Hikin' The Red Rock

Jared & Skye as "just friends", Zion, April 2004

I always hanker for Southern Utah in the spring. Jared and I did our first backpacking trip together there (in the picture above), before we were dating, and every year since we talk about going back. I always think it should be an annual event, but you know how things tend to come up. Anyway, 4 years later, we finally made it happen. We bounced around quite a bit, and went to four really cool spots, 2 of them National Parks:

Little Wild Horse Canyon: one of the coolest slot canyons you'll ever hike (coolest I had hiked anyway). We hit this on a Saturday, along with about 57 Mormon Scout troops. Once I got over the lack of solitude and the pre-pubescent teen to adult ratio, it got kinda fun squeezing past each other and seeing how people responded to the greeting, "howdy." Seville pet every dog that came through too, which was quite a few.

Goblin Valley: really amounts to a walk in the park, but a seriously breathtakingly weird lookin' park. I wonder how many sci-fi movies have been filmed here (at least Galaxy Quest).

Horseshoe Canyon: is actually part of Canyonlands, but detached from the rest of it and hard to get to by a long dirt road through the desert sage with many unmarked forks, turns and cows (actually, I bet the cows are marked, but not so drivers can tell). Horseshoe Canyons boasts some of the best ancient Native American Petroglyphs and a couple dinosaur tracks. The hike is well worth it without them though.

Capitol Reef: might be my new favorite National Park. There is so much stunning scenery and crazy rock formation to hike through that by the end of our stay there I practically had visual stimulus overload. Definitely a place to go back to, since we barely scratched the surface there.

See the rest of the adventure below. Or click HERE to go directly to the online album and see 'em big on your screen.