The Re-Tour Day 10: We Finally Explore Sunlight Basin

September 2, 2018.

Having camping in a deep valley and stayed up late, I once again found myself sleeping in the next morning — no sunrise to coax me out of bed before dawn. When I’d pulled into the site the night before, I’d worried that we’d have absolutely no view — a shame since Sunlight Basin is so pretty in the morning light.

As it turns out however, it was the lack of visibility in complete darkness that made me think that — because our site was quite beautiful — sun filtering through the trees, creek rushing by in the background, and orange cliff faces to our north and south.

Everyone else realized essentially the same thing as they started climbing down their ladders and looking around. We also decided that it’d be a good time to air down our tires — something we’d chosen not to do on our rush into camp the night before, and paid the price for!

Then, at our usual “early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese” time of 11:00am, we finally rolled out of camp — on our way back to the main road where we’d turn west, heading up Sunlight Basin Road, hopefully further than we had on our previous adventure.

As was the case the previous day, there were tons of other folks out on the roads — many of them hunting, others out enjoying the amazing weather for the long weekend. That meant traffic as we headed up the valley, and most of the group kept up a speedy pace to stay in front of the trailing dust clouds.

But not me. With views like this, I just slowed down and let the traffic by. And then, I stopped and got out of the truck.

Even so, it wasn’t long before everyone else ran into a few slower UTVs and I was able to see them just up ahead, their backdrop one of the more dramatic we’d see this beautiful day. Knowing it was only a matter of time before I completely caught up, I did the only thing I could think of. I stopped and got out of the truck again.

And again. Seriously — this is one of those places where you just can’t help yourself, the views getting better and better by the moment.

Eventually we reached a part of the trail where the creek has completely washed out (and taken over) the road. It’s not deep or difficult to navigate — quite the opposite, it’s a super-fun, extra-long water crossing. So in we went, unfortunately the water not really deep enough to wash off more than our tires.

We continued up the canyon, views and UTVs revealing themselves around nearly every bend. As was our rhythm, we stopped here and there to let the annoying little buggers pass or to take photos of the moon setting over the rocky mountains. We were having a grand time, everyone in high spirits.

Oh, and the water crossings. The trail was much drier than the previous year, but there were still plenty of crossings for us to get our feet wet — and we took advantage of them all, Monte @Blackdawg hopping out of Igor to snap head-on photos, and me hopping out to get shots from the rear.

Strategies were of course different. Mike @Digiratus, always the pragmatist, stopped in the middle of the creek to “wash off.”

But not Dan @drr, and definitely not Zane @Speedytech7. And well, I think I may have won for “most water on the hood,” again; though it was hard to tell even a few seconds later as the sun dried everything up quickly.

We were soon on our way again, followed by a group of UTVs that we decided to let pass; everyone else deciding that the slower, “stop to take pictures and enjoy ourselves” pace was the right one for today. So, just after the next water crossing we all pulled to the side of the road making a clear path for the UTVs to just keep driving on the road.

But no. These were UTVs. And when you drive a UTV, rule #1 is “Be a Dick.” So they crossed the river, and then proceeded off-trail to skirt around us. And not just by a couple feet — we’re talking 30- or 40-feet off of the road.

Nice, guys. Way to be stand-up humans.

To relax our nerves, we turned back to enjoy the views around us. Despite the UTVs, life was good.

We’d run into the UTVs again — to find out what we said to them, keep reading We Finally Explore Sunlight Basin at adventuretaco.com.

Originally published at adventuretaco.com.