Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Memorial Weekend...Day 4...Finally.

Sorry for taking so long to finish this little mini-series of posts. I meant to have this whole thing done in 4 consecutive days, but that didn't happen. So, here goes day 4 - day 3 ended with dinner on the Cottonwood Canyon Road - and day 4 begins that morning, heading out of the canyon towards highway 89:

Our last view of Cottonwood Canyon Road, from here we hit highway 89 and drove over to Buckskin Gulch.
The beginning of the hike at Buckskin - a hot, dry, sandy river bed.We walked for about 0.25 - 0.75 of a mile in this, and I kept thinking, "This better be good!" because by this point in the trip, we haven't showered for  days, YUCK, and frankly, I'm ready for my own bed. And Sam likes to keep little details from me...like what's going to be around the corner:
BOOM. Buckskin Gulch swallowed us - instant slot canyon...the coolest one ever. The typical red rock slot canyon that Utah is known for. And we walked right in, no dropping in like the one the day before - so Kona had no problem.
I mean seriously, how freaking cool is that!? 4 feet from wall to wall, and 100's of feet above our head. Awesome.
This portion was my favorite because of the lush green trees that were growing above us, and the water that trickled down the sides of the canyon...sorry, no picture of that.

So, we hiked and hiked through these slot canyons, then suddenly, just POPPED out into this HUGE open space with this... hole....in the wall. Not entirely sure what to call it. But it's HUGE!

On red rock wall around the corner from the hole, we found these petroglyphs. How crazy is it to think that the native Indians, 100's of years ago, carved these drawings into STONE and they are still around for us to see today? I think both drawings are meant to be goats.... Sam might correct me on that.

 Kona didn't feel like having her picture taken at this moment.
The water has carved out these perfect tiny holes all through the canyon walls... almost like bubbles.
You can see here just how massive the canyon was by comparing how tiny we are!
This picture is just too cute! I wish I was in focus though! Kona knows how to be super adorable!
This is one of the narrowest spots that we walked through.



And back in Arizona, we stopped at Lee's Ferry (Marble Canyon - Colorado River. If you ever go on a Grand Canyon river trip - this is where you begin.

A California Condor that decided to present itself to us for pictures.

And done. We headed home after this picture. We hope you enjoyed our trip as much as we did!

Happy Tuesday!



2 comments:

  1. Great Blog Leah~ very fun to follow you and your happenings. Loved everything about the camping trip (and the awesome camp stove box) except maybe the wind driven dust haze.


    BTW hard to find the "comment" hyperlink I guess I was looking for a button. Look out though, I finally figured it out!

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    1. Brent! Glad you like it! It's become a fun project for me. And comment away!!! Much easier to reply to comments than to individual emails :)

      Hope you guys are doing well!

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