Andrea and I decided to venture out of the Northern Wasatch “Comfort Zone” down south a ways to Mill Creek Canyon. We parked outside the Church Fork Picnic Area and hiked up Grandeur Peak (8,222′.) It is a pretty consistently steep trail but there were amazing fall colors popping so we got distracted and were able to take a lot of “mini” breaks along the way. I think everyone expected a poor color year in Utah due to the lack of moisture this last fall/winter … I say, “Not So!”

Technically not really Friday but I did think about working on this post last Friday …

After Dad successfully lead the Pioneer Traverse Expedition to the dual summits of Mt. McKinley (now Denali) in 1971, he decided it would be fun to take the family to see the Big One the following summer. Not technically the whole family … where were Natalie and Larina???

I found the following gems as I have been scanning more of Dad’s slides … enjoy!

The next project after finishing the mountain bike trip blog posts was to start scanning some of the additional slides Dad handed me in July. One of the first groups I came across was from when we lived in South Africa and were “vacationing” in Lesotho. The photos are of us visiting cave paintings … odd coincidence since I just posted about the pictographs we saw on our mountain bike trip!

When we got back to Green River on Friday we had the good fortune of being in the middle of the Green River Melon Days. The biggest thing that goes on in this little community …

Wanting to delay our return to “reality,” we/I decided it would be fun to run/jog in the Green River Melon Days 5K early Saturday morning. Nothing more than spending a couple dollars to support the local high school which includes Grades 7 – 12 and has only 77 students and 9 teachers. Crazy, considering my graduating class alone was 535 students! The principal of the school was handing out the t-shirts and manning the booth on Friday and then was in charge of officiating and running the race … talk about multi-tasking! I think every teacher at the school had at least 4 – 5 different roles.

After the run we went to one of the melon stands and loaded up with 53 lbs of melons to be distributed through our neighborhood. YUM!

All good things must come to an end, sadly … We had a leisurely, made-to-order omelette breakfast, packed up and hit the road for a promised “fast” 27 miles out to our pick up location. Despite a couple hills where I decided that walking was a faster option, it WAS fast. So fast, in fact that we arrived over an hour before our pick-up time! After a nice lunch, we loaded our bikes and headed about two hours back to Green River.

All in all, Joel logged in about 80 miles over the four days and I was closer to 70. The roads were 4WD and then 2WD on the last day and the only real challenge was the sand that we had in some places. Really tough to ride in sand and counterintuitive not to “over correct.” We had a great time and the group dynamics worked very well – it seemed like the smaller group of six clients and two guides really “meshed.”

Already looking at the calendar for next year! Should we trade in our road bikes for mountain bikes???HMMM

From Sunset Pass we had hoped to be able to ride to the campground at Clearwater Canyon. It was called the “Cocktail Campground” by our guides as the camp was a very short walking distance to the Grand Canyon where you could sit at the edge and look at the Colorado River below you for an amazing sunset (with your cocktail, of course.) Unfortunately, when we got there, it was already full! So we rode another 5ish miles to the junction with Cove Canyon and headed up to a nice, secluded campground for our last night.

On the second day of the trip we detoured for a hike to a “hidden” pictograph panel. This is sometimes called the “Perfect Panel” or the “Hitchhiker Panel.” Through an investigation of some obscure route tips, a couple of years ago one of the guides for Holiday River Expeditions and some clients were able to find this. If you look on the internet, although the desire was to keep this “hidden” so as not to encourage vandalism and such, people have now published GPS Waypoints so if you really want to see the panel you can find it. Good Luck.

We broke camp and then descended the very steep Flint Trail switchbacks and rode out to the Golden Staircase where we hopped off the bikes and looked down towards the Maze area. Unfortunately, it was not in the cards this trip to actually get to the Maze Overlook. Joel was disappointed as this was one of the main reasons that he was interested in this trip. The Maze area of Canyonlands National Park is so remote that it is rarely visited unless you have a true 4wd and an experienced driver. Maybe next time!

Once we rode back from the Golden Stairs, we stopped at a major intersection where I opted to relax (today ended up being a shorter riding day for me – about 12 miles total.) Joel and the rest of the team took an additional 12 mile spin out and back to Teapot Rock.

From the intersection we then rode a couple miles up to Sunset Pass where we had a great campsite full of petrified wood, a “bathroom” with a view and then a beautiful sunrise on Gunsight Butte.

With two vans loaded and ready to go early Tuesday morning, we headed three hours south of Green River to the Hans Flat Ranger Station in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. At this point the van with the bikes and guests dropped everything off and left us with the support van with all the food and gear. Our guides, Jack and Ben, checked in with the rangers and once again, our plans ended up changing due to the impending rainstorm.

Our route for today ended up about 18 miles total as we pedaled out to the Millard Canyon Overlook, got rained on for about 45 minutes, ate lunch at the Bagpipe Butte Overlook while trying to dry out our raingear and then parked the van at our campsite for the evening – Camp Flint Seep. We then took a short ride out to look at the Flint Trail Overlook and “the “”The Neck.”

After a relatively quick drive from North Ogden to Green River, we grabbed a bite to eat at a local gas station turned food truck turned Mexican restaurant – carbo-loading at it’s finest with giant, almost foot-long burritos! Then off to the check-in at Holiday River Expeditions office.

Joel and I both rented bikes so we got “fitted” and then we got a quick run down on operating them. We found out that the company had turned over it’s entire fleet of bikes in the spring so the bikes we were riding were only a couple months old and pretty amazing. Probably only Dad or Ross will find this interesting but we rode Specialized Stumpjumpers with dual shocks on the front , single shock in the back, 12-speed with only one ring in the front, “dropper” seats that you could hydraulically drop or lift for descending and disc brakes.

As it was over 100degrees in the Salt Lake City area the week before, we watched the weather closely and were relieved when the temperatures dropped a bit. Unfortunately, with the lower temperatures, we were advised that there were sporadic heavy rain showers potentially passing through the area almost every day. Depending on where we were riding at any given time, there was the possibility that it would be impassable for the support van due to the clay and sand roads turning into “gumbo” (as Joel likes to say.) We were given a tentative itinerary that differed from the published one but we were all flexible and were just happy to be embarking on this adventure.

We got to meet the “team” which consisted of me and Joel, four other clients and two guides. I was relieved when I had called the Holiday River Expedition office a couple weeks ago and was told that there was another woman on the trip – 71 years old. I figured at least I wouldn’t be the slowest – HAHA. OOPS, she cancelled at the last minute and I WAS the slowest! All the other riders had a lot of bike experience and Joel had done a great job racking up the miles prior to the trip. I was not so diligent!