I dug and dug and all off sudden there it was, a penny. 

 I searched the area and all I could come up with was 22 shell casing and some larger caliper cartridges. No treasure for me today. 

You never know what you will find in the back country. Came across this bunker.

Next we headed to Alstrom Point via the Smoky Mountain Road. This is a 25 mile out drive in the mountains. The first 20 miles is mostly dirt road and the rest is over rock mountain side. The drive was worth the effort to get there and the views were unbelievable. We encountered a couple of campers along the way with one guy in a pickup camper at the very end with his lounge chair at the edge. 

 

Buddy celebrating his 9th birthday. He was keeping an eye on Diane as she explored.

rock formations

That is as close to the edge as Diane gets.

Had to explore the mesa.

Bracing herself against the mesa.

Making my way to the point.

 We had lunch and spent an hour exploring around and taking pictures. Diane wants to build a house on the spot and it would be great to wake up every morning looking at the beautiful view of the valley and lake Powell below.

We will always venture away from the Jeep to check out the area.

 

If you blow this up you will see the pickup camper with his lounge chair next to the edge.

 Then it was the trip back over the rock trail. We stopped and chatted with a woman who was setting up camp with her two adult daughters. She was from Texas and her daughters were from Chicago and LA. She said that they were hesitant to drive to the end with their rental truck. They did not want to risk damaging the rental.

When we got back to a crossroad, leading us back home or venturing further into the mountains, Diane made the mistake of telling me it was up to me which direction we went. We went right and I said that we will see how long it take to get to the next point and the trail was a big loop. It only took 15 minutes to get to the next turn so I said let's keep going.  

You can find many structures like this one with a huge rock perched on top of sediment. 

Let the adventure begin.

Always interesting rock formations as we drive. Saw this guy by accident. He is only 5 inches tall and sticking out from a large rock.

It was a beautiful day.

Spotted this hole in the wall, climbed up and it only went back about 10 feet.

 Little did we know that this would turn into an all day adventure. At one turn we ended up on Croton road and Diane remembered that was the same name of the road we were on when we ended up in Escalante a few weeks back. We had committed and had to continue. We needed to keep making left turns in order to get back to our starting point. (It had to be a section of Croton Road that was different than the other one).

Most of the trail was rocky and went up and down the mountain. We were averaging about 10 miles per hour. We came across one intersection that said Big Water (where we needed to head) 31 miles. After roughly 31 miles we came across another sign that said Big Water 31 miles. Diane was getting worried. We started this trek at 1:38 and it was now 4:30 and we had miles to go. 

At 6 PM we were still on the trail zig zagging around the mountain. The sun was going down and we definitely wanted to be out before dark. It was just after 7:30 PM when we stopped to air up the tires before getting on the highway and headed for home. At least it was only 45 minutes home, not 3.5 hours like the last time. This will be be the last all-day adventure, maybe :). 

This is how it looked as we aired up the tires.

 I will post some videos on this adventure when I get them put together.

 On Friday, to our surprise, Diane's son and family stopped in to visit. They had flown into Las Vegas for  spring break, and were sight-seeing in the area. Leslie was texting Diane and getting info on the campground, unknown to us that they were in the area. All of a sudden she was knocking on the door. It was great to see everyone and hear what they were doing on vacation.