I've had my new camp trailer parked at my in-laws' house for the past two weeks not just because I don't have room for both the old and new trailers in my driveway, but also because I've been dreading backing the new trailer into the drive. I've spent this time fixing up the old trailer--installing new linoleum and carpet, adjusting all the doors so they open and close without sticking, tightening loose screws, fixing screens, etc.--in order to sell it. I finally got it all finished this week and then swapped trailers. I took the new trailer to an empty parking lot for a few practice runs first, though it didn't make me any more confident that I'd be able get it parked at home. I built a ramp out of 2x10" lumber to lay over the curb so that I could cut the corner of the driveway a bit as I backed it in, and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I managed to get it backed in in one shot, and it's really nice to have it parked at home now. Traci and I still need to get all our camping gear stowed in the new trailer, and I need to put in a new battery, change the oil in the generator, and make sure all the appliances run on both gas and electric. I also have an appointment to get the axles flipped soon, which will give the trailer some much needed ground clearance so we can take it off the beaten path. We won't get a chance to load up the ATVs and go camping for a couple of weeks, though I'm half-tempted to sleep in the driveway just to get a feel for our new home away from home. :)

While Traci was with Michael at Scout daycamp yesterday, Bradley and I did the Coal Wash loop ride on my ATV. The weather was forecast to be 75-80° with a 20-30% chance of showers. That seemed acceptable to me, though considering that we'd be riding in the bottom of canyons with large drainages for most of the ride, I did have some concerns about flash flooding. We left home pretty early and got to the staging area and started riding before 9:00 AM. It was beginning to get overcast, and there were some very dark clouds moving in from the west, but I decided to risk it. The first part of the ride through the main part of Coal Wash was pretty boring because I've been through there so many times recently, although that part of the canyon isn't terribly scenic anyway--the really nice scenery kicks in at the fork. We reached the fork of Coal Wash and, for the first time, I headed up the South Fork. Up until this point, my travels have always taken me up the North Fork, and the only reason I chose to do this loop counter-clockwise was so I could see the South Fork first on this trip (which turned out to be a a good decision).

The scenery along the South Fork of Coal Wash is a bit different from the North Fork. The canyon bottom is wider and there are more springs along the South Fork. I saw some interesting features there, including a large alcove that beckoned for exploration, but they were too far away from the ATV trail for me to visit them on this trip. We only made a couple of short stops in the canyon, one of which was at a spring where Bradley played with the tadpoles in a shallow pool right at the edge of the trail. The ride through that part of Coal Wash seemed short, which it really was--compared to the North Fork, it's much easier and faster riding. We soon found ourselves at the beginning of the Eva Conover Road.

At about this point, it started sprinkling on-and-off, which continued throughout most of the day. I expected the Eva Conover Road to have a steeper climb out of Coal Wash, but it was pretty easy-going. The trail was very scenic, and followed the rim of a minor fork off of Coal Wash for the first little while. Bradley and I found our first geocache of the day along that section of trail. The next geocache that we found was about two miles farther along the trail on Secret Mesa, and there we saw two guys on dirt bikes who were the first people we'd seen after a full three hours of riding. When we finished up at the cache, it was nearing time for lunch, so we rode on while looking for a nice and sheltered spot at which to eat. We came to the end of the Eva Conover Road without having found a lunch spot, and just kept going past the UDOT shed (where they keep the snow plows for the nearby stretch of I-70) toward Eagle Canyon, but we found a very nice place to stop before reaching the trail leading down into Eagle Canyon.

