Day 16: Gooseneck State Park/Valley of the Gods

October 14, 2013

Free Camping at Gooseneck State Park



Donna at Deadhorse rim

As you may recall, David tried to get me to go on the dirt/gravel road of Valley of the Gods last night when I was tired and just wanted out of the rv seat. 

Nasty camping hair

Well today is a new day and he is at it again.  After reading someone else's blog with some  more info, I caved.  It is a 17 mile road and we approached it from paved route 261...the area just before the switchbacks where rv's are not supposed to go (narrow road too).





There is a road that crawls its way up here - route 261 UT

 Before taking off on this scenic road, we decided that we would eyeball the switchback area because we were curious as to where EXACTLY the road went.  It was not real obvious as it climbed up to the top of the plateau.  We never did figure it out.





Valley of the Gods

It took us about 3 hours or slightly less to finish the 17 mile road.  David was being very careful to not bottom out, get stuck, or rumble us to death on some washboard areas.  I even got out and walked a bit up a generous hill.  We are 25 feet from tip to tail so I would not recommend that any rv over that do it because of the angle of the dips at the bottom of some of the hills.  I would also recommend that you don't do it after a rain (which the sign may say). 



Valley of the Gods

My other recommendation would be to first
on your way into Gooseneck State Park,

check out the access from the other end (route 163) or just go in that way.  That end has a kind of wash/stream immediately in the beginning so you can see the condition of that.  You can access it from either end really.  The scenery was breathtaking on this sunny day.  Highly recommended.  The best part (if you decide to do only half of it) would be the entry on route 163 to the far end where the road almost hairpins...then flip it and go back.  Any kind of overnight spots are mostly at this end.



Crawling our way along Valley of the Gods

Since we were heading towards a Thursday reservation at Zion, we needed to work our way towards that goal.  We took 163 down to Monument pass (scenic area with a Native American riding a horse that will gladly take your money if you wish to photograph him).  We did not pay him; however, there was a man there that did.















Valley of the Gods

Raplee Ridge - very unusual mountains

David did not stick around to find out how much!  So 163 to 98 to Page, AZ.  In the end David said we should have gone north and gone back to access route 24 so we could take route 12 south.   This route 163 to 98 was underwhelming even though it had scenic route listed on our map. Next time as we will probably run out of non snow weather soon.





Monument Valley

Overnight in parking lot behind McDonalds or Walmart in Page, AZ.