Hiking adventures

We skipped town for a day and went down to Canyonlands National park for some hiking on Saturday.  The weather was AMAZING.  Nearly 60 degrees and sunny.

We've done a few hikes down there so we decided to venture to one we had seen but never felt quite up to doing.  We did the "Confluence Overlook" trail which is a 10 mile hike that is described as "strenuous".   We only did 6 miles though because, well, have you seen us?  We aren't exactly in peak physical condition.  But we've been exercising and trying to improve so why not give it a go.

I do have a knee that gets kind of mad after too much hiking so I was the one who told Frank that I thought 6 miles would be plenty this time. He probably would have done the whole thing, crazy guy.

It was a really fun hike with lots of different kinds of terrain.  The beginning included a fair amount of scrambling up rocks which made us a bit nervous, not gonna lie.  But there were also some flat spots, thankfully!

We did manage to get lost a couple of times.  The first time added a good 1/2 mile to the trek and we were thankful we had brought Frank's new binoculars (birthday gift!) because we had to use them to find the rock cairns we had apparently missed.

Here we are climbing up to what looks like it might be a cool overlook.

This was the 1 mile mark.

Here's a little info about Frank:  he isn't that good at noticing things like, say, road signs and ahem...rock cairns.  He just walks along on the path that appears to be the right one.  Well, on this particular hike, you can go off in the totally wrong direction if you aren't watching.  After our first detour we started being more careful but I realized several times that we had either stepped right over a log or rock grouping that was supposed to show us where NOT to go or we had walked right past a rock cairn showing us a turn. ha! Oh man. We are lucky we made it back, I swear.  It became a bit of a joke whenever Frank was in front.

so pretty!

We actually came across an old ladder that is attached to the side of the canyon so that you can get up this slick rock area.

There were tons of pretty over looks.

And we reached one area where we were excited to look back and see the car!

We knew we could probably find out way back at least.

And it also made us feel like we had accomplished something since our car was just a speck in the distance.

I love this combo of the red rocks with the mountains behind.

This stuff below is called Biological Soil Crust.  It is found in the desert and helps to control erosion, holds moisture and is alive with life.  It's important to never step on it and ruin it.  There was lots of it on this hike, although it's hard to capture in pictures, especially with just a phone.

We stopped for lunch at the halfway point and enjoyed this lovely view.

Although it was nice and warm, there were occasionally shady spots with snow.

Here is the overlook from the beginning and the view on the way back through.

And check out these cool formations that look like a pair of boots!

Here we are at the end of the hike.  I'm looking a bit red, a sign that I actually exercised!

We came back to the car and a big crow who had been hanging around as we got ready to hike, came right back and hung out, hoping for some hand outs I'm sure.

We got in the car and started eating a little bit and I heard a loud noise only to look up and see this:

I opted to keep the window closed to get the picture since it seemed like he might enjoy biting my face off.

We only came across on other person as we hiked and he was headed back as we were going outbound.  One thing we like about hiking in southern Utah is the lack of crowds.

I made a joke after he hiked away, that maybe he had come out here with a friend and then murdered said friend.  Then he came across us!  And so, fearing we might give away his secret, our lives were now in danger.  It was just a joke, but of course after that, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't coming back! 

Frank started making jokes about "the murderer" and even when we got back to the car we saw a truck waiting nearby and he said,"What if that's the murderer's truck? He's been waiting for us to come back!"

We never found a body and the guy didn't murder us so all is well, except in my imagination apparently.