Isle Royale

Well, the experiment was done.  It was successful in some ways, but less so in others.  Notably;

• I didn't like the big group hiking.  In part because I am very susceptible to heat exhaustion and heat stress (something that would probably be much less of an issue were I less overweight, I agree—but not entirely.  My dad used to have this problem at boot camp in the 70s when he was still really thin, for instance.) I really kind of need to go my own pace.  I ended up getting locked into a schedule that was not at my pace, and it ended up being really difficult to keep up, because I did have to stop to cool down once or twice, and frankly, we had at least one day, possibly two, where we just had too many hard miles planned.  Nobody really much liked it, but I was one that had the hardest time with it.  Again, were I on my own, I not only wouldn't have over-planned, but I could have much more easily managed my pace and my timing.  This has never been an issue before for me on my own, but only when I'm trying to stick to someone else's pace in the face of a difficult trail.  Other than that, the social aspect of it wasn't bad, and in fact I often kind of enjoyed it.  But that said, we didn't get that much of it, because during the day we ended up stringing out into several groups moving at variable paces.  (I was always with the slowest group.)
• I ended up admitting defeat the last day.  I was so tired and sore after our longest day that I had no appetite for the last eight miles that we were to do on the last morning to get to the seaplane dock, so we hired a boat ferry to take us from the dock we were already at to the end.  My wife was even more defeated than I was and demoralized, so the two of us went back via boat—after waiting for several hours on the dock, which wasn't really all that unpleasant, to be honest.  So rather than the full 45 mile or so hike, we cut 7-8 miles off of the end.  Two long days in a row left me much more battered and bruised than I expected, but it was some of the younger guys that almost had worse injuries and soreness.  One guy in his late twenties, my friend's son-in-law, had an ankle swollen to twice its normal size.  My 17 year old son was limping on a gimpy knee.  It took several days for us to all be able to walk normally, and my son is still limping a bit (in some ways, so am I).  So yeah—I'm not the most aggressive hiker out there, but even the really thin, young and athletic people had a tough time with this itinerary.  It was way too aggressive.
• I really prefer hiking in the more wild national forests and wilderness areas than the more developed national parks.  Part of the reason for the overly aggressive itinerary was the need to hit certain campsites that are spaced as they are spaced.  Yeah; in a pinch, we could have just set up camp in the woods, but we weren't supposed to, and I don't really like that lack of flexibility.
• Also; eastern hiking just doesn't really appeal to me very much.  I like walking through the woods as much as the next guy, but when only two or three mediocre views are your entire payoff for nearly a week of almost fifty miles of hiking, that doesn't seem like a great experience to me.  I guess I'm just a western hiker at heart, and the more open spaces of real mountain meadows and deserts and badlands are what I love.
• My wife hated it.  She put on a good face most of the time, and didn't mind the hanging out at camp with our friends and our boys, but she didn't sleep well, hated walking with a pack on, was footsore and hot and sweaty all the time and hated that, she's convinced that she was "attacked" by a fox and that I was going to drop dead and die in the woods because my heat exhaustion got to the point at the end of the long day where I threw up.  At one point she said that it was like a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from, and while that may have been said a little bit in the extremity of demoralization, it does pretty much describe her take-away from the experience.  Even if it's a trip that I plan under better circumstances, I doubt I'll be able to talk her into ever going again.  On the other hand, my boys are up for some excursions in the mountains next summer, or the desert at spring break or whatever.  Of course, one of my boys will be leaving for his mission long before next summer comes along, so he won't be hiking with us anyway.  But meanwhile, maybe my older married son will be available to go in his place next summer, especially if we go hiking in the Wind Rivers, or go see the Tetons and Yellowstone, etc.

My biggest lessons learned are, therefore, twofold:  1) I really would do better if I were in better shape; I need to get serious about both losing some weight and developing more endurance, and 2) I really don't like aggressive death march type hiking anyway, though.  I want to relax, go out in the wilderness, and just enjoy being there, which means actually minimizing the backpacking, quite honestly.  I like backpacking because I like getting somewhere that I'm away from the roads, not because I like the backpacking for its own right.  My trip during spring break where I went hiking without backpacking and enjoyed it quite a bit was a big deal; I might well do much more of this kind of thing in the future.  After all, although I stayed in an official campsite at Colorado National Monument, there's no reason I couldn't have stayed in a hotel in Fruita or Grand Junction and done exactly the same thing that I did do except with restaurants, showers and sleeping in a bed at night.  Which means... maybe I'll get my wife to participate after all.

