Living Life On the Edge with Stan and Mel: Mesa and Grand Gulch Adventure!

We wanted to go on a camping/backpacking trip but knew that it would be hard to backpack with the boys, and hike as far as we wanted to with the boys. So my parents were super nice and said we could drop the boys off for a few days and go have our adventure. So on Tuesday, April 11 we packed up and headed that evening to Mesa.

We headed out early the next morning for our camping adventure. We drove up to Grand Gulch in Utah. It was such a peaceful drive. 😏

Passing Monument Valley

Handsome companion

Stan's parents gave us(really the kids) this book a while back. Dad used to read it to Stan when he was little. It takes place right where we camped and hiked so we decided to read it on this trip. It was so fun! It was a great book and neat to read it while we were there in the canyons he talks about.

Mexican Hat Rock. As we passed Mexican Hat, Utah we found why it was named that. There is a rock that looks like a sombrero. Zoom in, it's right there in the middle, to the left a little.

Grand Gulch is up on top of a 1200 ft mesa. The road is called Moki Dugway and is quite the winding road. At the point of this picture we could not see where the road went after the turn. It was seriously carved out of the cliff and I want to what the person that looked at the cliff and thought "oh yes, I can build a road there." was thinking. :)

We found ourselves a perfect little camp spot, set up camp, and donned our hiking bags for a little afternoon hike.

We saw this paint brush flower a few times. They were soooo beautiful. Notice the dirt surrounding the flowers, we'll talk about that in a minute.

We hiked down into a canyon near our camp spot and found this ruin. One of my favorite things to see at ruins is wood. it just amazes me that the wood was put there 1000+ years ago and is still there!

A piece of corrugated pottery

We headed across the gulch to the other side and found this ruin on top of a peak.

The view from that ruin. Such a beautiful day!

The way we hike when we don't have children with us :) It was fun to scramble without a trail on this hike.

What wasn't fun about not having a trail is the VAST amount of cryptobiotic crust that was EVERYWHERE. We could hardly walk a direction without having to carefully pick our way onward. It got to be quite annoying. :)

Back at camp, Stan built an awesome fire in our little pan. It worked perfect.

Reading by firelight

The next morning we picked up camp and packed our backpacking backpacks ready for the next two days of adventure.

Our destination was somewhere that way.

Timers and cars make for great pre-hike pictures.

And we are headed down there. Across the canyon is a ruin...

There it is. How they got there, we don't know. This spot is kind of an island.

When we got to the floor of the canyon, we set up camp and got ready to hike the bottom of the canyon to find lots of fun ruins and all that came with them.

I love spending this kind of time with Stan. It is so fun to walk and talk. We did see two other people on this day, but besides that we were all alone and it was so fun, relaxing, and peaceful. I love him!

For the most part we hiked in the river bed, but there was a small spot that had water blocking and so we followed the trail up into these bushes. I felt like I was in a jungle.

Our first stop was Big Man Panel named for...the big men you see there. These were not small paintings. You can see the hand prints all along the side of the wall for reference as to how big these people were.

Such a perfect day!

As we were hiking along, we thought we saw something up off of the canyon floor, and it was something!

This little room was probably a grainery as guessed by what was in it...

It was neat to see their building structure, the small sticks covered in clay and surrounded by rock.

And then there were petroglyphs

and some painting

and this metate.

We saw these "vv" a lot

And LOTS of hand prints.

Corn

These people were cool

Corn husks inside of the structure.

And on the little ledge in front of the window or door or whatever it was were these corn cobs.

The grass bindings were neat too

An arch

Well we came to another ruin, and this one had quite the field of cacti in front of it guarding it from us, but we made it through. Not without being poked a lot though! It was another neat ruin.

Stan standing in the field of cacti

Lots of tiny windows

Some one had gathered these artifacts.

Etchings in the stone.

What used to be the roof of this structure, it had collapsed but neat that it was still there.

We thoroughly checked out that site and then gladly got out of the thorn ridden field to the canyon floor again.

We thought this was a funny site. I have never seen a vine of cacti hanging like this.

We had one more stop we wanted to get to, a large panel of petroglyphs/rock art. It was neat!

That panel was up this canyon that was pretty rocky. Stan has an old ankle injury that was already acting up pretty good by the time we got here, but then he hurt it really good on this rocky part. I am glad we were not present for the flash floods that bring these messes.

On our way back to camp. Limping along.

We got to our tent about 9:30 (another thing we could never do with children), got ready for bed, read a little of our book (Stan had taken pictures without my knowing!) and then fell asleep. We enjoyed the most lazy morning ever of camping I think I have ever had. We woke up on and off all morning but didn't get out of our sleeping bags until 9:30. I felt so rejuvenated!

Headed up and out. Stan's ankle was feeling ok at the beginning of this hike but it got progressively worse.

On our drive out of this spot we came across a cattle drive! We were so excited because it was exactly what we were reading about in our book.

This cowboy led us through the herd. He had on snazzy chaps and a vest and everything.

The rest of the that afternoon was very relaxing. We found another camping spot, set up camp, read, napped, had dinner, another fire, and went to bed early. It was marvelous. In the morning, we packed up and headed to our last hiking spot. We had booked a reservation to hike to a ruin that they only allow a certain number to go to each day.

Ready to hike!

This picture doesn't show to it as much but our car was DIRTY. So much dust!

Headed down into the canyon

The ruin is on the other side of the canyon behind me

A closer view

Down and back up, here we were.

One last steep climb

And up this crack in the rock

Here I come

And here we are.

A little pamphlet they had said that all these holes show a different angle of the canyon and were probably used to keep watch

This ruin was neat because we were allowed to go into a hallway that was part of the main structure. Stan getting ready to head in

Inside the main structure there were some neat characteristics, like seeing this wood. They were so meticulous.

The make up of the wall, big rocks, little rocks, clay. And neat to see some of their wall paint still on

In one of the rooms a lot of the clay had come off of the wall and you could see the straw/sticks/wood holding it up.

Inside the hallway

And me inside of the hallway looking the other direction

Another section of the wall where the clay had come off

This room had a ledge all along the back wall and even a little shelf

This room was FULL of corn cobs!

Check out the tying job on the right

And then that one in the middle.

This roof was in great condition

As we were hiking out, we looked back again across the canyon and saw a ton more ruins that we didn't see before and we could have totally checked out. Guess we'll have to go back. :)

The boys had so much fun at Grandma and Grandpa's and with their aunts and uncles. We were so grateful for them watching them. Sterling wouldn't come to me at first when we got back. Here are a few of their adventures while there.

One time, Grandma asked Scott to pick up his toys and his response was that he couldn't because Sterling was on top of him and indeed he was. These two love to wrestle This is Scott trying to get out from under Sterling

Jenni took the boys on a walk to Aunt Jan's and Scott ran pulling Sterling the whole way (about a quarter mile):

Sterling LOVED this stool:

Sunday morning jam and color session in Jenni's room: