Yesterday was an epic day of hiking and geocaching, with some exciting off-roading thrown in. Today's my birthday so I had taken yesterday off work, and I wanted to do something really fun on my day off. Somebody recently placed a series of 20 geocaches in the middle of the San Rafael Swell called the "Heart of the Desert." Finding those sounded like more fun than the rockhounding trip that I had originally planned, so early Friday morning I set out to find all 20 caches, plus several others in the area. I left home just before 7:00 and reached my parking spot for the HOTD caches at 9:00. By then it was already warm enough to have used the A/C in the truck on the drive there, but I came prepared to haul enough water to last me the entire hike. The first few caches were easy to get to by hiking across mostly flat ground. After that, the next few required some steep scrambling through small canyons and over hills. I reached the fifth cache in the series after an hour and 15 minutes, which would pretty much set the pace for the remaining 15. By the time I reached the halfway point, it was pretty damn hot and I had to stop and rest. I was on Indian Flat by then, and most of the remaining caches were reached by simply hiking across relatively flat ground.

At the fifteenth cache in the series, something strange happened. An pronghorn antelope began approaching me, and even though he obviously knew I was there, he just kept on coming. He was nonchalant about it, casually and slowly walking toward me while occasionally stopping to browse on some grass. I took some video of him which you can see here on YouTube. His behavior eventually started to spook me, so I shooed him off by walking toward him and tossing a few rocks his way. I then continued on my way to find the remaining few caches. Near the second to last one, I made a stupid mistake. There was a steep hill between me and the next cache, but I hadn't done enough planning ahead and didn't realize that the cache was on the other side of the hill--I expected it to be on top. I climbed the hill only to go back down the other side, when I could have walked around it much more easily. By the time I had finished finding all the geocaches and returned to the truck, I was too exhausted to even eat lunch. It took me just under six hours and the hike was over six miles, and all I wanted was to be on my way.

There was one other geocache nearby--well, about 25 miles away on an extremely rough road--that I wanted to find because it was the oldest unfound geocache in Utah. It was at Swazy's Leap, which is in one of the most remote areas of the San Rafael Swell. The road going there just kept getting worse and worse, but I kept going and going because I thought to myself, "It can't possibly get any worse that what I already drove over." It turns out that, yes, it can get worse--much worse. The road wasn't technically difficult to drive on, it was just rough and rocky. I only needed 4WD for one brief section on the drive out of the area. I finally reached the "end" of the road where the BLM has barricaded it from further vehicular travel, but the actual road continues another 2.2 miles to the cache at Swazy's Leap. I was already nearly exhausted from the earlier hiking, and the drive to this place had taken a lot longer than I expected. I barely had a signal on my cell phone, so I decided to call Traci to let her know where I was and what I was planning on doing, just in case something went wrong. The hike started off badly. I thought I could get there faster if I left the road and cut cross-country, but I ran into a couple of deep canyons that had to be negotiated. Now I know why the road follows the course that it does. I eventually regained the road and decided to stick with it the rest of the way to the cache. I kept a fast pace, but my muscles were paying for it. It took me more than an hour to reach the cache, but it was an awesome place and well worth the effort. Swazy's Leap is a relatively narrow spot along the canyon rim of the Lower Black Box, through which the San Rafael River flows. Legend has it that one of the Swazy brothers jumped his horse across this spot. It's easily possible to hike down to the "Leap," but I was too tired and the sun was sinking low in the sky. I snapped a few photos and hurriedly began the march back to the truck, this time not straying from the road much at all.

I covered the return hike in less than an hour, even though it was the same distance as the hike in. I called Traci again to let her know that I was on my way home, but that I'd be a while. The sun had set behind the cliffs to the west, and I began the long drive home as it began to get dark. The drive home was just plain shitty. It was stressful because I was in a hurry, but I couldn't see the road as well and couldn't go as fast as I wanted. My legs were sore and began to cramp up, and twice I had to stop the truck and walk around a little to loosen my leg muscles up. One nice thing about the drive home is that, when driving through Buckhorn Wash, I caught a glimpse of the sky out my window and noticed that the Milky Way was visible and extremely bright. Despite my hurry, I pulled over, turned the headlights off and shut the engine down so I could enjoy that sight for a few minutes. The drive home was only 75 miles but it took me three hours to make it there. I barely had enough energy to take a shower before I collapsed into bed. It was a tough day, but so far it's been a great start to my birthday weekend.

Man, it's been a while since I posted anything to this site. Last weekend was pretty uneventful, though I did take the boys out for a little hiking southeast of town. We first went to Olsen Reservoir to release the tadpoles that we caught a few weeks ago on Cedar Mountain. A couple of them had completely turned into frogs, and the rest were almost there. Torrey especially had a lot of fun there playing in the water and the mud. I think Michael and Bradley wanted to play in the water and mud, but I wouldn't let them get near it. After leaving Olsen Reservoir, we drove closer to Mounds to hike around a bit. There was an interesting little hill that I'd seen about a year ago from the opposite side of the Price River, and I finally decided to check it out. We were able to drive to within a few hundred feet of the hill, then we hiked down off the plateau on which we parked and then up the hill. It wasn't terribly interesting there, but it was something to do. After hiking around, we drove to the Price River bridge near Mounds and ate lunch at the river's edge. The kids really wanted to at least dip their feet in the river, but the bank was to steep to get close without falling right in. After returning home, Torrey smelled badly of the dried stagnant mud that she picked up at Olsen Reservoir, so I gave her a haircut and a bath. I'm lucky that she's such a well-behaved dog, or else that would have been quite an adventure by itself!