Having landed at Isle Royale National Park...

Windigo; our starting point for the hike

I don't actually know where this is, but here's the guys on the trail.  The last fellow with the blue camping pad is one of my sons.

Almost the full group; missing one person who's taking the picture

My boys on either side; my friend's son in the middle

Some of us.  I'm on the far left, my friend on the far right; our teenaged boys and his wife in the middle

My two sons looking at one of the few decent views on this hike.

On top of the Greenstone Ridge trail.  This is the long day.

The older of my two younger boys and one of my friends' older sons (who's about the same age and pretty good friends my oldest, married son, actually.)

My wife on the trail

Arrived at trail's end at Rock Harbor!  This picture is almost everyone except my friends' one son who ran off somewhere and couldn't be found for this picture.  He may have just been in the bathroom; I can't remember now.

On the other dock, waiting for the sea planes that will take us back to the mainland.

Isle Royale

We're trying an interesting experiment in a few weeks.  A local friend of mine has been talking to me for years about hiking Isle Royale, the national park out in the middle of Lake Superior.  It's a small park, but it also has the lowest visitation of any standard, regular National Park, in part because reaching it requires a costly (and time-consuming in the latter case) trip by seaplane or ferry to reach.  On top of that, it's kinda in the middle of nowhere (although that's not necessarily unique for national parks) and it lacks the scenic drama of many other parks in the mountains or the deserts. (Admittedly, that's partly my own bias there.)  Anyway, we agreed we were going to hike this this summer, and the time is fast approaching; it'll be at the end of the month.

He has a very outdoorsy family, and his youngest son is almost 18, so most of his family will be with him; his wife, three of his four sons, and his daughter and son-in-law.  In all, they're a seven person party, which changes the regulations for group camping for them somewhat.  I'm going too, and I had planned on bringing my own two younger boys (my older son and daughter in law are too busy to break away, sadly) but curiously, he somehow convinced my wife to come along!

I'm very surprised by this personally—she had told me for years that she loves hiking and being outdoors, as long as she can sleep in a bed at night, take a shower, and eat at a restaurant or otherwise some "real food" at least.  So I wasn't assuming she would go, and I wasn't going to ask her.  Maybe it's the family ties (we discovered that this friend of mine and my wife are fourth cousins, actually.)  Or maybe it's just the fact that he asked her and I wasn't going to—or maybe it's the fact that he asked her and not me, and she wasn't quite as comfortable saying no to him.  And it certainly helps that his wife will be there.  Most likely it was a combination of all kinds of factors that just tipped her over the edge.

Now, honestly—I don't think that she's likely to get into backpacking in a big way, and I'm not even convinced that she's going to enjoy this (although I'm doing my best to help her do so) but I'm very curious about the results nonetheless.  I have taken one of my sons backpacking before, and I've got another one who wants to go with me but it hasn't worked out yet, but normally I do my hiking and backpacking alone—and honestly, I kind of like it that way.  The solitude is part of what's appealing about the hobby to me.  Not that I don't like my family, of course, but I see my family every day and backpacking is kind of "my" thing, not "our" thing, if that makes any sense.

So, this trip will be an experiment in a number of ways, both for me and for my wife, and for all of us. 

1) Will I actually like hiking with this big crowd?  When I was a teenager, of course, my backpacking trips were with our youth group and our leaders, because I wasn't old enough or experienced enough to do them on my own.  But in the years since, I've gotten accustomed to doing things my own way and enjoying the solitude.  Technically, we're a group of four and the other family is their own separate group of seven, but of course, in reality, we all know each other, we have the same itinerary and we mostly plan on walking together, we may well feel like a traveling circus compared to what I'm used to.

2) Are the boys going to enjoy this?  My older of the two that's coming is the one who's been with me.  He thought it was kinda boring to be out alone just the two of us, but he's done other trips with larger groups of friends and family and really enjoyed them.  I don't know that he loves hiking for its own sake, but he enjoys it well enough when he has people with him that he enjoys being with.  The younger of the two hasn't ever really done anything exactly like it, but he's active and healthy, he's always liked camping and rafting and other outdoorsy things that he's done in the past, so there's no reason to suspect that he won't like backpacking too.  But again, for him, the people that he's doing it with may be more important than what he's actually doing.  Luckily, he's less likely to be bored just hanging around with the family than the older one is.

