Freemont Indian State Park, Utah
August 27, 2022
Freemont Indian State Park, Castle Rock Campground.
After saying goodbye to Nevada, we drove to the little town of Milford, Utah for an overnight stop.
Didn't see many cars on the road in this part of Utah.
The Lions club in town maintains a free (donations welcome) RV park where we stayed. It was just a large gravel lot with a few trees interspersed, but it provided a quiet and pleasant spot to spend a night. Conveniently, there was a park across the street that had a riding arena (saw some kids riding horses in the arena) with a dump station for RV use
Right behind us was a hill that the locals used for dirt bikes and ATV riding.
Being in Utah means that most churches are Mormon (which we are not), so finding a church has required a bit more planning than usual. Fortunately, the church we went to was an easy walk (less than a mile across town), so we didn't need to unhook the truck from the trailer. The church was pretty tiny, and we got to experience our first bi-lingual English/Spanish Mass.
The next morning, we stopped at a grocery store in Milford and got most of our supplies for the week. There were a few items they did not have (no cauliflower, no ginger, etc), so we also stopped at another small grocery store in Beaver, Utah (which was on our way). Oddly enough, the store in Beaver didn't have cauliflower either so we ended up with frozen cauliflower florets which worked well enough in our recipe. (Not quite sure what was the deal with the cauliflower shortage?) Beaver also provided a laundromat which turned out to be most convenient. We were able to park the camper right in the mostly-empty parking lot which meant that we could use the Wi-Fi from the camper while in the laundromat, and then just carry our cloths directly to our closet. Traveling with our house has its advantages!
Finally, back on the road to our next destination!
We started seeing a bit more green in this part of Utah.
The gravel road into the campground was quite scenic.
Upon arriving at Freemont Indian State Park, we were quite happy with our view for the week.
If you have big arms, you can get quite the deal on firewood here!
One day, we visited the state park museum which had an interesting display of Indian artifacts. When construction began for I-70 back in the 1980's, much of the hillside was excavated to use for fill for the new interstate. In the process, the remains of a large Indian village was found. Archeologists came in to quickly recover what they could, and Fremont Indian State Park was created to commemorate the village. In addition to touring the indoor exhibits, we walked around outside to view some of the rock art left by the Indians on the canyon walls.
The visitor center
If you look closely, you can see some Indian art...
...But it's kind of hard to see
The scenery was quite good in the park.
It is thought that this drawing represents the Indian's creation story. Or, maybe it's just a doodle--the experts aren't quite sure.
We went to the "Cave of a Hundred Hands". Apparently, there are only 31 handprints, though.
It's Babi's basement stairway! 😉
On the way to the cave, we passed under a bridge with more modern handprints.
Indian families lived in structures called pithouses.
This one was a bit on the short side.
Glad we don't have to go up a ladder to get outside!
The granary is where corn was stored.
Not much to see here.
Another day, we went to the neighboring town of Sevier to the Big Rock Candy Mountain trailhead for a 17.2 mile bike ride. This is a paved bike trail (Rails to Trails) that goes through a canyon and connects with many of the ATV trails around.
The railway originally went through this tunnel, but it is not considered safe anymore.
You can still see the soot on the ceiling from the steam engines.
That's Big Rock Candy Mountain up ahead --so named because it resembles a big mound of chocolate and caramel.
We passed a unique resort that had a bunch of old railroad cars converted into individual vacation rentals.
After the paved trail ended, we rode on some ATV trails for a while. We stopped at Hoovers River Resort for lunch before returning back the way we came.
Fortunately, we didn't see any rattlesnakes.
It was a beautiful afternoon to sit outside and eat lunch.
Look around - Nicely paved trail - near the beginning of the canyon.
Look around - Farther down the canyon the walls got even steeper
Look around - After the end of the paved section we had to take some dirt roads to get all the way to Hoovers for lunch
The next day's forecast showed possible rain in the afternoon, so we decided to do some exploring and climbing right around camp in the morning. We only put in about 1.5 miles, but it was a lot of climbing around. It felt like a jungle gym for grownups!
What you see in these photos isn't really rock - it is more a hardened compressed muddy slurry with an assortment of rock sizes imbedded in it. We wore gloves for climbing, and as you climbed, stuff would just crumble and slide under you. You really couldn't count on things supporting your weight unless they were pretty big size rocks, so we tried to stay away from edges as much as possible.
A close-up of the rock surface. It looked like giant sand castles that had hardened.
These were some peculiar looking rocks. The edges appear to be curled.
Looking towards the interstate from Rick's final vantage point before we descended. Rick went up higher than Julie did (no surprise there).
Look around - There were several easy access locations to go into the formations at the bottom
Look around - Once we got higher we had nice views of the rocks and campground (in the woods below). We had brought gloves for climbing, as the rock was super rough. Julie made it most of the way up (see if you can find her still climbing up in this photo).
Look around - Rick continued to climb (Julie stayed below) just to see how high he could go. This is where I thought the better of trying to go higher.
Look around - Julie waiting under a tree while Rick goes to find out what is around the corner . . .
We took it easy at this location and didn't do any other large hikes or rides. We did do another short hike (1 mile including a bunch of scrambling) from the campground, just to see some more of the rock formations.
The black line was this hike, the blue was the previous hike.
This hike had similar views as last time, but even less semblance of a trail. It was fun to climb around--even Julie enjoyed it. Her knees are gradually getting stronger and don't bother her as much these days--hooray!
The tall features in this view are the ones we were climbing on last time.
Look around - A bit sketchy to climb up to this location (Julie did not join me on this one). This was the highest we got on this hike.
Our location had really good cell service so it provided a nice spot to update the maps on the hand held GPS as well as catch up on general internet stuff. The campground was mostly empty during the week and quite peaceful. The only real downside was the camp host two doors down who ran a generator every day--morning, afternoon, and evening for quite a few hours. We're glad we have solar so that we don't have to listen to that noise all the time.
On Friday night, we had grilled jerk chicken, grilled potatoes, and mango salsa. Since we weren't making this for kids or anyone else, we decided to use the full amount of serrano peppers--including the pith and seeds. It was really tasty, but oh, it was hot! We think we'll moderate the peppers a bit next time around.
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