Adventures Through the Canyons

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Deciding to end our time at Bryce Canyon, our next stop was Escalante, and we were off! We ended up driving through another hail storm, however with the weather during our adventures later in the day you would have never assumed so. As we drove through a small town it was time to make a few stops. After visiting various stores including a thrift shop and a little quaint mercantile, we got directions for the slot canyons as well as a campground permit for the night. Now to be fair, Michael and John were warned about the dirt road conditions driving to the canyons, but I suppose nothing can really prepare you for 26 miles of straight washboards (can’t beat the views though.)

Eventually we made it to Dry Fork road, and so begins one of my favorite explorations of the trip! We all packed up a little bit and headed out. I guess going into this hike without having many expectations is really what did it in for me. Not knowing exactly the way to go or how long the trails were, we gathered some advice along the way. We made our way through both Peekaboo and Spooky canyon, stopping many times along the way to take photos and mess around in the other worldly landscape that none of us had ever experienced before. There are points where the second canyon drops down a few feet at a time, and gets very very tight. Tight enough to the point where you have to turn sideways and it’s almost impossible to slide through while wearing a backpack. I’ll be honest, towards the end of Spooky canyon there was a point where I looked up to the sky that seemed a little too far away for my liking and the walls were quite tight and I’m not sure I felt too great about being in the slot canyons anymore. Luckily there were only a few more minutes until we were back out in the open, and I would definitely do it again!

Only really knowing about two of the canyons, on our hike back to the parking lot we saw a third. Apparently the Dry Fork area has four total canyons. This one was wide enough to fit a car through, but it did slim down a ways into it. We followed it until it left us at a bit of a dead end, and despite the fact that we passed a few people that had turned around, (which we should have probably too) we climbed out of the canyon and started our long (non-trail route) trek back to the parking lot. By the time we had drank almost all of our water and were shedding layers of clothes because of the heat, we made it to a nice steep hill right below the van. On our way back across the treacherous washboards, we made a pit stop at Devil’s Garden.

We drove all the way back out of the area and ended up stopping at a campground to shower and make dinner with a nice lake view. We then grabbed some firewood and found a nice spot in the campground we were actually staying at for the night. This is also where we found out that John has a little issue with angles while sleeping on the van floor. Once he put a few rock slabs under the tires he seemed more satisfied. Watching the full moon rise from the horizon while our fire was burning away, along with throwing back a few drinks felt pretty good after another long day. There was even a man at the campground who rode his bicycle all the way from Seattle to LA to Escalante, and was continuing across the country from there! I ended up calling it a night pretty early while the boys stayed up hanging out and taking some fun night photos.