3) My wife?!  Is she going to enjoy this at all?  Even if she does, what will she be interested in doing in the future?  I'd actually really like to plan some hiking trips from a hotel base-camp with her, and I've noodled around some ideas. Maybe this trip will make those more likely to happen sooner rather than later.  Maybe I'm wrong and she'll actually think that the whole thing is really cool.  But I doubt it.  I mean, I've been married to her for twenty-five years for crying out loud.

I don't think this means I will be ushering in an era of backpacking with large groups of family and friends, but I think that we'll enjoy doing it this time, at least.  And I've got my eyes on maybe some fun trips to take with my wife and my youngest son in the next couple of years when it's just the two of us available to go.

The Videos

Grand Junction area hiking

Well, I'm done and I'm back.  Here's how it actually played out in real life.:

• Saturday, I drove from home to North Platte, NE.  I left a little later than I guess I've done in the past, although I didn't remember that.  In any case, I got in later than I would have liked, even after I skipped dinner and ate a gas station hot dog in lieu of.
• Sunday I had plenty of time to drive to the Curecanti National Recreation Area.  HOWEVER, there was a lot more snow than I anticipated still in this region (I had been in a hurry before leaving and didn't do the checks that I should have.)  Although the roads were open, and I was able therefore to drive around and see some stuff, I couldn't very well camp there like I'd planned, because the campground was gated and covered in a couple of feet of snow still.  I had fun seeing a few stops, but I couldn't do any walking, and my only Dillon Pinnacles views were from the road.  I ended up making a travelocity reservation in downtown Grand Junction for $45 or something for a hotel, so I was in town earlier than expected Monday morning.
• Monday I ended up doing what I thought was going to be Tuesday's itinerary (and then on Tuesday, I kinda did what I had planned for Monday.)  So, I went up Wedding Canyon to Independence Monument, and then followed Upper Monument Canyon to about the Coke Ovens where I turned around and went back to the Monument.  Then I took Lower Monument Canyon out to create a kind of small loop at the end of the hike back to the car.  About an 11 mile or so day with... 700-800 feet or so of elevation gain?  (I should put the route in Caltopo and see what it gives me for gross elevation gain and miles, actually.  I'm kinda curious.)
• Tuesday I drove the Rimrock Drive with lots of stops, including the Window hike, the Canyon Rim Hike, some time in the visitors center, some switchbacks down to Coke Ovens viewpoint and several other viewpoints (although most of these can hardly qualify as hikes) and then did an exploration of the Grand Junction entrance area, including hiking to and back from Devil's Kitchen and then Echo Canyon. Later in the evening, I hiked the Fruita Paleo Area for another mile or two. I estimate that I hiked about nine miles or so.  Maybe a little more.
• Rain came in on Wednesday and ended up hovering over the Monument and Black Ridge Wilderness area all day, so I spent the day elsewhere.  I don't know how much rain they actually got, but the campsite was still wet in the evening.  Meanwhile, I went up the road about 15-16 miles or so to Rabbit Valley, did the "Trail through Time" hike and Rabbit Ears Mesa.  Highly recommend both; the first for the easy access to exposed dinosaur skeletal remains and the second for the tremendous views and solitude.  Another 9 miles or so total, plus 800 or so feet of elevation gain.  Maybe more in gross.
• After the rain and lots of elevation gain, I was kinda tired and ready to be done on Thursday.  I juked my plan of stopping by Moab and hiking Fisher Towers (which ended up being a big mistake; unknown to me a local friend and two of his older boys were actually climbing one of the towers that day; I would have run into him!)  I also ditched my plans to hike Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons; reports of rain all through the area made me leery of slot canyons, and I was kinda ready to just be done.  Did a bit of a long drive through some of the roads I'd never been on though and saw parts of southern Utah that I wasn't familiar with, including a dramatic crossing of Capital Reef.  Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of crossing the reef!  Got to the Provo area in time to eat a latish lunch at Brick Oven Pizza with my family.  Went and saw my brother and his wife and kids in the evening.
• Friday was family stuff in Provo and Salt Lake.  Saturday morning too (went and saw my sister-in-law's first General Conference performance as an official member of the choir), which meant that the drive home had to be compressed and rushed and we couldn't stop for anything.  Sunday late we got home.

Anyway, here's some pictures.  Later I'll make another post with the video I took, although fair warning—I talked too much and the videos are too long with me blabbing on about stuff while I'm out in the wilderness.  Or "wilderness" as the case may be; Grand Junction has lots of fun outdoorsy stuff to see and do, but unspoiled remote wilderness is not really ever exactly what it felt like.

