First Place Nonfiction: Better Than Slick Rock

If you want more than the usual slick rock and slot canyon experience in Southern Utah, here's how, based on my experience, to do it.

Part 1: How to Get to Moab

Since Southern Utah is one of the more remote parts of the Southwest, and parts, dealerships and repair shops can be a couple of hundred miles off, your chances of a breakdown are good. Try to make it happen within towing distance of Hanksville, where the local tow, Don Foutz, will not only tow you to Hanksville but eventually onto Moab when he can't fix your vehicle. In the meantime, Don will put you up in his father-in-law's motel, order the parts you don't need through his brother-in-law's filling station, and put you on to the best hamburgers in town at his father-in-law's café. (Driving a car with something like 110,000 miles will also help bring all this about.)

As you hang out in Hanksville waiting for your part that isn't really the problem, your best bet is to accompany Don on his runs. Time your breakdown around summer flash floods. Don gets calls to places like Bullfrog Crossing, south through Ticaboo from Hanksville. If there's been a good flood, cars on the Burr Trail approaching from the west, just minutes from the ferry at Hall's Crossing on the other side, contemplate a choice between a 150-mile detour and a 100-yard run at the mud. Californians in low-slung convertibles and Italians in Mitsubishi vans rented under the illusion they have four-wheel drive will have, predictably, taken on the mud. What's better than hoodoos at Bryce, giant ghostlike petroglyphs in the backcountry, slot canyons, or Lower Calf Creek Falls? It's Don swimming in mud to hook a tow line under the sunken bumper of a convertible, Don's high-tech truck getting stuck and pulled out with a rusty chain by a Navajo with an old Ford pickup, Italians haggling over tow charges (having been quoted a hundred before the tow, proposing "I give you feefty" after the fact), and a gathering crowd of Lake Powell tourists cheering Don on while the local Lake Powell ranger watches from a hill above, arms crossed, mute and unmoved, in spit-polished boots, creased pants and shades.

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