Zion's HIdden Canyon Trail

On our second day in the park we decided to try to get away from the crowds. We read about a Hidden Canyon trail and thought it sounded right on.


The trailhead starts at Weeping Rock, which produces some pretty amazing hanging gardens. According to our shuttle driver the water takes 1200 years to penetrate through the rock and feed the greenery.

Our hike started with a well maintained path and slowly turned into sand and rock. Before reaching the mouth of Hidden Canyon you must use several anchored chains to make your way around some cliff edges. There was little danger of actually falling but there was always a small feeling in the back of your mind, what if...
The floor of the canyon itself is a dry creek bed. This probably has some run off during spring from snow melt, but when we arrived it was like walking on the beach. Hidden Canyon was narrow and steep-walled. The sandstone was carved out by the wind and water in some pretty interesting formations. Near the end of the canyon there is a free standing arch that was about twenty feet across.

The canyon gets more and more narrow until no amount of climbing and scrambling without canyoneering tools will get you any further. We ate our gas station ham and cheese sandwich with a granola bar and a swig of water while sitting on a fallen log, and made our way back.

For more photos, click HERE.

Don't Look Down

With all of the amazing national and state parks we've seen on this trip, Zion really needed to shine to impress us. It shined indeed . . . and glowed, sparkled and dazzled while it was at it. There were a few unique features we really liked. Zion requires visitors to ride a free shuttle along the scenic route from the main entrance. There is another road that crosses the park through a tunnel heading toward the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but large vehicles require an escort to get through the tunnel. You can get off the shuttle at any point, and the driver gives some general history and tips along the way. We chose to do the 5 mile Angel's Landing hiking trail. It was steep, with some areas passed only by holding onto chains in the rock while looking straight down thousands of feet.

Later in the afternoon, as the sun got lower, we walked the Emerald Pools trail. This hike was more woodsy, with spectacular fall foliage (who knew you could find that in the southwest?). The contrast between the colorful leaves and the stark red rocks was striking. Add to that the Virgin River flowing below, and you really couldn't ask for more. See photos HERE. For a couple quick elk duels click HERE.

Green Cacti, Blue Angels

It's back to shorts weather after the Pike's Peak Colorado snow! Phoenix is still in the low 90s
in the October afternoon. We did a challenging hike in the White Tank Mountains, and placed
our Jeep (see "Green Jeep Bug and Bugling Elk" entry from 10/8) in a new geocache for someone else to find. Click HERE for some lovely desert photos.










For the next activity of the weekend, we scored some VIP tickets to the Goodyear Balloon and Air Spectacular through a coworker in the office. Her brother is Public Relations Officer for the Blue Angels. It was a great show! Those photos are available by clicking HERE. Watch a couple of videos HERE.

Super Hairpins

From Colorado Springs, it's a short drive to Garden of the Gods. There were some neat rock formations, and lots of climbers, but we'd been spoiled recently by Moab, so we opted for a quick look around and continued on. The next stop was the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. These are authentic representations of Anasazi culture over 700 years old. The attraction has been open to the public since 1906! Construction on the three-story building below the cliff dwellings, which now houses the museum and shop, was begun in 1898. Various additions were made over the years, and the buildings were occupied until 1984.

It's about 20 miles up the partially paved Pikes Peak Highway to the summit, 14,110 feet above. The peak is the second most visited in the world, second only to Mt. Fuji. In the mid-1800s, Pikes Peak was a symbol to the gold seekers heading west. "Pikes Peak or Bust" became their slogan. The road has very few guard rails, and the hairpin turns that run the whole way up are truly hairy. The drive offers dramatic views, though, and impressive, sweeping vistas. Travelers are cautioned to watch out for sudden changes in the weather. We got caught in some light snow on the way down. Check out some photos of the trip by clicking HERE.

Green Jeep Bug and Bugling Elk

Just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, we started what was probably the most challenging hike of the season. The trailhead was a few miles down a dirt road, and unmarked. We only found it because its coordinates were listed as a good place to start searching for a geocache. This cache contained one of the much sought after 2006 Green Jeep Travel Bugs. This item just had to be in our log, and a photo of the jeep, with the theme of "Adventure" would also give us an entry into this month's challenge.

Unfortunately, when entering the cache's coordinates into the GPS, the last two digits were transposed, and we did an extra mile at least climbing through boulder fields and bushwacking through dense underbrush and trees on the steep slopes of Palisade mountain. Cell phone service was restored at the summit, and thank goodness our day's savior, Ramon, was able to log into geocaching.com remotely to give us the proper coordinates. The first few photos in the web album (see link below) are from that hike.

Needing to slow the pace a bit, we head into Rocky Mountain National Park. The park has over 350 miles of hiking trails itself, and is home to elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks, marmot and more. Our timing was perfect to see large groups of elk coming down from the mountain to graze in the late afternoon in the meadows. Fall is also time for the elk rut, and we heard several males bugling in an attempt to gather a harem. The bugle indicates a bull's size and physical fiteness. Once he has his cows, the bull keeps them in line, herding them in the direction he wants them to go with warnings and bumps with his rack when necessary. Check out this informative article on the elk rut.

Check out the day's photos by clicking HERE.

Also by popular request here a couple videos of the day. Video Link

Holy Moab

Moab, UT is one of the most beautiful spots we've been this year. We wish we'd had more time there. It may even deserve a return trip someday. Just a short trip from downtown Moab you can reach Arches National Park as well as Canyonlands National Park. Nearby Dead Horse Point State Park is where Thelma and Louise took their famous plunge. All three are worth a look. Special thanks to Desert Highlights and our guide Ben who made our canyoneering trip so memorable.

Here is a link to our Moab photos-

http://picasaweb.google.com/heathertamara/Moab