Weather in Grand Junction

Not that I necessarily trust it, given that it's still a week and a half or more away, but the ten day forecasts on weather.com are starting to reach into the first days of my hiking trip.  What am I looking at?  Cooler temps, but not cold: highs in the upper 50s, lows in the upper 30s overnight.  A higher than expected humidity forecast and chances of morning showers(!)

I think that's going to drive me towards more "standard" routes; I don't want to get stuck on a muddy, bad road, or have to worry about flash floods, or even just the rather more banal but still uncomfortable and undesirable problem of getting stuck hiking in rain that lasts for more than a few minutes or so at a time.  Anyway, so much for going to the desert for clear skies and dry air!

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the forecast as the trip gets closer.  I doubt it will make any significant changes to my plans, but it might require minor tweaks.

Playing with options (Kodel's, Devil's and Pollock Canyons area)

Well, gjhikes suggests that getting to Monument Rocks north of Grand Junction in the Little Book Cliffs area is difficult if not impossible without a high clearance vehicle.  However, according to the Trails Illustrated map I got, there's a paved road that goes right to it.  Looks like I'll need to make a call a little later today (after Mountain Time Zone areas open) to find out what the real status is.  In any case, I want to have some modular plans that I can pick and choose from depending on what I feel, rather than the static itinerary that I posted yesterday.  Let's see what I can come up with.

First, I've got several potential modules in the Pollack and Kodel Canyon area, really close to my campsite, but outside of the National Monument on BLM land:

• The Devil's Canyon (D3) hike, which I almost certainly will want to do.  It's not really long enough to be a whole day.  Maybe I can even do it half a day and have time to do something else, although it's long enough that the second half will have to be something relatively short.
• Rattlesnake Arches is another one that's a little long, but not long enough to really be a whole day.  Although if I'm going faster than I think and feeling good (because after all, it'll probably be cool still, and I won't have a backpack on) maybe I can do both of these together.
• More likely, I'll combine it Devil's Canyon with some of the Kodel's trails, since they connect and are all in the same general area.  These trails are usually kind of short, although they sometimes require hiking one trail to reach another.  The nice thing about it is now flexible and modular the whole affair really is though.  The simple expedient of parking at the Kodel's Canyon instead of Devil's Canyon trail head forces me to pick one of the many routes through the Kodel's area to get to Devil's Canyon, which I kind of like.
• Another desirable hike in the area, although fairly long, would be to see Pollock Arch in Pollock Canyon. Although I don't know that it's more distant from the Pollock Bench trailhead than the Rattlesnake Arches are, and although there are less arches for your effort, you get a rare free-standing arch, like Utah's famous Delicate Arch for your work.

I really kind of see three main destinations here in this area: Devil's Canyon (via Kodel's for more scenic variety, and it actually only adds modestly to the distance), Pollock Canyon and it's Arch, and the Rattlesnake Arches.  I wonder if I can work them into two days or so?  I fairly long loop, although a fun one, and if all I have to carry are water, snacks, a jacket and a headlight in case I'm not back before it starts getting dark, would be from Pollock Bench up to Pollock Arch (maybe through Flume Creek Canyon, since the distance looks to be about the same), around through Pollock Canyon, out to the Rattlesnakes, and back again.  I'll whip up a Caltopo to get the mileage and elevation and see if it looks reasonable to do as a longer day hike or not.

Here it is, with some stats:

• Kodel's to Devil's loop: 9.3 miles, 1,553 total elevation gain, most of it in Devil's Canyon itself.
• The Flume-Pollock-Rattlesnake loop is truly epic.  Almost 18 miles with quite a bit of elevation gain.  It looks like it's not doable as a day hike, at least not unless I was quite a bit younger or quite a bit thinner and can go faster and longer than I'm likely to want to go. 
• On the other hand, cutting the Rattlesnake area off, painful as that may be, does make it achievable.  Or doing only Rattlesnake without the Pollock Canyon exploration, maybe—although that's still a pretty long day for someone my age, with my knees and my weight.