For the last few months I've been going jogging in the evenings on a semi-regular basis. When I jog, I always take Torrey with me (on her leash, of course) and I almost always leave my handgun at home. I had a close call this evening that left me wishing I'd had some means of self-defense other than my feet and hands. I had jogged a mile and a half and I was only a couple of blocks from returning home when I came across a pit bull standing directly in front of me on the sidewalk. As I approached, it was standing its ground and letting out a low growl. I managed to skirt around it on the parking strip, but then it started giving chase. I began sprinting (and so did Torrey), and luckily after a short distance the dog gave up its chase.

This was the third time in my life I've ever felt seriously threatened by a dog, and each of those times it was a pit bull that I was in fear of. I think that for the near future I'll at least carry my Kel-Tec P-11 when I go jogging, since it's so much lighter and smaller than my XD-40. I would rather carry something lightweight, like pepper spray, but I doubt I could even find any here in Price. I will have to get some the next time I travel up to Utah County, because carrying a big chunk of metal and plastic while jogging is going to be damned uncomfortable.

I'm back and finally winding down from the weekend's camping trip. I normally take time off work for these geocaching/camping events so that I can stay an extra day or two, but this time I just stayed Friday through Sunday. I actually did take Thursday and Monday off work, but only so I could pack and unpack all the camping gear without stressing over it.

The event was a lot of fun, as usual. There were even fewer people than last year, and last year it seemed that there were fewer people than the year before. The usual suspects showed up, however, and a few others who were a lot of fun to hang out with. The family and I spent Friday setting up camp and doing some geocaching, then as other people arrived we started hanging out with them around the campfire. I went to bed early (1:00 a.m.) and got up early the next morning.

We spent the first half of Saturday just lounging around camp and visiting the few others who showed up just for the day. In the afternoon my family set out with my sister's family and our friend Chris for a hike to a geocache. The hike was supposed to be pretty simple, but it turned out that we were approaching from the wrong side of the creek, and there was no easy way through the bottom of the canyon and across the creek. We hiked back to our vehicles and then stopped for a geocache on the drive back to the campground. We ate a nice potluck dinner, and then several of us had a few drinks. Twice I went through the forest after dark to find the night cache. The first time was with Traci, my niece, and another couple's grandson. We found the cache easily, despite having to cross a creek twice. The second time I did the night cache, it was with everyone who had been drinking (myself included in that group). A couple of the guys were absolutely shitfaced, so there was a lot of stumbling and loud laughter--I'm surprised the campground host didn't come to investigate. I still went to bed relatively early at 1:30 a.m.

We all put together an impromptu potluck breakfast on Sunday morning, then slowly everybody packed up their gear and headed out. We got home early enough that Traci and I were able to unload everything from the truck and camp trailer before dinner, so we had some time to relax that evening before bed.

Early last week I began planning a trip into the San Rafael Swell for Saturday, but my plans turned into a series of hikes that would take a couple of days to complete, so I decided to put it off until the last weekend in August. That left me with nothing to do this weekend, and the weather forecast called for rain, so I started looking for somewhere close to home where my family and I could go to have some fun. I wanted something close just in case we got rained out--I didn't want to burn half a tank of fuel only to get turned around when we hit the dirt roads. I have hundreds of waypoints marked in Google Earth for places I'd like to go in the future, so I fired up the program and browsed through them all. I saw the waypoint at Gooseberry Spring on Cedar Mountain and remembered how awesome that place was two winters ago when I first went there. Conditions weren't ideal for hiking around in that terrain in the winter, so I filed it away as a place to return to in warmer weather.

Traci had a church function to attend earlier on Saturday, so we didn't leave town until about 1:30 p.m. Because of all the recent rain, we decided our first stop on Cedar Mountain would be a cow pond that we'd been to before. I brought along a 1-gallon clear plastic jug, and we all caught some tadpoles to bring home. Michael and Bradley have never caught tadpoles or watched them turn into frogs, so I thought it would be a fun experience for them. We were all catching them and nobody was keeping count, so we ended up bringing too many home. I gave some to my sister for her kids to have, and we kept six of them in a fish bowl.

