Hike of Potential Dismemberment or Fines.

Goodbye civilization for a bit (or at least, so we thought...) and Hello Utah park system!! Lets go hike a canyon!

But first this 6 hour drive to get there...

right. forgot that Utah is kinda spread out, with n.o.t.h.i.n.g in between. I mean besides cow ranches. and a view of the mountains.

So - of course we hit Canyonlands N.P. and cruise up into it about 53 miles. great scenery, crazy winding road that takes you right up to the edge of enormous Buttes ond then whips you back over the top to the other side ... posted speed limit was 25 ... with recommendations of 15 mph or lower. silly mortals. and I wasn't even driving.

Now ... the campsite that we wanted to stay at - turns out that even though it is the main one at the park, there are only 12 sites. total. and they were all reserved hours before we even got there. you might figure that someone would tell us when we passed into the park. or that they would put up a camp Full sign. or that a ranger would politely recommend that we go stake camp first, before traversing over 50 miles of severe terrain in a leisurely fashion, taking photographs, instead of taking care of task one: set up camp. ... you would think.

So - instead, with about 2 hours of sunlight left, we decided to try to hike 2.6 miles out and down one of the Buttes to a campsite planted square in the middle of the canyon floor.

Half an hour later, loaded down with all of the gear that we could possibly not do without, more food than we could realistically eat in the next 14 hours, about 2 gallons of drinking water total, no map, but personal ID and a cell phone for each person, we set out. Hit the trailhead, set a decent 20 minute mile pace - considering that we were laden with all of our gear, and had not done any moderately serious hiking yet. Set off in the direction of the trail ... and promptly found that there were no trail markings. After several minutes of scouting ahead (since there were footprints damn near everywhere, we couldn't use that approach) I found us some trail markers ... and we continued. Picture taking and scaling random boulders to pose atop took some extra time ... but over a mile later ... and with about 45 minutes of sun left, we hit the edge of a 1500 ft Butte. with no way down. sheer cliff face on all sides. no more trail markers. We checked with a few fellow hikers from Holland, and they confirmed that the other trial which we could possibly have stumbled upon instead, they had already been on, and takes you to a different Butte ... the trail just ends.

okay ...

with binoculars, we could see the actual campsite ... easily 2 miles off in the distance ... and no way down.

After a good 15 minutes of me running along the entire edge of the canyon in search of an elusive way to scamper down, and a call in to Uncle Bill to find out that the fine for disobeying park regulations (inclusive of camping outside of a designated campground area) is $5000 dollars, we decided to head back to the SUV and sleep in the parking lot. Almost no sunlight - as it had already set below the mountain range, a solid mile of hiking across the top of a Butte to go, all of our gear to trek back out ...

when we followed the markings back in ... and ended up next to the wrong side of the trailhead sign ... we knew that the Hollandaise had been wrong (pass the blame). This had not been the trail/ to the campsite. at all.

5 minutes of searching the opposite side of the rim for a trail marker ... I found one. one. set down in a crevise, between two boulders. and then one more, partway down the cliff face. That said ... the actual trail was really nice, with huge steps cut into the side, moderate switchbacks, and a great view the whole way down. But ... you basically had to know that it was there in the first place.

Back at the car.

in the dark.

with gear that now smelled like real campers.

multiple cans of vegetables and graham crackers.

and the proposition of sleeping 4 people in one car, where every available space not already dedicated to seating had already been used for some sort of luggage or apparel.

TomTom - so newly put into play (gift from Colin) said that the nearest places for food or camp were outside the park ... Moab ... 50+ miles away. back along that road. in the dark. sheer cliffs. Apparently we lived. I credit a large part of it to luck - and the rest to that John knew there was pizza at the end, so he just couldn't die.

we may never go back into Canyonlands. ever.