Van camping

I'll probably do something very unusual, at least for me.  Because I'm bringing the minivan instead of my much smaller car (because I need to haul my wife and two teenage boys back home, plus my daughter's stuff which has been in storage in Rexburg), I have all kinds of room that I don't normally have.  And because I have established campsites that I can drive right to at every night that I'm not in a hotel...  I'm almost certainly just going to fold down the seats, set up a bigger, more comfortable air mattress in the back of the van, put big, puffy, heavy and bulky sleeping bags over it, and sleep in the van.  I don't have to carry any of this stuff, so why not?  I'll be trialing this approach this weekend in a campground near Toledo, and we'll see how it goes.  One interesting side effect; "breaking camp" means that I don't really have to do very much at all, do I?  Pack up my camp chair (another luxury I wouldn't normally bring), scan the site to make sure I didn't inadvertently leave anything laying around, turn on the car and go.  That's it!

Granted, this is an unusual trip.  I normally wouldn't consider this, because normally I'd be trying to get out at least somewhere that I can't reach in a single day (I'm actually feeling just a bit constrained by that as I'm planning this trip this time) and normally I'd also not have access to a vehicle that's big enough for me to set up like this.  In fact, I don't necessarily anticipate ever having access to a vehicle big enough to do that again; we're within a couple or so years striking distance of finally getting the car I want (instead of something too utilitarian for commuting to work and letting teenagers drive it) and also phasing out the need for a minivan at all.  My wife will probably replace the van with something about the size of a Ford Escape or Edge, whereas I'm leaning right now towards a shorter Jeep Wrangler.  I couldn't sleep in either of those things even if I wanted to, which I probably won't.

It is possible that I'll get a pickup truck instead of a Jeep, and have access to the bed, but honestly, most of those beds aren't really long enough for me to sleep in anyway—I'm a solid 6' 00" and I guess if I put the gate down, I could do it with my feet hanging out of the bed proper—but would I really ever want to cowboy camp in the bed of a pick-up truck?  Actually—maybe.  But that's still the plan B; I've wanted a Jeep since I was a little kid, and all of these options are now grossly overpriced compared to what they used to be even in the 90s.

Anyway, other than this, I still have one of my days where I only have about a half days worth of itinerary on my schedule.  I'm having trouble finding something else to add, because I want to make sure that I don't do something too ambitious after I've already done 8.5 miles in the morning and early afternoon (and this is my last day of hiking around Grand Junction before heading to Utah) and Trying to get very far away from where I already am will also be challenging.  Or rather, it will be challenging to do so without burning through too much time to allow me to actually still do anything meaningful after I get there.  I may well just hang around the Monument and see more of it.  There are a lot of smaller trails, only some of which I highlighted in my last post, so maybe I can do a few more of those.  Or, depending on the time, maybe I'll do something a bit more ambitious like Rim Trail #8 or something.  Maybe Rabbit's Ear is slightly better; big views payoff and a couple of miles shorter.

I may be stymied by road conditions.  I'm actually having to go a little bit earlier than I'd prefer; later April rather than the very beginning of April would be better.  Some hikes I've looked into have said outright that their trailheads aren't available by road until April 15, and even if they technically are, conditions on the road might be muddy with snowmelt.  Again; what I should have done is either gone even further south (like to Big Bend National Park) in late February or early March, or gone to Grand Junction and Moab more like the last two weeks of April.  I'm in a kind of uncomfortable position where conditions could be variable.  And because it's been a high snow year, that means some stuff will be unavailable to me.

Backpacking vs hiking

Well, I went ahead and made my campground reservations to last for all of the nights I'll be in Colorado National Monument.  I can blow off the $40 dollars I spent, get a backcountry permit and do the route described in the post below, but I'm thinking, even with relatively short distance, do I really want to climb 2,800 feet in one day?  Probably not.  And if I do, will I really want to keep hiking for another day and a half (or whatever it ends up being?)  Again, probably not.  Although, granted, if I just suck it up and do it, it's mostly all downhill after that first day, I still probably don't want to do it, and I won't actually plan on doing so after all.  Rather, I'll look around for day hikes, both in the monument and the surrounding area.  I'm actually a little excited to see if I can get up on the Book Cliffs a bit, or Dominguez Canyon, or some of the other areas nearby.  Of course, there's more to see than I'll have time to, so I'll have to be judicious in how I spend my time, all the while making sure now to overplan too.

So what does my new itinerary look like with just day hikes?

Well, the driving days are the same, including hopefully having time on Sunday afternoon to the do the Dillon Pinnacles. 

Monday: well, I actually probably am not in any particular hurry to get to camp, since I have a reservation.  But I want to be sure and get in before the office closes, so I'll probably go early, then go get some lunch, and then hike the afternoon and evening.  I'm actually thinking of doing the Devil's Canyon hike, which is just outside the monument, but curiously very, very close to the edge of the monument where I'll be camping.  If there's still time and daylight, I'll explore some of the little minor hikes of the Monument before turning in, like Artist's Point, Coke Ovens, or the Canyon Rim trails.