During our lunch stop it became a bit more windy and began sprinkling more heavily, so we donned our jackets for the first time. Bradley was cold enough that I put him in front of me on the ATV where he could take advantage of the heat from the engine. Luckily, as we descended into Eagle Canyon, the high canyon walls blocked much of the wind and it was much more comfortable for us both. When we got to the bottom of the Canyon we saw a couple more people, one person in a UTV and another guy (wearing shorts and a t-shirt!) on an ATV. We found three more geocaches in the canyon, and I really enjoyed the change of scenery. We weren't far from the highest point in the Swell, and we'd gained over 1,000 feet of elevation from where we'd started the ride. Plant life changed from small scrub and pinyon/juniper to more grasses and various pine trees. We passed under the bridges of I-70, which were very impressive when viewed from underneath (they're rather unremarkable when driving the interstate), and saw the huge natural arch in Eagle Canyon. While finding the geocache near the arch, a group of about eight ATVs passed us by going in the opposite direction.

After less than four miles in the bottom of the canyon, the trail climbed out toward Swasey's Cabin and the Head of Sinbad. There were even more pine trees as the trail climbed higher, topping out at about 7,200' in elevation, and the scenery there was unlike any other part of the Swell. I stopped to talk to a couple on ATVs right before reaching the top of the trail near the cabin, and they remarked how comfortable Torrey looked riding in her basket on the front of my machine. When we reached the cabin, there were four motorcycles parked there but no people in sight. Bradley and I checked out the cabin, and just as we were about to leave, the motorcycle riders appeared along the nearby hiking trail and we stopped to chat for a while. They were from California and were on their first trip to Utah, and they also made a comment about Torrey and her comfy spot on the four-wheeler.

After the cabin, we made a short stop at some rock art close by, then crossed under I-70 through a concrete tunnel where we saw the last people (a couple on one ATV) that we'd see on the trail for the rest of the day. We made more very quick stops at Dutchman Arch and the Locomotive Point rock art. We crossed over Reid Neilson Draw started the descent down to Cane Wash. The first part of the trail was ugly--very rocky and pretty steep, and it was the first part that made me glad I was doing the loop counter-clockwise so I didn't have to go up the hill. It eventually leveled out more and the descent slowed, and we found another geocache at a gorgeous overlook of Horseshoe Bend. From there, I could see the Wickiup and a huge chunk of the Swell and beyond.

It was nearing 5:00 PM when we left that cache, and for the first time during the ride the sun shone from behind the clouds. I had been wishing for sunshine during the day, mostly so my photos would turn out better, but it was short-lived. We reached Cane Wash and stopped briefly to let Bradley and Torrey play around and try to catch lizards, then started up the trail that leads over Fix-It Pass to the North Fork of Coal Wash. Shortly after leaving Cane Wash, some much darker clouds moved in and it began sprinkling again--it was time to put our jackets back on.

I stopped to take some photos at the top of the steep but short trail that leads down into the North Fork of Coal Wash, and that was the last time I took out my camera for a while. It started raining lightly, though still harder than anything we'd experienced so far, and it was almost 6:30 PM and already later than I'd expected us to be out. Going down that section of trail was really tough--by far the hardest thing I had done all day--and I was extremely glad that I wasn't going up it instead. I made it to the bottom after making Bradley get off the ATV while I negotiated some bouldery drop-offs, then I let Torrey run alongside for about a half a mile just to keep her happy. The rain gradually got heavier, though still not too bad, but I decided I needed to pick up the pace and so started riding about as fast as I dared in order to get home at a decent time.

Shortly after passing up the Devil's Racetrack turnoff, the rain started dumping buckets. We were still about an hours' ride from where the truck was parked, and there was no escaping the rain. A few minutes later, waterfalls began pouring off the canyon walls. It was then that I realized we could be in serious trouble. I stopped just long enough to grab my camera and cell phone and put them in my backpack where they'd stay dry (though not before snapping a quick photo of one of the waterfalls), then took off again at full speed. Although it was about 7:00 PM and it should have been plenty light enough to see, I had to remove my sunglasses in order to make out the trail in front of me, though they were prescription lenses and so left me still not seeing as well as I should have been able to.