After a brief stop at the Cedar Mountain overlook, we kept driving past the radio towers and the landing strip and stopped at Gooseberry Spring. It really is quite an amazing place. The spring itself comes out of the bottom of a semi-circular cliff, and the bowl formed by the cliffs is filled with aspen and large juniper trees and a single ponderosa pine. As soon as we arrived it began sprinkling lightly, but I wasn't going to let a little rain stop me from exploring the area. We all set out to find a route down to the bottom of the cliffs, which I expected to be a tough scramble. Instead, we found an obvious and easy trail leading down into the trees. To everyone's surprise, there was an old dilapidated cabin in the bottom of the cove not too far from the spring. The rain had gradually gotten heavier as we hiked down, so by the time we found the cabin we were getting soaked. We took refuge up against a large boulder under some trees, but it only provided a little protection. The dark cloud passing overhead didn't look very big and I expected the storm to pass quickly, but after ten minutes of huddling against the boulder we grew tired of it. As soon as the lightning grew closer and louder, we decided to make a run for the truck. The trail had gone from merely moist to completely muddy, so we were not only wet but also filthy by the time we got back to the truck. We were all in good spirits though, and it was actually fun getting caught in the rain.

After sitting in the truck for a while, drying off and waiting for the rain to subside a little, I got out and hiked back to the cabin while Traci and the boys stayed in the truck. I had wanted to place a geocache there, but I needed time to find just the right spot. I knew from experience that the boys wouldn't have the patience to wait while I searched for a good hiding spot, but we'd brought along notebooks, pencils, and crayons so they could keep occupied. I tried getting to the very base of the cliff where the spring comes out, but between the mud and the boulders in the way, I gave up. Every time I would grab the trunk of an aspen tree to catch my balance on the slippery rocks, I would get showered by water falling off the leaves. I made my way back to the cabin and placed the cache nearby, then high-tailed it back up to the truck because another lightning storm was quickly approaching.

We made one more quick stop at the top of an ATV/motorcycle trail that leads down to Chimney Rock Flat, then we decided to get off Cedar Mountain as quickly as we could because an even larger storm was approaching from the northwest, and the road back toward home follows the highest part of the plateau on the mountain. The drive home was very muddy in places, but I noticed a huge difference in handling with the new tires on the truck. As anybody who has driven off-road with me can attest, I almost always have to stop to turn the hubs in just to get past what seem like easy obstacles in the road, but not once did I have to use 4WD on this trip. I was also reminded why I rarely wash the truck--I can never keep it clean for more than a few days.

The weekend before last, as the boys and I were driving through the northeastern San Rafael Swell along the Green River Cutoff Road, I began to realize what an undiscovered gem that part of the Swell is. I'm not very familiar with that area, and judging by the lack of information that exists on the internet about it, I'd guess that not as many people recreate there as compared to other areas. I vaguely remembered that one particular region was called the Woodside Anticline, but I had to search through some geologic maps to figure out where I'd seen that name before. I did a Google search for information about the Woodside Anticline, and I found one of the most interesting things I'd read in a long time, the June 1951 edition of Desert Magazine. An article in it (pages 11-15) details a rockhounding trip to the Woodside Anticline by Harold Weight and his wife, Lucile. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time over the past couple of evenings trying to pinpoint exactly where the couple camped, found their rocks, and even where the photos were taken from. In a few weeks, I'm going to go there myself and spend a couple of days rockhounding and exploring some new country. There are several other nearby places I'd like to go, west of the Woodside Anticline, and I figure it will take me at least two days to see it all.

There's a reference in that article to a USGS professional paper titled Sedimentary Rocks of the San Rafael Swell and Some Adjacent Areas in Eastern Utah. Yes, I know, it sounds fascinating. ;) I've seen this paper referenced numerous times, and it appears that the authors were pioneers of geology in the Swell. I found an original of the paper and ordered it yesterday. I'm not sure what to expect from a USGS professional paper--the contents are probably not very exciting--but I am sure that it'll lead me on some more adventures in the Swell.

This past week and a half has been a boring blur. Nothing much of interest has been going on, and I keep losing track of which day it is because each day has been like the last. I spent several hours cleaning my truck on Sunday. Several hours may seem excessive, until you consider that it's been a couple of years since I last washed it. I had already scraped all the dried mud off the wheels last week before I had the new tires mounted 'cause I didn't want the guys at the tire shop to be pissed that they had to do it. I removed a couple of pounds of gravel, sand, and dirt from the floor mats (no, not carpet mats, luckily--the big meaty rubber kind). I found about a dozen toys or pieces thereof in the back seat. I'm pretty efficient at getting my money's worth at the car wash--I was able to wash the entire exterior for only $4.75 in quarters, which was all I could scrape up around the house. Now that the truck is clean and shiny inside and out, you can blame me for all the rain (and subsequent mudslides) we've had lately.

I changed the air filter on the truck today for the first time since I bought it three years ago. I know, that's terrible, but I have a good excuse, or at least a non-flimsy excuse. When I bought the truck there was a sticker on the air filter housing that said it had a K&N filter in it, and I had no reason to doubt that. Those filters are supposed to be good for 50,000 miles, and I've only driven the truck 16,000 miles in the past three years. I decided to check the truck today to see if the air filter needed cleaning, and learned that there was in fact not a K&N filter in it. There was so much dust packed into the air filter that a few taps on the ground yielded a very thick pile of dust. I replaced it with a cheap Fram filter from Checker, and even that was $35. I cringe to think of how much the Ford dealer wants for a Motorcraft filter. I took the truck for a spin around the block after replacing the air filter and there was a very noticeable difference in power. Stupid sticker.