See the start of this series in the blog: Finding the Magic Number
Hiking: 5.7 miles, Backpacking: 0 miles
I was thankful to arrive at our campground earlier than I had anticipated. Thanks to our long Day 1 drive. We found our campsite, a state park, nestled about 12 miles outside of Island in the Sky.
Canyonlands is so big and so vastly different in environments, it is broken up into 3 parts; Island in the Sky, Needles, and the Maze. We visited only two of the three districts. The Maze is just as it sounds, a series of canyons without trails that without a good wayfinding system you could get lost.
Once settled into our camp, we drove the few miles to the ranger station and checked in for our future backpacking trip and planned a small 2-mile hike at sunset on the Grand View Trail. I’m not sure I can describe the hike, but in a few sentences I would describe say: Think of having a bird’s eye view looking into a huge canyon and seeing only a ledge of another huge canyon and not being able to see the bottom of the canyon inside. Now think of a bunch of those canyons interconnecting and all leading to the Green or Colorado river … which is so deep within a canyon that you can’t see the water, but you know it’s there somewhere.
That night as we ate dinner, we saw a kit fox about 10 feet away from us. We found out later, that the ranger thinks he has a den near our campsite, since he doesn’t bother campers, but is seen a lot around the site. As we climbed into bed, it started a light rain which was nice since the day had been hot. Little did we know it wasn’t the last we would see of the rain.
The next morning, we left camp early to visit, Arches National Park. Canyonlands and Arches are directly across from one another and I’m still not quite sure why they don’t combine the parks into one. Canyonlands get 1/10 the visitors Arches gets, but Arches really could be considered a 4th district of Canyonlands.
In preplanning I had wanted to visit 7 viewpoints—Park Ave, Balanced Rock, North/South Window, Double Arch, Delicate Arch, Sand Dune Arch, and Landscape Arch—however after seeing the first 3, we were pretty much ‘arched’ out. The park has one road in and it’s a bit like Disneyland, loads of people, hot sun, and trails guiding you in a single direction. None of which is our idea of a fun.
We originally skipped Park Ave for the way out and started at Balanced Rock where we encountered our first bus of people, then we went to North/South Window which was fun. We took the ‘primitive’ trail which is to say it went over some small rock areas with the trail outlined by rocks and cairns. By the time we had circled the Windows the people were coming in droves and we were feeling a bit claustrophobic so we skipped Double Arch and headed toward Delicate Arch. The sun was up and a 5+ mile walk to see what appeared to be identical to what we just saw didn’t sound fun, so we went to the viewpoint instead.
Along the way we passed Wolfe Ranch, we had high hopes it would be a lot like the homestead we saw in Texas at Guadalupe Mtns, but it was more of a cabin in the ground. What caught the kids was a bull frog we saw in the stream nearby and we spent maybe 20 minutes contemplating what the Petroglyphs nearby meant. Isabel was so interested in the glyphs she bought a small field guide book in the store. We used this guide for the rest of the trip to try and understand the people who lived here long ago.
Our next stop was the Sand Dune Arch. The rocks around what created this ‘arch’ had eroded enough to create beach sand and make you feel like you were playing at the beach. It was an intriguing to find this bundle of rocks and the wind that whipped through them created a beach like setting.
It was sunny and hot and our last stop was Landscape Arch a 1+ mile hike in, with about 200 other interested people. Landscape Arch is the widest arch in the park and as recently as 1991 succumb to the perils of nature and been whittled away to a more and more delicate arch, until one day it will fall completely. Along the way we saw a few lizards and other dessert insects, but otherwise we only say loads of people.
My parenting style I think is a lot like the French. Allow your children the freedom to find and explore their own boundaries and allow them the responsibility of not going past those boundaries. So, when Noah asked if he could climb on a few rocks while we waited for Isabel and Will, I said sure without thinking of asking which rocks or where… why would I. The next thing I know, some woman is a gasp, I look up to see what her commotion is to find Noah about 50’, maybe 75’, in the air climbing on these long rocks that are maybe 3 feet wide. I tell her, he’s my child and not to worry and I’ll never forget the look she gave me. She thought I was totally crazy and told me how kids shouldn’t be trusted, how they are fragile, and how they could get hurt. I wonder what she would say if I told her, I believe kids shouldn’t have limits put on them by others and:
- I take my kids backpacking… in the wild,
- They can start fires… with flint and steel,
- They ride their bikes around the block… by themselves, and worst of all,
- I let them climb trees… as high as they feel safe and they have a profound sense of identity and self… because I let them do all these things.
