Joel organized a work party/shooting weekend at the Golden Spike Shooting Range. This meant that I was supposed to be watching the crops. Seems that the heat mats and lights are better suited for growing cats!

Path of least resistance = move the crops.

Talking to my friend Jenifer late last year, I was a little surprised to hear that she had never been to any of the National Parks in Southern Utah. As an auditor she has traveled all over the US and internationally for most of her career. Her husband had visited Bryce Canyon several years ago and wanted her to see it so a plan was put together to have them both come out for a mini tour of some of the State and National Parks in our neck of the woods. From Michigan they flew into Grand Junction where our adventure started.

Although I had secured a timed-entry permit for Arches National Park many months before, the first day we decided that a visit to Dead Horse Point State Park and the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park would be less crowded and more accessible so that was where we headed for the first day, skipping Arches altogether.

We finished up with our first day by driving through Moab, Monticello, and Blanding; ending up in Bluff for the evening.

Too lazy to look back through the blog posts to see if this is something that I have posted before but here are some quick shots of the first flowers that are in full bloom in our yard – can you tell I like purple – YEA. I did miss the very first one – purple crocus!

Sadly, our grand adventure will come to an end. I had pretty close to 90 miles on the odometer for our total trip and on the last day we meandered down towards and around Temple Mountain. It was an amazing ride as for the first time we had a massive, sustained tailwind AND a downhill. My Garmin clocked a fast 27 mph on one section – the trail was pretty good but there was a bit of slamming around on the undercarriage (both mine and the bike) but after three days of headwind, not much to complain about!

We started off by seeing another herd of wild horses who were again a bit wary of people. But beautiful!

Then we headed out towards Family Butte again.

We stopped for snacks and water before the van headed down the alternate route to our pick-up/lunch point.

We had our last lunch and awaited our pick up back to Green River. An amazing time was had by all and we look forward to the next Holiday River Expedition trip!

We knew that it was inevitable so we fueled up with another great breakfast in order to conquer the first section of our ride today – a six mile climb out of the Muddy Creek Campground to McKay Flats. You just really had to grit your teeth and start the grind, not realizing that there were many “false summits” ahead where you were sure the road would flatten out and then start downhill.

Once at the top, we stopped for a snack and then headed down an unexplored road towards Quandry and Chimney Canyons. We went about 4 miles then stopped for lunch then continued to the evening’s campsite near the Chute Canyon Overlook.

As we neared our campsite we saw the first of many wild horse herds. Very wary of people – we didn’t get a lot of real close shots but here are a few. The herds we saw today and also the ones we will see tomorrow are part of the Muddy Creek BLM Management Area.

Before we ate dinner we took a ride out to the Chute Canyon Overlook and took in the stunning view and a few photos. According to my tracker, we logged in 23.8 miles today.

We had an amazing campsite for the evening and a promise of stargazing aka no clouds. Tom talked a lot about the night skies and with no wind tonight everyone got a restful sleep!

After battling for years trying to keep the parking strip looking decent, we decided it was better to “flip the strip” and stop wasting thousands of gallons of water a year plus all the chemicals we were using. Now it matches the rest of the yard. Our HOA requires us to retain 30% green/grass and Joel jokes about putting astroturf in where the remaining grass is!

Day Two dawned with the promise of pretty significant winds. Not to worry – we were riding over 16 miles downhill through Red’s Canyon? Wrong – it is always demoralizing to be riding downhill into a headwind as you can’t really even stop pedaling. Be that as it may, we had the opportunity to ride past Family Butte and down to Hondoo Arch and Muddy Creek Campground with not too much effort. We had anticipated that this would be our lunch spot and then would climb back up to McKay Flats to our campsite. Based on the increasing winds, our guides Rachel and Zoey made the decision to camp here in some semblance of a wind break. Great decision in the end! To add some adventure to the day we took a 2 hr. hike up and back through the Upper Muddy Creek Gorge which included a total of 10 water crossings!

Once back at camp we set up the tents and tried to add a few windblocks. The sand that was blowing around was so fine that it came through the mesh in the tents and everything was covered in an instant. The wind seemed to die down a bit so Dan and Beatrice set out searching for downed wood for a fire. It was nice to have the fire to take a bit of the chill off.

For the fourth year in a row we signed up for a Holiday River Expeditions trip and were excited to spend four days mountain biking in the southern end of the San Rafael Swell. This was an area that we had never explored so everything would be new!

We arrived in Green River the evening before to do a quick bike check and review our itinerary. We met two other guests, Beatrice and Dan. Dan, a good friend of Joel’s from New Ulm had driven in from MN – we were really excited to have him join us – we had tried for many years but his busy schedule wouldn’t allow him to venture westward until now.

