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Published: March 30th 2010
On Friday I had flashbacks to two springs ago, staring out into the back yard through 6' high windows, glaring at the darkening skies and impending blowing snow. Two years ago I had a house full of people gathered from as far away as Vermont, New York and Long Beach to float with us down the San Juan river in SE Utah. There was no backup plan. And no matter how much we furrowed our brows at that angry sky, no matter how much my blood pressure went through the roof and my hair turned grey strand by strand, nothing was going to make the sun come out and make it all ok.
As a desperate last-ditch measure I picked up the phone and called the Sand Island launch office - not an easy phone number to come by on a non-business day - and asked pleadingly what the weather was doing over there. Mind you 'over there' is only an hour and a half west of here and therefore had no high hopes but the voice on the other end, after listening to our plight, said 'it's sunny, calm and close to 60 - come on over!' We ended
up having a fantastic trip with picture-perfect weather in quintessential Utah river country. That's just kind of how trips to Utah typically go...
Flash forward to this past Friday, staring out the same windows at the same typical Spring weather nonsense and going batshit crazy because we were all packed up and ready to roll. I needed to go camping. It's just that time of year and I've been cooped up too many months. In my past life a little weather wouldn't stop me from anything. Hell, a LOT of weather never really stopped me from anything. In my present life I have two children, one of which has some serious opinions about a lot of things and the other of which is in the tempestuous waters of being between one and two and isn't yet battle-hardened and time-tested to the weekend death-march adventures of her family. So we paused. We ate blueberry pancakes and slowly drank our coffee. The grey sky turned shades darker and finally looked more like black, the Sleeping Ute disappeared entirely, the thermometer was going DOWN from the low 40s down into the 30s and, yes, our favorite, the trees outside started to dance
in a wind that was picking up.
A complicating factor is that it's spring and Utah is the destination. And it's Spring Break for a whole lot of kids. This means that campsites at Canyonlands fabulous little campground were going to be hard to come by. They always are unless you're there early. Sitting around sipping coffee for an hour doesn't help chances of getting one if you finally decide to get your butt in gear. Which we did end up doing - I think Todd decided that it would be better to pack up two cranky kids and drive into a blinding snowstorm to go sleep in a tent than put up with me all weekend being grumpy and petulant about him not deciding to do so.
The drive to Canyonlands is also about an hour and a half and the whole drive was just comical. When we started loading the truck a few flakes were coming down, an hour later when we were ready to shove off it was snowing, by the time we turned onto the highway it was really coming down. The first truck that went by us kicked up a rock and put
a nice crack in the $500 windshield. Awesome. The baby was crabby and Maisy started chanting about wanting to watch a movie. Then the wind picked up and turned the snow sideways and started to stick to the road. Todd started wondering why the hell we'd put all of the booze in the back of the truck.
But there's no turning back now, OH NO. By golly we are going even if it kills us. During the whole drive the weather was just about the exact opposite of what one might call 'camping weather' but there lingered some nameless hope that at some point it was going to change. We started to run out of distance for this to happen when suddenly somewhere between Newspaper Rock and the park boundary, the snow stopped, the wind calmed down a bit and, can you believe it? the skies lightened up and we swore we saw a patch of blue up there. We rolled into the campground expecting the worse since it was nearly 1pm and found to our disbelief that the place was half empty. We scored the nicest site in the campground and all but did little happy dances for
our good fortune. Well maybe I danced around a little. Within an hour the campground was full. This obsession with finding a spot there is an unusual one for us - we used to avoid such structure like the plague. But now - with two kids - somehow that picnic table, water and sense of little community, well I don't know what happened but they're kind of NICE. There. I admitted it. Let's move on.
The other nice thing about the campground is the fun to be had around your campsites - caves, amazing sandstone to wander up and down and around - the kids dig it, we dig it, the views are amazing, the site we had was sheltered from the weather (which did continue by the way, but only sporadically and usually only when Todd was trying to start a fire). It was, let's just say, brisk for the rest of that first day but tolerable and we ventured out on a short hike after the compound was set up. Wrap the family in down jackets and enjoy the 30 degrees.
The one nice thing about weather is how beautiful it makes such wide-open vistas. While
cloudless days are lovely, the moods that clouds and storms on the horizon can bring are unmatchable. The big skies of Utah are always a fascinating palette on not-so-perfect days.
We spent the evening trying to keep Addy from falling into the fire or finding cliffs to launch herself off of. Without a doubt it will be a year or two before I bring this kid to the Grand Canyon. She is just way too determined to off herself and loves to run away from the person trying to save her...so I'm just thinking that 2000' sheer drop-offs and this kid just aren't a good match. Luckily the canyon isn't going anywhere. It was nice to have her in about 6" of padded warm clothing because for a change her face-plants were very cushioned affairs. She'd trip and fall and look like Randy from A Christmas Story, unable to get herself back up. That's my second reference to Randy in this blog...I'll have to come up with a new pop reference for wearing too many clothes.
It probably got into the high 20s overnight as the clouds moved out and the big moon and stars showed up. The
dog's bowl had ice in it.
Our hike the next day was lovely as we took the trail into Chesler Park from the end of the reasonable piece of Elephant Hill road. I started the hike in tights, Carhartts, a windproof Patagnia fleece, a thick hoody, a turtleneck and tank top (and was cold)...finished in Carhartts that were too hot and a tank top - very typical Utah spring day. The sun was officially in the game at this point and you'd be hard-pressed to find a lovlier way to spend the day than in the slickrock. It's such a great little Park, Canyonlands, with some fantastic trails that take you through one of the most unusual landscapes in Utah, or anywhere for that matter. It was great. Todd and I took turns running off to cover some childless miles but the kids did great - to our 8 miles they covered 6, the baby even doing a respectable .5-1 mile all on her own. Hike your age, that's the rule. She'll get there.
After some hand-wringing about whether to spend a third night or head back to Colorado on Sunday, we packed up camp and set off
on a similarly wonderful hike through Big Spring canyon. Had lunch on a big old hunk of rock once again overlooking the needles of Chesler Park. La la la. Happy hiking...
We were sad to leave but made it home by about 5pm with a plan to get a day of skiing in at Telluride on Monday. Maisy has her Spring Break this week and if I had to take a day off to do my share, by golly I wasn't going to spend it cleaning the house (not that it doesn't desperately need it). The snow was PERFECT, the day absolutely glorious...who wouldn't finish off a weekend like this without a perma-grin? We live in a beautiful corner of the world...
(click on the pictures for a bigger view)
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Gabi
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We wanna come too!
Next time, invite us (with somewhat nicer weather though - we do have a 3 month old). The baby did great camping this past weekend in SE Arizona, and we're itching to do it again. Can you believe we've never camped in Canyonlands?