Noah was confident he could climb and he was careful going up and down, sure it was high, but to me it was no different than a tree, yes he could fall, but he wouldn’t go that high if he was worried or scared. How many times have you not done something because of self-doubt or someone told you that you shouldn’t and how many times have you either regretted not doing it, wished you had tried something, or realized that you were stronger than you thought? My words of advice, let your children be brave and discover new things.
By the time we finished with Landscape Arch we were done. We had no interest in hiking Park Ave and “seeing the arches up close,” because we felt we already had.
The interesting thing about Arches National Park, is to think a million years of monsoon like rain had eroded what was just regular rock into these beautiful arches was amazing, however we could have done without the people and all the arches looked pretty much the same. So, seeing one made me feel like we had seen them all. We finished the Park by about 1 and pushed on to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Where we camped just outside the park at a place called, “Needles Outpost.”
Needles Outpost is right on the edge of the park. It’s the perfect camp place against a huge rock face with beautiful views of the park. At the end of August, we had the place all to ourselves. I didn’t realize they had Teepees to camp in, but next time I would totally go for one of those to save ourselves pitching two tents. When we camp, we have one tent for Will and 1 kid and one for me and the other. That night Noah slept with me.
Before we left on the trip, Noah purchased a flint and stone from Portland Saturday Market and was dying to try it out. We had practiced once at home and he couldn’t wait to be the official fire maker on the trip. This site was the first opportunity we had. It took him about 5 minutes, but he lit the fire with very little help from me.
That night tested our camping equipment to the extreme. We were caught in a monsoon. It started torrential rains around 11pm and kept raining that way until 1:30am. I woke up thinking a snake had crawled under the tent and under my sleeping pad. It didn’t particularly alarm me because of the amount of rain we had and I had a tent and 3” of air between me and the snake. I dreamed and thought in amusement of what type of snake it would be and questioned my ‘fear.’
I had a huge growing moment that night, I realized that for last 14 years I had closed myself into a smaller and smaller box with illogical fear of what might happen or what I or shouldn’t do, or if I do ‘x’ I might get hurt. I laid there stiff as a board on ‘my snake’ for about an hour, out of sheer stubbornness, continuing to calm my mind and say the snake won’t hurt me, he just wants a dry spot, he’s been drowned out of his home, the snake won’t hurt me, and really what would I do… get up and beat it with a stick… where would I find that stick in the desert? Should I move my tent… in the rain? What really were my choices here?
When finally, I was sore from laying so still I carefully put my hand on the ground away from the area of the snake and my hand sank at least 3 inches. I felt like I was pushing down on a waterbed. I realized what I thought was a snake for the last hour was actually a torrent of water floating our tent and trying to wash Noah and I away. The rain was so intense and so loud that when I yelled to Will that it was only 3 seconds between lightning and thunder he didn’t respond except to repeat what I had said to him back at me. Our physical bodies were less than 4 feet apart, but the rain was coming down so hard and was so loud he couldn’t hear me talking to him! The thunder was so close that is made it so loud, it sounded like a bullet going off in your ears. We surmised the lightning must have struck the plateau we were at the base of.
The next morning, I found one of my sandals that I had left just outside the tent over 8’ from where it started. The overnight rain had greened up everything and brought out the biggest, badest, unbelievable mosquitos we had ever seen. Nothing kept these things from biting. I had bites through three layers of clothing and I was using mosquito repellent! By the time we had packed up I had over 30 bites on my bicep alone. Where the mosquitos came from I’ll never know, since where we camped was miles from any water source.
We were supposed to start backpacking that morning at 4am. We had a 7+ mile day ahead of us, but with the amount of rain we received the night before, we postponed our start by 4 hours until the ranger station opened so we could ask about flash floods. Good thing we did, I had forgotten to buy some wag bags (Waste Alleviation and Gelling Bags aka poop pack-out bags). Check out where we went next.