May 15, 2014 Part Two (of Three) Moki Dugway and Muley Point

Leaving Goosenecks State Park, we headed towards the Moki Dugway.  I had heard about this stretch of road for many years and, of course, wanted to see it.  I was not sure if I was going to drive it but I did – not as bad as I thought it would be.

So what is the Moki Dugway?  It is a three mile graded and graveled section of Utah Highway 261 that descends a steep slope (11%) from the mesa top to the valley floor.  The Moki Dugway was built in the 1950’s by Texas Zinc Minerals so ore (uranium or vanadium from the Happy Jack Mine on Cedar Mesa) could be hauled to the mill in Halchita near Mexican Hat.

We started from the valley floor – heading to the top of the mesa (1200’ higher) in the picture below:

The road is paved for the first one half mile and then it becomes a graded dirt/gravel road.  The road is almost hidden – can you find part of it:

And up we go:

Every so often I would stop and take pictures of the view – WOW!:

When we got to the top where the road became paved, we decided to go out to Muley Point – about 5 miles on a dirt road to the overlook point.

However, we stopped here first to have lunch –what a nice place:

The views from here were pretty awesome too.

Monument Valley in the background:

After lunch, we continued on to Muley Point and the views continued:

Here is a short video of the view:

http://youtu.be/1dByXC7TXRk

We eventually made our way back to the Dugway – one of the current residents on the mesa:

And down we went – check out the road – :

All I can say is WOW.  And our journey continues – see Part Three.