Every year, for my entire life, my dad's family has gone camping in Southeastern Utah for fall break. We've spent a lot of time there for a couple of reasons: most of us like camping, and that is where my grandma's dad lived for a while running cattle. So, we go visit Anasazi ruins and various sites, and each year we usually end up going somewhere we've never been--which is always an adventure on washed out dirt roads. A shovel or three is always a must. You never know when you're going to have to be the road crew. I think we only had to fix one spot of the road so we could pass this year--and it might be a record.
So, I drove up there from Mesa and my family came down from Genola. I thought it was a long drive from Genola--no so! It's 420 mils from Mesa, over the reservation, and by yourself, it gets kind of long. I did get to see some cool stuff on the drive that I had never seen or had seen last when I was 8-years-old.
I arrived in camp about 10:30 pm and the temperature change was a little hard to adjust to that night. Mesa was 103 degrees when I left, and at camp it was 53 degrees and dropping quickly. My parents arrived somewhere around midnight, and we set up tents in the dark.
The next morning we ate breakfast and decided to go for a drive and a hike to a ruin called "Over Under." Other than losing the vehicle behind us with all but one child under 12, it was pretty fun. The hike wasn't too bad, but I realized that altitude is a bigger difference when you have to change 5500 feet in elevation instead of just 1500 feet. I was struggling that day a bit.
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| Over Under ruin |
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| Henry |
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| Uncle Don and Aunt Adele hiking into the ruin |
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| Melinda |
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| Daniel, Henry and Herschel (Uncle Don in background) |
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| Spillway where water flows in the spring. You can't see the drop very well but it's quite a doozy. |
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| Melinda hiking on the trail |
That night we went back to camp, and some people went on another hike. After dinner, sleep came early for everybody that night, and I slept much better--probably because we broke out the air mattress, but we also moved the tent from off the divot that prevented sleep the night before.
Friday, we again went for a drive and hike to another ruin we'd never seen before. This was called the Citadel. I couldn't help thinking of Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf says to Pippin, "Go back to the citadel!" The hike was a bit longer, but we started a lot earlier too. On the hike we found pools of triclops, which are some funky water bug (I'm sure that someone is saying, "Ellen, we told you it was this kind of bug," but I don't remember what it was).
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| The triclops feeding upside down |
We hike out on a peninsula and when we reached the end, we could see the rock and the view from two forks of the canyon joining.
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| View of the ridge and rocks we're going to climb! |
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| Elmina |
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| Melinda and Mom |
After figuring out how to get down the the level where we have to to get across the narrow rocks, we started hiking down. It was worse getting there than coming back--for some reason it's always harder to go down than up.
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| Mom |
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| Yes, there's a 800 foot drop or so to the left |
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| Henry: King of the rock |
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At this point, we hiked out the narrow rock, which was about 20 feet at the narrowest, and 40 feet at the most, with a sheer cliff on one side.
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| Looking down into the gorge |
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| Cordell and Herschel |
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| Henry hiking up into the ruin |
The last leg of the journey was kind of hairy--very steep, and a step too tall for most of us--especially those vertically challenged like me. But, we made it, and ate lunch there. Aunt Adele stood on the edge of the cliff and said, "You shall not pass," just like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, and it was hilarious!
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| Henry and Cordell |
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| Mom sitting on the rock like it was a horse--I believe she was saying "Yeehaw!" during this pic |
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| Herschel and Andrew at the Citadel |
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| Cordell, Mom, and Andrew stopped in almost the only shade on the peak |
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| Andrew |
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| Henry |
After lunch, we climbed back down and up again to meet up with Dad and Melinda (who don't do heights so good), and Elmina, who is a little too sure of herself to hike on cliffs. It was an awesome hike and the ruin was in extremely good condition.
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| Herschel, Daniel, Mom, and Uncle Don |
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| Herschel, Daniel, and Uncle Don |
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| Cordell and Andrew |
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| Cordell |
After hiking back to the van, Dad took us on a drive that I will not willingly go on again unless I have about 5 more hours to drive a lot slower. Several of us got car-sick. The Dollhouse ruin was remarkable though.
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| Elmina with one of the representatives of the absent. A couple years ago we started pretending that an object was one of our missing siblings, and the tradition has stuck. I think this was my brother-in-law Matt, but I'm not sure. |
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| I wish this picture showed how really steep in was. |
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| Herschel and Elmina |
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| Herschel pretending to be an indian |
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| Cordell, Elmina, and Henry |
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| Those that hiked down to the ruin: Elmina, me, Herschel, Cordell, Melina, Henry, and Mom |
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| Cordell, me, and Herschel. After looking at this picture, Herschel and I both said something like, "how did that happen?" |
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| Me, Cordell, and Elmina |
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| Elmina hiking up the rocks |
That night, after another long drive, we got back to camp and ate. Mom or Melinda found marshmallows that were huge! I ate two and that was more than enough.
The next day was the drive home: over the Moki Dugway, through Monument Valley, through Tuba City and Flagstaff, and back to Mesa. Here are a few of the better pics:
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| Me, Henry, Dad, Andrew, Elmina, Mom, Cordell, Melinda, Herschel |
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| The Bear's Ears |
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| I've never seen a sign quite like this |
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| The Moki Dugway |
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| Comb Ridge |
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| Monument Valley |
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| Mountain north of Flagstaff |