My ATV has never been ridden so hard and fast. I was seriously looking behind me on the straight stretches of trail expecting to see a flash flood rushing up behind us. Even a relatively small flow (not large enough to wash the ATV away) would have caused huge problems by obscuring obstacles in the trail and making egress difficult or impossible. There was some water already running in the bottom of the wash, which served to get us even more wet as the ATV splashed through it. After about five miles of hauling ass, we finally reached the junction where BLM road 6768 meets up with Coal Wash and we were able to exit the wash bottom. It was a huge relief to be away from flash flood danger, though we were now riding above the canyon rim and lightning was striking near enough to make me worry about getting struck. Fortunately, with the sandy and gravelly soil, mud wasn't an issue...yet.

Bradley was miserable and kept asking how close to the truck we were, and Torrey was probably worse off than he was because she had no idea what was going on other than that she was cold and wet and bouncing around a lot. After what seemed like hours, but was actually about 50 minutes after the downpour started, we finally arrived at the truck. I pulled up right alongside the door, unlocked it, and picked Bradley up and set him down inside the truck, then did the same for Torrey. The road hadn't been muddy up until that point, but the ground at the staging area was extremely sticky clay, as was the next mile of road leading back to civilization. In just the 40 or 50 feet I'd ridden across the staging area to get from the road to the truck, I'd gotten probably 50 pounds of mud stuck to the tires of the ATV. After getting Bradley squared away with a dry change of clothes (which I always carry for the kids), I circled the ATV around and drove up the ramp into the truck bed. I stayed in the truck bed while secured it with the ratcheting straps that I'd left in the truck bed, but I had to jump down to the ground to get the ramp unhooked, folded up, and tucked away under the ATV.

By that time I probably had several more pounds apiece of mud on my shoes, and after getting into the truck I spent a few minutes getting the mud off. By the time I was ready to drive away, I realized that I had forgotten to turn the hubs in, so I had to get back out and lock them in, then knock and scrape the mud off my shoes again. I've had an experience driving on this road in the mud once before and it wasn't pretty, and I knew what to expect for the first mile of the drive back home. Despite being in 4WD and having better tires than the last time I was in this situation, at several times I was traveling with the truck at a 45-degree angle to the road but still making forward progress. There's a ditch along the road that gets deep enough to swallow a vehicle in some places, and I almost slid into it a few times. It took me about 20 minutes to travel that one mile of bad road, though during dry conditions it's easily possible to do between 30 and 60 miles per hour on it. After the greasy stretch, the road becomes gravel, then alternates between native surface (that's not so clay-like) and gravel for the rest of the drive to Ferron, and I didn't have any more problems with mud. I stopped just north of Ferron at a pull-out on Highway 10 so that we could eat some dinner which consisted of ham, cheese, crackers, and Fig Newtons. We got home well after 10:00 PM, and all I had the energy to do was to take a shower and go to bed.

I spent about two hours of my Father's Day today cleaning the mud off the truck and ATV (and then the driveway). I would still want to do this ride again sometime, though it would be nice to have more daylight and nicer weather for the ride. With today being the summer solstice, I don't believe the former is possible. :) I would definitely only do this loop in a counter-clockwise direction. Some of the hills would be difficult to go up, and considering the amount of time the ride takes, difficulties should be minimized.

We've owned our old Layton camp trailer for six years, and with the kids getting bigger and now having ATVs that we need to haul when we go camping, it was finally time to replace it with something more suitable for our family:

Traci's uncle had this sitting at his used car lot in Helper, and though I'd actually stopped to look at it once, I didn't think it would be within my budget so I didn't even inquire about it. However, Traci did stop to ask about the price the other day, and although it was more than we were looking to spend, it's only a year old which allowed us to get a longer loan term and keep our monthly payments low. We're planning on dumping money toward the loan to pay it off early.