We gathered all the gear and loaded up the vans for a short, 45 minute drive west on I-70. Then a few more miles on the frontage road and we were off! Our first stop was at the historical Swasey Cabin and then a “chunky” descent down to Eagle Arch and Eagle Arch Canyon.

Once in Eagle Canyon, we had to get out! It was just as steep and rocky going up – warranted hopping off the bike a few times. Back at the top it was lunch time and then off to find a campsite for the evening.

I had 26.85 miles on my tracker which included a short hike up to Eagle Arch.

I think the most important thing we learned on this day was to avoid the Swell on a Saturday! Wow … in all the MTB adventures we have been on in the last 3 – 4 years, we had never seen so many dirt bikes, 4 wheel drives and side by side off-road vehicles. Although bicyclists have the right of way in these situations, it seemed the path of least resistance just to get out of their way. Yuck … I hope that we never get to the point that we think that would ever be an alternate way to enjoy the outdoors.

Note to Self!

After training for the 16.4 mile Antelope Island Trail Run at the end of March, I felt I was in a good place to keep up the mileage and run the Coldwater Traverse 11 mile trail run last weekend.

Last year, due to the record snowpack, they had to alter the course which made the first four miles basically flat/downhill. This year they were able to route back to the normal trail which is a very steep uphill for almost that entire four miles.  The weather called for pouring rain most of morning which I was prepared for but not excited about. Proving once again that forecasting weather on the Wasatch Front is really a guess, it turned out to be a perfect day – upper 40’s, overcast, and only a few sprinkles at the end …

Although the course this year had over 1200′ more elevation gain than last year’s reroute, I was only five minutes slower. I was very pleased with myself! Placed “midpack” for the age group. What was really crazy was that a  woman in my age group placed 6th overall out of almost 90 runners. She was 50 minutes faster than me! Not that I would ever need to be that fast, but maybe I should look her up and get a few pointers!

I always try to pick up litter when hiking or trail running, within reason of course – no Kleenex, toilet paper, single socks, etc. I found this gem on the trail run. Take a look at this and let me know if you think you can identify it!

The Women’s Wine Hiking Society on occasion has longer hikes and excursions. The posting for the 3 Day Backpacking trip to Canyonlands National Park looked intriguing as it was to an area of the park that Joel and I had not explored. The group has been extremely well organized, sending out gear and food lists ahead of time and then we had a Zoom call to coordinate carpooling, tent and gear sharing and to discuss the expected weather and water requirements. This is a remote area that has no running water and the camp area that we were going to had no toilets so you carried in about 9 liters of water and bagged and carried your poop out. At 48#, the pack was probably the biggest that I have had since the 5 Day Glacier Peak climb a couple of years ago. But, good training for my upcoming Mt. Olympus climb and Wonderland Trail trip with Bob and Larina.

We carpooled down to a condo in Moab (my driver and tent mate was also named Alison!) Once we did introductions (fellow hikers included; a technical writer, three veterinarians, a lawyer, another retired gal that volunteered with a nonprofit, the communications director for the University of Utah, and a couple that I didn’t remember their occupations,) we ate dinner from a local Thai restaurant and then fought over the rickety bunk beds. Luckily they had enough for 12 people so no one had to sleep on the floor!

We left the condo by 5:30am to get to the trailhead early.

Our “basecamp” was in Chesler Park and the 4+ mile hike wasn’t too bad – a lot of steep areas with about 1500 ft of elevation gain.

It took a little over three hours to get to camp. Once there we set up our tents and then went on a couple of shorter 3 – 5 mile hikes before having dinner.

The next morning we had an option to hike to Druid Arch which was about a 6 mile hike or the Devil’s Kitchen Loop which was about 9 miles. Since I had one neither, I opted for the longer hike. Unfortunately the pace of the group is a lot more leisurely than when Joel and I would set out for a hike or climb. We learned very early upon arriving in Utah that you needed to get on the trail in the dark and off the trails by noon due to the heat. Although it is not usually too hot in April, it hit 76 degrees so by starting a 9 mile hike at 10am, I was not a really happy camper. No shade to speak of except when we stopped for lunch – this was the point in the trip that it made sense that we were all carrying in at least 20# of water!

On the last day we had more of an “alpine start” and were back to the cars in less than 2 hours.

On the way back to Moab we stopped at the famous “Newspaper Rock.”

All in all an interesting group of gals and a fun trip, exploring another part of Utah that I hadn’t seen before. Tune in for more adventures!