The Road Less Traveled

“Unimproved road for next 6 miles. Can be impassable when wet. Not recommended for trailers.”

A fat lot of good that sign does you if you’ve got a trailer in tow--you’re already committed to this lonely two lane road, and there’s no turnaround option except two miles straight behind you. I’m immediately thankful that the Flying Heart is safely parked at its site and that I’m just on a day trip with the truck.

Wanting to stay off the interstate, I have decided to take this alternative route, marked “scenic” on the map, on my way back to Beaver. The sign baffles me. “Unimproved” means…what? Expecting miles of poorly maintained pavement that’s crazed and cracked, I am quickly gripping the steering wheel, sweaty palmed and tense, as the Falcon jolts along over stones (pinggg! tink! ka-thunk!), gravel (shssshhhh-grrrrwhfff-plink-plink-plink), and pot-uuhoompphh-holes on a forest service road laid down in the dinosaur age and now meant only for ATV’ers and hard-core dry-campers.

The rear wheels fishtail at 5mph around sharp uphill turns on loose gravel. My teeth clatter as we dr-rr-vr-iivv-rrvvvvvv-rr ooo-vvr-rrer washshshshhh-bb-b-bbb-oardd-ddd g-ggr-owwnn-nnd-ddnd. Dust billows behind and around and onto every surface of the truck. At every new mile marker, I’m ever more grateful I don’t have the trailer attached, and I make a Note to Self When Hitched: until more experienced, make sure I know that all “scenic” routes are paved.

The sign also lied. The unimproved road lasted 20 miles, not 6 (although 8 was the worst of it), and I spent nearly two hours going that 20 miles. The reward was increasingly stunning views of sky and valleys, alpine grasses and flowers, and--near 10,000 feet--meadow upon meadow of green. Aspen leaves shimmered in the wind. White-barked birch stood like pillars. Pine and other conifers filled in the depths of spiky green.






I was in bear territory, a posted sign said. I saw none, but a guy I overheard at a fuel stop the next day said he’d seen a mother bear and her cubs up there. Did spot several deer between the trees. What looked like two instances of plump cats dead on the road turned out to be live marmots sunning themselves. Each got up and scampered away when my truck neared, although I did see evidence of one that moved too slowly from another set of wheels.

I had spent the morning at Fremont Indian State Park. It’s dedicated to protecting the pictographs and petroglyphs of the Fremont Indians who lived here for about 900 years (they disappeared in the 1300s, but no one knows why). They (and some itinerant Piutes) left hundreds of wall art images in the area, from square-bodied sheep and triangle-shaped people, to spirals and concentric circles and zig-zags, to weird collections of art that might be telling a history lesson. Newspaper Rock, Water Panel, Indian Blanket, Sheep Shelter...There’s enough to see here to last two days, at least.

I walked a few of the shorter trails. Sadly, the trail forces people to stay a distance from the art, and my little camera couldn’t capture most of the images I was near. I did appreciate the vast distances the Fremont could see of their surrounding lands, though.

One side-hike was to 100 Hands Cave. The trail crosses Clear Creek and ducks under I-70. Scads of swallows had taken up residence under the bridge, and the birds were active. The fluffy heads of little ones were just visible in some of the nests.


100 Hands Cave sounded romantic…a place to walk into, to pause in the silence and hear the dead speak in whispers from their palm prints on the walls, to imagine shadow stories being told and replayed before a cavern fire.

Not so.

100 Hands Cave is a recess in a rock wall about 6 feet deep, 8 feet high, 20 feet wide, blocked by iron bars, and marked by not 100, but 31 hand prints. Maybe the people who named it thought “31 Hands Cave” or “About 40 Hands Cave” or “Over 30 Hands Cave” wasn’t compelling enough of a draw, although it did work for Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors, so why not here?



All the marketing-speak (and iron barrier) notwithstanding, I found it interesting to really look at the hand prints. Small, like children’s, in keeping with the short stature of the Fremont—they were about 4 and a half feet tall. Several colors, mostly in groupings. A painted hand had dragged in a zigzag near the ground, fingers spread, making the symbol of mountains. Or perhaps someone was just getting the paint off his hands by scrubbing it out on the wall.