The only downside is that it's six feet longer than my old trailer, and I'm not sure I'll be able to back it into the driveway. It's parked at Traci's parents' house for now, until I get the nerve up to try parking it at home. I'll likely have to block traffic for a short while, and I'm worried about hitting the tree that's one foot from the edge of my driveway entrance, and I really don't want to drop the tires off into the gutter. Other than that, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Traci spent all day yesterday doing Relay for Life, so instead of sticking around town and being bored, the boys and I went for a road trip. I'm not quite sure why I settled on the San Rafael Desert, but it's been a while since I've been there, and I never really got a chance to explore the area the three previous time I'd been there. It wasn't until Friday after work that I even decided on where to go, so I spent that evening getting everything prepared for a fun trip. I knew it would be a very long trip with a lot of driving (it was 260 miles total, with 100 miles being on gravel and dirt roads), so I found a few ways to keep Michael and Bradley interested and entertained along the way. I let them pick out their own lunches and dinners (mostly Lunchables, with a few snacks in between), and also planned out several short stops along the way to break up the monotony of the drive.

We left Price just after 8:00 am on Saturday morning, which was a little later than I'd hoped but still early enough to have a full day for exploring. Our first stop was for a quick potty break at the beginning of the gravel road just south of Green River, and several miles after that we stopped again at Horse Bench Reservoir so that the boys could climb around on the rocks and I could find a geocache. Our next stop was at a place where the road crossed a small sand dune. Michael and Bradley love playing in the sand (hell, so do I), and there's no shortage of it in the San Rafael Desert. Short stops like this really kept them happy, which in turn made the trip worthwhile for me.

After the sand dune, we moved along to the Chaffin Ranch to see the geyser there (see DesertWoodrat's blog post for more photos and a great video). When we arrived, the ground around the geyser was pretty wet, so I think it had erupted shortly before we got there. While we waited for the geyser to go off, the boys played around and collected rocks and sticks coated in travertine. I have a problem with them always bringing home rocks in their pockets (we have too many at home as it is), so I had to set some ground rules wherein they could only collect rocks on this trip when they had my approval, and I let them each take one piece of travertine from there. We waited around for just over 40 minutes with no eruption--all we got was to hear some air escaping early on, though it was silent when we left. Michael and Bradley were disappointed because I told them they could play in the water if it erupted while we were there, but they also understood that the longer we spent waiting, the less we would be able to do later in the day.

The next stretch of driving was pretty long, but the boys were satisfied so far with everything we'd done, so it wasn't too boring for them. We kept going south on the main road after crossing the San Rafael River bridge and took the turnoff to Saucer Basin. The basin was surprisingly green, much more so than I remember when I was there four years ago. The road was washed out slightly where it crossed upper Moonshine Wash (or lower North Spring Wash, I'm not sure which), and I tried to power through the sandy edges of the washout in 2WD but got stuck. Locking in the hubs solved that problem quickly and we were soon on our way again. My destination at the end of this road was the Cone, a formation at the west end of Gruver's Mesa. I'd seen the Cone many times in satellite photos, and had even seen it in person from quite a distance. The topography has always amazed me--the sandstone is heavily pock-marked, with some of the circles/craters being bigger than 200 feet in diameter. I've long wanted to see it in person and up-close.

The road atop Gruver's Mesa crosses an old landing strip that has mostly grown over with brush. In the satellite photos, it looked like the road ended at the west end of the mesa, but I wasn't able to drive that close. There was a narrow ridge that the road crossed about 0.15 miles from the end, but it had washed out a bit and I didn't dare drive across it. We parked just before the washout and ate lunch since it was nearly 1:00 pm, then filled up our water bottles and set out on foot. I didn't want to push the boys too hard, so I told them that we could stop hiking and head back to the truck anytime they wanted, and I half expected them to see the route down to the Cone and want to turn back right then. I was very surprised when both of them saw what we had to hike down, and they both still wanted to go there, even after I reminded them that we would have to hike back up the ridge we were about to hike down. I expected it to be difficult finding a route down to the Cone, but the "road" actually continued down most of the way, apparently a remnant of mineral/oil exploration from many decades ago. We had to pick our way down a series of ledges near the bottom of the mesa, but it wasn't anything that a five-year-old couldn't handle.

