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I would say training is going well, but I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been active, but I knew these past two weeks were not going to follow a schedule so whatever that means for progress I’m willing to live with.

Totals for last week: bike 70 miles, run about 2 hours, swim 1 hour.

Instead of routine we’ve been in Southern Utah hiking and camping, so that’s what this post is mostly about.

Great Basin National Park

We drove out Hwy 50, “America’s loneliest Road” through Nevada, stopping along the way only for lunch, gas and a chocolate malt in the cute but run down old school American Hwy towns. Just before the Utah border we stopped at Great Basin National Park and camped for the night. The campground had only just opened and patches of snow still lay about. It was freezing during the night, maybe mid-20s, and by morning I was accused of stealing a blanket from my daughter. I deny it.

We had a lazy and slow beginning to the next morning as we sat around the fire and warmed ourselves up. Luck went our way when we finally got moving and turned up at the visitor’s center and got invited to join a 10am tour of the caves. We’d called the day before and the tours were sadly full, but this tour was just added that morning. That set the tone of continued good luck throughout this trip.

The tour itself was great and both Patty and I saw a lot more of the caves than we had on previous visits and Kelly loves that kind of thing.

Capitol Reef National Park

Our first stop in southern Utah was Capitol Reef, one of our favorite places.

Here’s some photos of the run Patty and I did on Monday morning there: from the campsite up to the Fremont River Overlook. With the altitude it was a pretty hard run, I’m not sure I’ve breathed so hard since I was in high school (Strava).

After running we took the scenic drive and stopped at Capitol Canyon and walked to “the tanks”. It was a short hot walk, but the tanks themselves were cool. A series of rock pools that were mostly dry. I’d like to see them filled and flowing from one to the other.

We camped on the grass in the walk-in section of the main park campground which was a nice location. Unfortunately someone else was listening to (perhaps) 1950s sitcoms until 1am in their tent (?!). There’s always someone to ruin a night’s sleep.

San Rafael Fold

Our next destination was the San Rafael fold directly north of the Goblins State Park. The park itself is nothing very exciting, kind of overrun with kids and dogs, and the people who work at the entrance station are some of the most unfriendly and unhelpful people we’ve come across (three separate encounters). Our focus was instead to the north in the BLM land where we dispersal camped and then hiked the Little Wild Horse slot canyon loop.

For me the hike was the highlight of the trip, with miles of slot canyons to walk through. Sometime we need to go back and explore this area more.

It took us 3hrs 45 mins to complete the 8 mile hike. Kelly really enjoyed this, not a single complaint was heard though I think she was pretty happy to be done and guzzling an ice cold coke we had in the cooler for just such an occasion.

Moab

To break up the camping we stayed Tuesday night in Moab at a rather unexciting motel, but didn’t really spend a lot of time in the town itself. Wednesday morning I got up and went swimming and knocked out about 2500yds in probably the nicest pool I’ve ever been in at the brand new Moab Rec Center. Huge windows face out towards the red rock cliffs lit up by the rising sun, reflecting the light all across the pool surface. It’s going to be hard to face the Y this week. The swimming itself seemed a little bit of a struggle at the higher altitude but I also eventually realized the pool was 25m not yards, so I wasn’t going as slow as I feared. At least I think it was 25m!

After that Patty and I took turns running and discovered a river road heading south along the Colorado River (Strava). I had to stop and take this picture and contemplate how I can move to Moab and do runs and swims like this all the time. Still working on that plan without much forward progress.

On the way out of town we stopped and walked up the Mill Creek trail to a local swimming hole. It was a hot day but we didn’t see any swimming going on. We made Kelly a deal that if she jumped off a rock into the creek we’d buy her a sushi dinner. She took the bet so I guess sushi is in the near future. She deserved one anyway for the hike the day before, but she was so uncomplaining I never even got to use that carrot.

Canyonlands National Park

We made our way down the Canyonlands as the winds picked up. By the time we got there the winds were gusting up the 50 miles and hour. We decided to camp anyway and it worked out okay even if it was kind of a noisy night and dust and sand would occasionally whip up under the fly and shower down on us.

The next day it was calmer but thunderstorms were rolling through the area. Our original plan was some 4WD fun up Salt Creek with some side hiking, but it turned out that the Salt Creek drive was impassable, so instead we set out for a 10+ mile hike around a loop within Needles, up Big Spring and back on Elephant Canyon. This was some hard hiking for 10 miles, constantly climbing between canyons, through cracks, over obstacles, and even two ladders. It took us just over 6 hours to finish and we experienced it all: sun, rain, wind and hail and a lot of spectacular rock along the way. In the end both Patty and I were pretty much exhausted, not to mention our poor daughter. She had a few dark moments in the middle, but she pulled through on what was certainly her hardest hike to date.

Trip home

After another night in Canyonlands we headed back home via Natural Bridges National Monument (where we just drove the scenic road), and a long trip through Navajo country to Flagstaff. The next morning we continued in a snow storm back west and made it home is a rather epic drive.

Complete set of photos here.

Travel, Utah 4wd, camping, canyonlands, capitol reef, flagstaff, great basin, hiking, hwy 50, Kelly, moab, needles, Running, utah

We were recently on a roadtrip to the American Southwest and managed to get in a few runs. Here’s the first one. Patty returning down Echo Canyon in Death Valley National Park.

We camped there for two nights in perfect camping weather. This run took us a couple of miles up a canyon along a jeep road. It was pretty hard going on the way up as it was uphill and the footing was very loose rocks. On the way down those same rocks were like pillows for our feet to crunch down on.

From Death Valley we headed into Arizona where the temperatures were not as nice. Flagstaff was in single digits and windy when we got up so we decided to pass on our planned run in Buffalo Park. We Northern Californian dwellers are not built for those conditions (or at least lack the right apparel!)

A couple of days later, now in Moab, UT we woke up and, because Kelly was still asleep and we were in a dark motel room, we checked the iPhone to see what the weather was like outside. “28 degrees.” Not bad. A run looked on. “And a chance of snow.” Hmmm. We checked the radar image and a big green and yellow blob hovered over Moab. Double hmmm. I got up and looked out the window. White. Snow. Everywhere.

When Kelly woke up she was pretty excited. She’d never seen snow actually falling before.

We spent the first part of the morning hanging out in a coffee shop and then playing in snow at the local park. While there I noticed how many people were out running! There was even a couple doing intervals across the park’s snowy grass. If they could run, so could I. We went back to the hotel and got changed and then took turns in putting down a 3 mile run.

While I won’t go so far as to say it was really all that nice running into the snow, it was refreshing and something different. Plus, with almost 3000 miles of driving in a week, it got my legs moving.

Death Valley, Running, Utah