Comb Wash Road

Written from my 25 years later perspective…

May 24, 1990. Day 6 of my first trip through the Southwest. Me, Mike, and Colleen – age 5 (almost 6).

We were tent camping and had spent the first night in Williams Arizona, three more nights at the Grand Canyon, and we were just waking up from our 5th night of tenting in Monument Valley, Navajo Nation Reservation. It was very windy throughout the night and the fine powdery red sand found its way into all sorts of unexpected places. Ice cold shower in the morning was a surprise, but I was clean and ready for the days adventure. (This campground we stayed at no longer exists - they've built an incredibly beautiful hotel called The View on this sight and moved the campground to a different location) 

Heading northeast on 163, just a couple miles driving and we saw some vendors selling jewelry just off the road, a few cars, old tables with displays of jewelry neatly laid out before us. Colleen stayed in the car because it was still chilly out – sun hadn’t kicked in yet, and Mike and I were looking over the jewelry. The woman we tried to engage in conversation seemed less than interested in friendly banter – and answered our questions politely but with no smile and no enthusiasm. I glanced over to the car to see how Colleen was doing and she wanted to join us – so I waved her to join us. Immediately the woman snapped out of whatever funk she was in, and wanted to show Colleen everything! We bought 3 bracelets. Good start to the day!

Driving through this land can be both stark and beautiful. This morning I was feeling a bit road weary, but eager to explore the ridge along Comb Wash Rd. Mike had read about some petroglyphs along here, and that was our goal – to find some petroglyphs.

Comb Wash Road is near Bluff, Utah. Bluff, Utah is near nowhere, so driving off the main road into an area we’d never been, in a desolate landscape – before cell phones (not that there’d be a signal anyway)…. I wasn’t afraid, just mindful of what we were deciding to do. We had plenty of water and all our camping gear. Still, we needed to proceed with caution onto this dirt road to the west of 191 between Bluff and Blanding. 

The dirt road was much smoother than I’d anticipated. You could easily see how it proceeded north along the western side of this ridge line. We had set the odometer to zero when we left the main road, so we knew exactly where we were when we came upon a man and his truck 50 feet off the dirt road. He was elbow deep in mud, attempting to dig out his truck which had broken through the cracked, dry clay and was now axle deep in a muddy, mucky mess. He was a trail guide from Recapture Lodge in Bluff. He had been scouting for a location to set up camp for a group of folks who were on horseback and expected to find their camp all set up when they arrived. His truck was filled with gear and he wasn’t going anywhere. Mike tried to help him dig a little bit, but it was pretty apparent that wasn’t going to get results. For a brief moment they thought that our truck (a mini-truck) might be able to pull his truck out via some rope – all I imagined was TWO trucks stuck in the mud and wanted to keep our truck on the dirt road! 

We ultimately abandoned our plans to explore Comb Wash, so that we could drive back to Bluff and send a tow truck back for this guy. Since we could declare precisely where he was from the main road – it seemed like this was the right thing to do.
 
Driving through Bluff takes all of a minute, and you may not even realize you’ve done it – so finding “the tow truck guy” was a little bit of a challenge. I think we began at a gas station – and were eventually directed to a large corrugated metal building end of town, surrounded by a large chain-link fence. There was an open gate I walked through, calling out ‘hello?!’ I found an open door into the metal building and found an elderly man sitting in the shade of an office area – I asked him if he knew where we could get a tow truck and he wanted to know why. I began to explain where the guy and his truck were, and asked this man if he was familiar with this road - ‘of course I know that road, I built that road!!’ Oh, well then he’d know exactly what this guy was dealing with. I told him that the trail guide had driven off the dirt road and his truck had broken through into the mud. ‘There’s no mud out there!!’ declared this unhelpful but eager to talk old man. I smiled and said, well whatever it is – his truck is stuck in it up to its axles. Just then a young man walked it to see how he could help – and we were able to explain the situation to him and he said he drive out there right away.

Now it was noon and we decided to have lunch at the diner in Bluff. The waitress brought Colleen a coloring page and we had a decent lunch. About an hour later as we headed north on the 191 towards Moab, I learned that we’d be staying in a Motel and not tent camping for the next couple nights. It was the best news, and nicest Motel I ever stayed in!! (probably not, but I sure appreciated it!!)
 
So day 6 ended with Colleen playing in an awesome playground at a park in Moab - and dinner at the Rio, where portions were huge and prices really cheap!