Somehow I missed this thread, great pics and great writeup! I did a similar route last year spring mostly staying on th Burr trail in our '77 Ford Camper Van, "Brown Sugar." I had gotten a ride down with Kurt Williams for Cruise Moab... When we first got there, we rolled up upon a beautiful little house that housed some surfers that lived in Moab but took it and beached it in Baja every summer, rode their bkes, lived off a solar panel, then moved on and back to Moab when the heat cooled down and the school year started again. Definitely a well travelled machine. In the paper for $1300, I called before and they said, "we are flexible" so I said, "well just for ****s and giggles I'll start really low, $500" and they replied, "OK, but that is about the lowest I think we can go." Brown Sugar more than met our expectations, in fact she is in near perfect mechanical condition. So for $500 I got "Brown Sugar" and felt so confident in her mechanical abilities that I decided to clear out a little early and take "the long way" home via that route and Escalante.
I camped on Lake Powell on the side where you saw the "BMW," maybe just two miles away. I have been meaning to write it up myself for some time though very little "off road"... Again, excellent write up!