Camping hike near Kanab

Now for something a little different.  It has been a while since we did any backpacking, mostly while we lived in Europe.  I'm more used to staying on the move while on the trail, so stopping for the night is a bit of a foreign concept to me.  This summer we're doing some training with heavier packs, and overnight camping seems to fit into that idea.

As practice run, we loaded up and walked out of our RV park to find a place in the hills to spend the night:

More pretty desert flowers:

Overlooking Kanab, another nice afternoon:

Vermillion Cliffs, love the colors around here:

Fun trail heading up to the top of the plateau:

Go that way:

When I posed for this, I wasn't thinking the caption might be "That's my butt":

Yes, I'm still taking pictures...

The ATV trail on top, quite sandy but the trail network made it easy to explore the area:

Checking out the canyons:

Camp cooking while John goes for his daily run (red beans and rice, that was pretty good actually):

Hey, we timed it with a full moon, what do you know.

We were too busy setting up camp and cooking dinner, so I forgot to get a photo of our tent before it got dark.  Oh well, we had a tent and slept in it.  Everything went well.

First flower of the early morning:

The moon on the other side of the sky:

Looking over at Tom's Canyon on the way back:

Stopping to smell the flowers:

Breaking into a bottle of Lemonade Mountain Dew that John found, in order to empty it and carry it out.  Using a multi-tool on a piece of trash somehow struck me as photo-worthy:

Good morning Kanab!

So we made it back in time for the lottery for The Wave, but still no luck with that.  Ah well, we tried!  Our days around Kanab were enjoyable in any case.  Now we just have to come back another time!

Hoodoos!

John visited southern Utah with Randall in 2003, and they had found some really cool rock formations.  Since then he has been trying to figure out where they are.  No luck last time we came through here, although we saw some great toadstools.  However, this time a lady in the Kanab visitor center knew what John was asking about.  She directed us to Big Water and a 9-mile hike up a creek.  Time to go explore!

Starting up the big wide creek:

It's a low-water day:

First glimpses of the hoodoos:

Yep, these sure are cool!

The pinkest conglomerate I've ever seen:

Amazing how these erode, with the softer stone forming long columns under the hard cap:

John is feeling a bit hoodoo-y:

Lots of gawking and photo shooting:

Tiny hoodoos in the making:

John carried a flat rock around, looking for a particular hoodoo:

Here she is!  The Hoodoo Queen is still there and still fabulous:

John has grown considerably since 2003.  Or Randall's photo framing was better than mine:

Can't get enough of these beauties:

Worth a selfie:

John returning the flat rock to the creek (!):

Love the desert flowers, this one apparently a cactus growing in the middle of a bush:

Time for a run back!

Thank you hoodoos!

Coral Pink Sand Dunes and dinosaurs

Next up - southern Utah!  Kanab is a decent home base for exploring the area and participating in the daily lottery for The Wave.  One more lottery day for us, so it's unlikely we'll get it, but we are enjoying seeing other things in the area while we're here

We spent an afternoon at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes state park, an excellent place to see something new.

Like pretty pink sand dunes:

Wandering around with shoes off:

Other creature tracks, plenty to try to ID (we kind of suck at that):

Yucca and a clear blue sky:

Checking out the path around the dunes:

There are even some flowers growing in the sand.

It was worth the trek up to the top of one of the higher dunes:

Especially for the run down the other side!  You can't really see in this photo, but there are plenty of ATV tracks in the sand.  Looks like a really fun place for some off-roading.  Also "dune boarding," pretty funny.  For us, we would make due with running fast down the hill:

A study in per-speck-tive - John is the "speck" in the upper left as I'm about to run down:

One of our stranger timer pictures - it's not easy finding a place to set the camera down around here:

Just a little way down the road we were told about a nice hike to see dinosaur tracks.  We had no idea we would also find our own "Wave"  :)  Hi John!

Finding the tracks kept us amused - here's a big one (along with the very-helpful photo to verify that we were actually looking at the right thing):

Another good find:

Little bitty tracks:

Imagine the size of that dinosaur:

And one more:

Walking in the steps of giants:

It's a gorgeous spot, worth the 2 mile trek along a sandy road to get there:

A rock formation worthy of the Beehive State:

I leave you with this image.  You're welcome.

Grand Teton NP

We had time on the way back from Yellowstone for a stopover at the Grand Teton National Park.  Glad we did - the mountains sure are stunning.

Views from a walk at Colter Bay:

Looking across Jackson Lake at the mountains:

Oxbow Bend was a great place for wildlife viewing, including seeing some river otters!  Also white pelicans and other interesting birds.  And another great look at the mountains (those were easier to photograph than the animals), including Mount Moran:

Another look at Oxbow Bend:

More staring at the mountains, this time across a field of sage:

Elk tracks in the sidewalk?

A pretty valley across Jenny Lake, would be fun to come back and do some hiking here:

Finally a view of Grand Teton itself!  We didn't get that far south the first afternoon, rain clouds thwarted us the next day, but on our final morning we saw this during our drive south:

Yay for GTNP!