Upon reaching the bottom of the Cone, I decided that climbing to the top wouldn't be appropriate for Michael and Bradley, so I convinced them to hike all the way around it instead (the summit will have to wait for another day). About the time we had gone halfway around the Cone, they decided that they'd had enough hiking and wanted to go back to the truck. Since we were already halfway around, they were amenable to continuing the rest of the way around, although the terrain was a bit rougher ahead of us. We made it without any troubles though, and I decided to place a geocache at the base of the Cone before we continued on our way. Very shortly after we started heading back, we found chert arrowhead chippings scattered over a huge area, and each of the boys picked up a piece to take home. The hike back to the top of Gruver's Mesa went smoothly. Just before the last steep hill before the very top, I stopped to pick up a piece of petrified wood that I'd spotted on the way down. It weighed about 50 pounds, and it was no easy feat getting it to the top. Even after that, carrying it on level ground was difficult, but I made it the entire 1,000 feet back to the truck without breaking my back. :)

By the time we got back on the road, we'd been gone from home for about eight hours and most of the day was gone. I had to skip a few planned stops in order to make it home at a decent time, but we still had time to squeeze in the huge sand dunes near Middle Canyon and the igneous dike near the Big Flat Tops. There was quite a bit of driving between Gruver's Mesa and the sand dunes, but the kids were beat from the hike and both of them fell asleep along the way. I made a brief stop at Lookout Point, and as I pulled up I startled a golden eagle that was just sitting on the ground there. I was about 30 feet from the eagle before I even realized it was there, and it noticed me at about the same time and took flight. I was too slow in grabbing the camera to get a decent photo, but I spent a minute or two enjoying the view, then moved on.

When we got to the sand dunes, the kids had awakened and were ready to play again. I had expected to spend a lot of time there, but the wind was blowing a lot of sand and soon irritated the kids to the point where they were ready to stop playing and eat dinner. I had them strip off their shoes and clothes and cleaned the sand out of everything (and there was a lot), then we drove a short distance down the road and found a nice spot to park and eat dinner. I really hated having to drive past the Sweetwater Reef turnoff, but I knew that the area was too big to explore with as little time as we had left, so we pressed on toward the igneous dike. There are three large sections where the dike is exposed, but I chose to stop at the the largest section on this trip since we were short on time (I'll be back for the rest some other day). We had to hike about a quarter-mile from the nearest road to the dike. We climbed around on it, and I took a ton of photos. I've seen a couple of igneous dikes (there aren't a lot in this part of Utah), and this one is the most interesting. I placed a geocache there, the kids each picked up a piece of volcanic rock, then we headed back to the truck. I gave the kids some snacks for the drive home, then we were on our way toward UT-24. We had to pass up Little Flat Top, which was another place I had wanted to stop. The full moon appeared in the sky before we got back to the highway, and I caught glimpses of it in my rearview mirror all along the drive home.

We got home at 10:20 pm, just in time to take a quick shower and crash in our beds. I was hoping that my sunburn would wash off, but only some of that redness was from the red dirt and sand in the desert. The backs of my legs got burned pretty badly, but the kids fared better because they've spent more time out in the sun than I have this summer. I took 400 photos on the trip, and I've whittled them down to 77 that were worthy of being posted online, which you can view here.

I've spent a lot of today contemplating my next trip to the area, but I'm not sure I'll make it back there during the heat of summer. Spring seems to have passed me by, and I sure didn't get out quite enough when the weather was moderate. I'll have to make the best of this fall.

After a lot of procrastination, I got my vegetable garden planted on Monday. I think this is the latest I've ever planted, and I came this close ---><--- to not doing a garden this year. Starting from seeds, like I normally do, has gotten to be too much work and takes up too much space on the window seat in the dining room. This year I got all live plants, and I decided not to plant corn because it's never really grown well in our yard. I've got a lot of tomatoes, crookneck squash, cucumbers, and zucchini. There's probably room for couple more plants in the garden, but I haven't figured out what I can plant that wouldn't be less trouble to simply buy at the store.