Today featured another hair raising drive. A couple in Lake Powell turned us on to a cool route from the Lake to Bryce National Park via Boulder (Utah, not Colorado).

For those familiar with Rand McNally road atlases, we’re talking about “hollow gray lines”, which means “Other unpaved roads”. This was a fantastic drive through canyons, desert, and brush. And desolate. We saw two cars for the first 30 miles, then we hit traffic in Capital Reef, in the form of 10 cars.

The road started off paved, but quickly descended into gravel. Rough gravel at that—bone jarring rough. There was also a disturbing lack of signage, we had to guess a few times on which unpaved road to take.

The path took us through Capital Reef National Monument and Escalante/Grand Staircase National Momuments. Both almost completely devoid of people and cars. We were treated to another death defying switchback road up a mesa. Fantastic.