Tuesday will be a big hiking day, but since I don't have to carry my backpack, and since I can turn around and head back at any point I decide I've had enough, it shouldn't be too bad.  I intend to start out with Wedding Canyon and hike to Independence Monument.  I'll head up the Upper canyon trail as far as I feel like, before turning back around.  Probably about the time that I'm not on the canyon floor anymore and start to see that I'm climbing out, I'll quit and turn around.  Then, doing a kind of inverse lollipop, at the Monument itself I'll take the Lower Monument trail instead of Wedding Canyon and do a loop back to the car.  Or, I could do that lollipop in reverse.  I guess I'm indifferent to the two options right now.

Anyway, this is a long day, so I'll probably tired, dirty, thirsty and hungry by the end of it, and ready to head back to camp, make some dinner and take a load off for the rest of the evening.  On the off-chance that I'm not, I guess I can finish any of the small hikes I noted above that I didn't do yet.

For Wednesday, I want to hike the Bench loop.  It's probably not really a full day, unless I sleep in a lot or something, but I don't yet know what I want to supplement it with.  Probably something outside of the monument, but it has to be a relatively short trail, and one that I can reach quickly.  I'll keep researching various ideas.

Thursday I break camp and drive into Utah.  I probably have plenty of time to enjoy a scenic day of driving and stopping and even some hiking.  I only have to get to the Goblin Valley State Park area by nightfall and it's a ridiculously close two hours away.  Even driving from Colorado National Monument to Dead Horse Point to Goblin Valley is less than four hours.  If I want to go check out the Fisher Towers, that's probably even a little bit closer.  So that gives me some time to really enjoy the day; I do have to do some driving, but if it's only about four hours, I can afford a few hours of hiking and sightseeing too.

I couldn't get a camp site at Goblin Valley State Park, but here is dispersed camping in the BLM land nearby, including on the side of local rinky-dink roads, so I'm planning on doing that instead.  Friday morning it's the Wild Horse/Bell Canyon loops and then drive up to SLC.

Colorado National Monument

While not as spectacular nor as remote as the Needles District, it is more lightly traveled by hikers and backpackers, so given my failure to get a permit for Canyonlands in time, I've decided to make Colorado National Monument my alternate destination.  I'm still working on the exact itinerary, but here's my rough thoughts:

• Saturday March 30—Drive to North Platte NE.  I've already got a reservation.
• Sunday March 31—Drive to the Curecanti National Recreation Area.  Pick up one of the more remote first-come first served individual campsites and set up camp.  Presumably there will be time to explore a bit before dark.  
• Crystal Creek would be desirable, assuming snow is clear.  Dillon Pinnacles is the must-do hike.
• Monday April 1—Finish exploring the recreation area.  Drive to Colorado National Monument and take a site at the Saddlehorn Campground.  Get my backcountry permit, but otherwise take it easy.  Assuming that there's time, do some drive/short hike exploration, including possibly:
• Artists point
• Canyon View/Window Rock
• Otto's Trail
• Tuesday April 2—start of actual "backpacking".  Route is a loop from Monument Canyon Trailhead through Wedding Canyon, joining Monument Canyon at Independence Monument, getting up via Coke Ovens and the CCC trail to the Black Ridge Trail heading south.  Once I hit the trailhead down there, take the Liberty Cap Trail to the other side of the monument, and the Bench Trail back towards the Monument Canyon Trailhead, dropping down via Gold Star Canyon to the cliff base trail, and arriving back at my starting point.  Trying to decide if I want to stretch this out via two nights so I never feel rushed... and I kinda think that I might.  Although that means carrying quite a bit more water.
• Wednesday April 3—Continue backpacking.
• Thursday April 4—Continue backpacking.  Arrive at car and drive to Goblin Valley State Park, where I'll spend the night one more time car camping.  Any exploration of Goblin Valley that I have time to do is great; I'd prefer to do this more this evening.
• Friday April 5—Do the Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon loop.  I need to start fairly early, because this will take until lunchtime.  Eat lunch and drive to Stansbury Park, or wherever my wife is staying.  This is another good four hours, so I'll be arriving late afternoon; hopefully without there being any stress about being on time to help my wife turn her rental car in before it's due and she has to pay another day.
• Saturday April 6—Go to the first session of General Conference and then hit the road, hoping we get a good enough signal to at least stream the audio of the next sessions.  Arrive (again) at North Platte NE
• Sunday April 7—Finish driving home.

