October 27-28, 2013
Our "mud season road trips" have shortened over the last couple years, both spring and fall! Why is that? Hummm... 2 kids?! This latest trip takes the cake. I couldn't believe how much planning went into this trip, and it was only for 2 nights! We decided to take mom and dad with us, since it had been decades since they had seen Goblin Valley... and it was nice having extra baby holders.
We left after church on Sunday and drove down through Price and the Book Cliffs area. I'm always blown away with how beautiful it is, but then again I've always been partial to that area of desert. The last stretch on SR-24 going south parallels the San Rafael Reef. Gorgeous! I reserved our campsite ahead of time. I've learned my lesson about camping with kids and just ASSUMING a spot will be available. I will NOT play that game anymore! It's sad because, back in the day, we used to camp out against Little Wild Horse Mesa and built bon fires up against the butte walls (good times, eh Megann?). For being in a campground, our site was pretty cool. It was up and around a fin, away from everyone else. No bon fires, no loud hippie music, but the stars were incredible! Anna had a blast throwing sand in the fire and Dallin just stared at the flames.
Monday morning we headed out for Little Wild Horse Canyon. You can't come to this area and NOT hike it. It's just as cool as Goblin Valley. I knew some weather was coming in, but I assumed it would only be a little windy... and our tents were staked down. Good enough, right? I thought it was funny how everyone else was packin' up and LEAVING. Humm... Anyway, Little Wild Horse Canyon didn't disappoint! Red rock, slot canyons, sheer cliffs, and once again, not a soul! Where was everyone? We hiked up a couple miles until the slot canyon ended. We didn't make the loop around Bell Canyon this time. We'll save that for when the kids get older. Coming out of the canyon we noticed the wind had really picked up, and driving back to camp, it turned even worse. Our tent blew away! We found it 100 feet from camp! I left our bags all open and the tent had tumbled in the sand. Augh! The rain fly on mom and dad's tent had snapped, and we think a good samaritan had come by to release their poles and flatten their tent. They fared better than us. It was so windy we couldn't even eat without getting sand in our mouths! How were we supposed to make tin-foil dinners? I couldn't even use our tent to peel vegetables! Poor Dallin was miserable. I really wanted to stay one more night, but everything was stacked against us. We left. Fail! We did stop by to see the goblins and Bevan thinks he even found the one that got toppled. It was even more windy by that time so we didn't stay long. I felt alright about it. We came and saw what we wanted to see! It turns out that it did rain that night. Whew! It felt like we were gone for a week, but it was really only about 30 hours. I'll have to plan a REALLY good mud-season road trip for April to make up for this!
