Woke to cloudy skies for the first time in ages, but it soon cleared up.  Left our campsite and after giving the car a well deserved wash after 5 weeks and 4,000 miles, we drove to Boulder over a 9,600 feet pass.  There was snow on the side of the road and we saw a couple of mule deer.

We stopped at Escalante river to do a 2 mile hike which involved fording a stream 4 times with water up to our knees - cool.  The landscape looked like something out of a Jurassic park film.  Had a brief heavy thunder shower, but not enough to turn the river into a torrent or flash flood.  We also heard wild turkeys in the distance.  The Escalante Monument Park is one of the most inhospitable parts of the US, with parts needing 4WD to get anywhere on unpaved roads and bare rock.  The mountains nearby were the last to be properly mapped in the US in 1870.

Drove on to our motel in the little town of Escalante, had an ice cream and looked forward to a comfy night in a proper bed.