I'd plan tentatively on camping the first night not too far from the Coke Ovens; but I'll probably make the climb up to the Black Ridge Trail and camp on the other side of the road somewhere.  For the second night, I'm thinking staying in the canyon alcove somewhere after doing the Bench Trail.

The second day is quite long, and the first day is kinda short; just under 7 miles (although with a pretty steep and significant climb.)  There's a good chance I'll take advantage of my fresher state and push further on the Black Ridge Trail to make a slightly more equitable mileage total between the two days.

UPDATE: I changed the route slightly; the first day now goes all the way to the western trailhead.  I probably won't really walk that far, although by the time I get up to the top up there, I've already done all the climbing I'm going to do and some flat walking might be OK.

On the other hand, did you see that elevation change?  Do I really want to climb the better part of three thousand feet in one day?  Ugh.  I'm having second thoughts about this backpacking loop portion.

Needles

Well... I didn't plan far enough ahead and now there are no camping sites available at Chessler Park, or really almost anywhere in the Needles District at all.  I'll need to have a Plan B.  Because it's relatively easier to do, I'm thinking of either Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction CO, or Natural Bridges National Monument near Blanding UT.

Sigh.

Dillon Pinnacles

When I drive out west to go hiking out where the scenery is really something, (which so far has mostly been in either Utah or Colorado, although Wyoming has tempted me a lot too—and one of these days I'll go even a little further and explore New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) I always try to find a way to get as far out of the Great Lakes region as possible on the first day so I can take my time and enjoy the western scenery a bit more leisurely the second day of driving.  For instance, on two trips to the Uintas, I've made sure that I got as far as either North Platte or even Ogallala Nebraska, and then went and spent a couple of hours at Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff National Monument, hiking and messing around, before then enjoying scenic drives over the Medicine Bow mountains and the Flaming Gorge area.  (The interstate drive across the red desert isn't nearly as bad as a lot of commuters I talk to claim it is, but interstate drives are never as good as little country roads if leisurely enjoying the scenery is your goal.)  Sadly, my sister-in-law doesn't live in Vernal anymore, so that option isn't really a very good one anymore, but with a different destination and a different route, I have some new opportunities this time around.

If I'm going to start hiking in the Needles district, for instance, then I'll want to spend my second night on the road—right before I hike—in Monticello Utah, I think.  It's closer to the Needles area than Moab.  And that gives me an opportunity to still have the same first day of driving, but then cut through Colorado instead of Wyoming, and drive through Gunnison and some other areas that are quite on the way to where I'm going anyway.

So for my Sunday afternoon stop driving and hike around for a little while pit stop, I'm thinking of the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison with it's fabulous Dillon Pinnacles rock formation.  There's a four mile round trip trail (although I think it's actually just a point to point that you backtrack on with maybe a little lollipop like loop at the end) and it's not very far out of the way at all, if it is even out of the way.  And, although the season isn't as exciting as if it were summer or fall, I'll also be driving right by Mount Sneffels, which will be fun.

It always helps that I gain two time zones heading west, and also that daylight savings time will have started by the time I'm making this trip, but assuming I get to Ogallala the first day, I've only got 10½ driving hours.  With the extra time zone crossing and plenty of daylight, if I get a nice early start, and have easy like Sunday morning traffic (on Sunday morning) then I should easily have a couple of hours in the early to mid-afternoon to check out the Pinnacles, hike the little trail, and just have a nice drive around the area.

Which is nice.  I actually really like Scotts Bluff and Chimney Rock, but I've seen them twice already, and I'd like to see something else this time.

Next time I do southern Utah, which I'm sure I will do because I'm only seeing a fraction of the red rock paradise that I'd like to see, I may even make a couple nights stop in Grand Junction and see Colorado National Monument, camp there, and hike for a couple of days before crossing the border into Utah again.  But for now, this'll be a nice way to get psyched up for the hiking trip while still driving.

