Escalante

Yesterday we got home from a fun backpack trip to Coyote Gulch in Escalante.  We made the 6 hour drive with Sam + Marie-Reine and Tommy + Rilee Wednesday evening after work.  We got to the trail head just before 2:00 a.m. and because of flash flood warnings and lots of lightning (but no rain) we decided to camp at the trail head and wait for morning to hike in.  Here we are just after sunrise and a whole 3 hours of sleep, hoping to beat the heat.

The hike in was beautiful, but even in the early morning it was already hot.  We had wonderful, hot weather the entire time we were down there.  To escape the heat we spent a lot of time swimming in the water where we found a few deep pools.

The water was so sandy and muddy that we joked that we were swimming in chocolate milk. 

We had a lot of fun swimming, hiking, exploring, shooting blow guns, napping, playing sequence, catching frogs and just hanging out.

We usually come here in the end of April, so we were excited to see how different it would be going in the middle of the summer.  The main difference was the temperature.  It was so hot down there and even the water was warm.  It didn't cool off very much at night and we would all just lie awake at night because it was so warm.  We definitely didn't need our sleeping bags...

There were also a lot more bugs and tons of lizards and frogs.  It really is an adventure being there and just enjoying nature for a few days.  We slept out in the dirt and I couldn't help but be a little nervous of bugs, spiders, scorpions, mice and bats.

We hiked out Saturday evening.  Again, we didn't want to be hiking out in the heat of the day, especially because there is a giant sand hill that you have to hike up.  We got to the top of the sand hill just as the sun was setting.  It was beautiful to look down from the top of that hill and see the hill, coyote gultch, the Escalante River, and all of the red rock in the evening lighting.

 The only problem with our plan was that as we hiked through the crack in the wall and lifted our packs over the cliff with a rope, the sun set, and once we were at the very top it was dark.  We got out our headlamps and set out to finish the last 2-3 miles that were between us and the truck.   Because it was dark when we got out of the canyon, we never were able to see where the truck was and we just started heading in the direction we thought it was.  Nobody agreed as to which direction we needed to be heading though.  Some people thought we needed to be heading more south as we hiked, and some thought more north.  So, after about an hour of hiking, we were completely lost.  Nothing looked familiar and we had no idea which direction we needed to go.

We knew that the truck was sitting on a plateau, but in all directions nothing seemed right.  It was all either too hilly, too flat, or too something.  The boys have all been here so many times, but in the dark everything looks different.  We would decide to go in one direction and try to reach the top of a hill.  But as we would hike, it seemed like we would never get to the top of the hill.  And from there, again, everything looked different.  It started getting stressful and we considered camping out for the night, right there on the rocks.  We said a quick prayer and decided to try one more direction.  We thought we saw a plateau off to the far right that looked familiar, and we decided to head there.  After hiking for a few minutes we heard Rilee yell "Wahoo!" and we knew we had found it.  We ended up hiking for probably an extra hour and may have just gone in circles, but we feel lucky that everything worked out the way it did.  And looking back on it now it was quite the adventure...

We spent the night again since it was almost midnight and we were all exhausted and then drove home early Sunday morning .  We had such a great time and can't wait for next year!