Our Grand Adventure to Capitol Reef

The real next adventure I should be blogging about is my visit to Utah while Stan went to China for a work conference, but we're working on getting pictures for that post, so we'll just post the week following adventure.

We took a trip to Capitol Reef in Southern Utah September 18th-20th and met up with the same two friends that we adventured with at the Grand Canyon last year, Joe and Adam.

Sometimes New Mexico looks exactly like you would expect it to look, brown and desolate. We love an open road!

 On our drive there, we got to an area that I said "This sure looks like it would be a great spot for Indian Ruins." Seconds later, we saw a sign for some! So we took a quick pit stop to see what we could see.

Scott was really funny with his hat when we got out of the car. He was trying to hold tight :)

This was a tower and the little square in the front there was a tunnel that led to the Kiva.

Stan in front of the Kiva with the room structures in the background.

Still holding his hat.

A view looking the other way.

We got back on the road and headed into Utah. Southern Utah is one of my favorite places. I LOVE the red rock and mountains!

It was such a beautiful day and the Colorado River in the background was quite the view.

When we got to the park, we stopped in at Fruita, where the park visitors' center was. Along the road there were a few things of interest to see, one were some really neat petroglyphs.

Here is Stan with the petroglyphs in the background.

Here is a zoomed in picture of those drawings. My interpretation of them is that this is a place of lots of deer.

Scott was such a cute happy camper. He really appreciates it when one of us sits by him in the backseat.

We got to our campsite and set up, had a great campfire and s'mores, then went to bed.

We woke up to this beautiful sky, this is looking westish

And this is eastish

Stan and Scott at our campsite. We really enjoyed it a lot.

When we were at camp, Scott would play in his playpen

Friday was our big hiking day. We drove to the Upper Muley Twist trailhead to begin our adventure.

This was a view from our car as we were heading to the trailhead. It was quite a view!

A look down the road

The boys in the back: Adam, Scott, and Joe

The beginning of our hike. It was such a beautiful day!

Double Arch. There were quite a few arches along the hike too.

The hike began in a wash...

Can you see us? We sometimes call Joe a gazelle, the way that he would hike up all the hills. I told him he had to take the camera anytime he went to get pictures of the views I would not see (because we both know I was not going to hike up them) :)

There we are again

The boys

We, well at least I, was astounded at the beautiful rock. I could not get enough of it! I love how you can see the striations in the rock.

Saddle Arch

This is Joe's artistic picture on one of his hikes up higher than I went

 We stopped for lunch at the point where the trail headed up to the ridge.

Stan and Joe making our delicious parfaits.

Scott started sucking his bottom lip tons on this trip. He was playing with the carrier during this picture.

Stan with Saddle Arch behind him

And up we went...

Another group picture thanks to a tree and it's perfectly placed branch.

 And got up to this view!

Then we hiked along the ridge...for a REALLY REALLY REALLY long time...

Awesome rock formation

Joe had his frisbee and we would randomly throw it along the way. I tried to catch a panorama of the boys throwing it, it almost worked...

Family picture in front of an arch, we promise Scott was alive, he was just really into his nap

He REALLY appreciated breaks.

Joe was appreciating this break too.

Scott loves being put up in the air.

He loves Stan

After a REALLY REALLY REALLY long time (Stan just told me that it wasn't THAT long, but it sure felt like it) walking along the edge, we finally got to the place where we were supposed to head down back into the canyon. It was quite the scramble at times, but fun to climb over the rock.

Stan scouting out our route (because the cairns were not placed very well)

In his scouting, he found we had to backtrack because there was a very narrow spot with water at the bottom

So we took a break with this cute boy

The boys hiked out to an edge

While I waited back here for them

In this part of the canyon, the rock was so neat

We went down, down, down, and finally were able to reach the wash again. (Can you tell that I felt like this hike was eternal? It was a 9 miler but each phase of it felt like 9 miles to me. My shoes were very unkind to my feet during the hike so maybe that is why it seemed so bad).

When we got to the bottom, the boys went up a slot canyon a ways to see what they could find. I stayed back with Scott. It was fun to be able to use the radios and hear about what they were seeing.

When they got back we made the long trek out. We were all going pretty slow by the end.

We had ourselves a delicious BBQ when we got back to camp and some dutch oven cobbler. The next morning we decided against any more hiking and headed out for the 8 hour trip home. It was fun camping with the boys again this year and we sure saw some neat stuff!