April Desert hiking

Well, it looks like I'm going.  I'll be gone the same time my wife has planned to take the boys during their spring break to Utah and Idaho, ostensibly to pick up my daughter's stuff from storage in Rexburg, visit her sister (and see her first Tabernacle Choir concert) and see General Conference while they're out there.  It'll be the week before General Conference, and the plan is that I'll meet up with them on Friday sometime and go to the first Saturday morning session with them before we hit the road for home together.  I'm a little disappointed that neither of the boys will be with me, and honestly, I think maybe they are too—or at least, they'd rather do that then go back to Rexburg, which for whatever reason they kinda felt was a depressing place, at least during Spring Break when it's still cold, windy, brown, etc.  Maybe we'll talk about that, but I really think I can handle being on my own better than my wife can, even though I'd like to have the boys hike with me.

Anyway, as I said earlier, sadly, I have to use the weekend to travel, because that's the only thing that works out from a timing perspective, so I'll be driving Saturday and Sunday and arrive in... Monticello, I think, on Sunday evening sometime.  Let's do a day by day break-down of my plans

• Saturday March 30—Drive to mid-Nebraska; stay in hotel
• Sunday March 31—Drive to Monticello; stay in hotel
• Monday April 1—Go to Needles District of Canyonlands and hike into Chessler Park.  Camp overnight
• Tuesday April 2—Explore Chessler Park, Druid Arch, etc. Continue camping in same place.
• Wednesday April 3—Hike out, drive to Dead Horse Point State Park, set up camp
• Thursday April 4—Explore Dead Horse Point State Park, whatever I wasn't able to see the day before.  Drive to Goblin Valley State Park, set up camp
• Friday April 5—Explore Goblin Valley State Park and Little Wild Horse and Bell slot canyons.  Drive to Stansbury Park, or wherever my wife is staying Friday night.
• Saturday April 6—General Conference morning session, and start driving home
• Sunday April 7—Finish driving home.

I do feel like the Dead Horse Point and Goblin Valley State parks are a little rushed, and I wish I had another day (maybe even another day each) to explore them more, but I'll probably be OK.  I don't need to literally hike every single trail at each location.

Needles and Moab

I'm still trying to decide what I'm doing for my solo hiking trip this year.  As February comes to a close, my chances of making it to Moab during the Spring season start to diminish; I still don't have a date, or even a serious plan, so how likely is it really that I'll actually be putting boots to ground in a month or even two or heck—even three?  And three is already starting to lean into weather that's likely to be too hot, honestly.  If I'm really serious about going, I need to nail down a schedule in April... or put it off until the fall.  I can always go in October or even early November, I suppose.  Although then I start to step on other commitments; Alex will be eligible to go on his mission starting late September when he turns 18, so October or early November is probably when he's leaving.

And I'm reconsidering some of what I'd planned.  I do still want to do Chesler Park and camp there, maybe two nights, for a relaxed, packless exploration of the region.  But I'm now starting to become increasingly convinced that the Salt Creek area should be the subject of it's own trip that focuses just on that area, and is done as a point to point with some kind of shuttle, or two cars, or something.  So, I should just ditch that (for now) and look for some other stuff to do in the Moab area after doing a Chessler Park backpacking trip for... I dunno, three days and two nights or so.

Luckily, there are a lot of potential day trips or short in and out one-nighters in the area that look really good too.  There's a six mile loop trail at Dead Horse State Park that few people take (because they just hang out at the drive-up lookout point and then leave, mostly) which is highly recommended: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/east-west-rim-trails-loop

There's always more to see at Arches, although avoiding crowds can be a challenge in its own right: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/klondike-bluffs-trail-tower-arch-hike
https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/devils-garden-primitive-trail

And there's a few other spots in Canyonlands worth taking a look: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/horseshoe-canyon-hike

And, of course, there's plenty of BLM land that I'm curious to see more of: https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hidden-valley/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/fisher-towers/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/negro-bill/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hunter-canyon/

And this link has some of the same options listed above, but a few other ones as well:  https://www.explore-mag.com/10-of-the-Best-Hiking-Trails-Near-Moab-Utah

Of course, if I do a lot of day hiking like that, I need to figure out where I'm actually staying at night; a campground somewhere?  A hotel? 

Either way, if anything is going to come of this, I need to get on it pretty darn fast.  Now that my wife is home from her girlfriends cruise, it's time to pivot to my solo vacation (which is actually solo, unlike hers) and figure out what I'm doing.  Maybe I'll even piggyback off of their trip out west to see conference and do a few other things during Spring Break in April.  It'll be a little odd, because I've had the fact that I can't go with them on my mind from the get-go, due to vacation schedules, and my own requirement that I get my solo backpacking trip that I missed in 2018—so going with them to go backpacking will be weird.  But maybe for the best after all.