Utah

 Shortly after we returned from our last trip, Emily finished finals. She stayed in Rexburg to take care of a few things and have fun with her friends. Unfortunately, she had a huge falling out with her roommate. I guess it has been building up for some time now. Luckily, the roommate is moving out and Emily won't have to share rooms with her anymore but it ended very badly...let's just say that we recommended that she report her for her "unethical" behavior if she didn't move out.

Meanwhile, Caitlyn got her driver's permit validated. She had her first behind the wheel lesson. She went with the same company that Emily used and we even got the same driver. Caitlyn is feeling a little better about driving down the road.

We set out to meet her at her cousin Austin's new house in Utah the next week. Emily arrived the evening before and she spent the night with them. We left early from Riverside and got to Austin's house in the early afternoon the next day. We were a little unsure of our exact plans as the forecast showed intermittent thunderstorms all over the state for this week. When we got there, we took Natalie, Austin and Mason out for a late lunch at Panda Express. Austin and Mason had to go to work afterwards and we had quite a distance to cover still until we wanted to stop to camp so we didn't get to visit long. We got to see baby Georgie but only briefly. I didn't end up even getting any pictures. We left Emily's truck there and everyone piled into Christian's truck for our adventure.

We were headed towards Escalante and wanted to camp in that vicinity. We awoke the next morning, broke down camp and continued on our way. Our goal for the day was to drive an easy but scenic trial called Hell's Backbone.

We finished around lunch time or shortly thereafter. We decided to head up the Hole-in-the-Rock trail. Apparently, Christian and I did part of this trail many years ago but was not able to do the last few miles in the vehicle we were driving. I think I was leasing a little 2-wheel drive Isuzu Amigo at the time. We had the clearance but we did not have 4-wheel drive.

It is a fairly long drive but most of the road is very easy except for the last 5 miles or so which requires high clearance and 4-wheel drive.

The road was built by Mormon Pioneers looking for a short cut to the San Juan Settlement. The families that forged this trail spent long days working on this wagon trail and evenings with music and dance at Dance Hall Rock.

Christian and Emily climbed up the back side of the Dance Hall. Apparently, there were really neat deep holes on the backside that Caitlyn and I did not see. It was very hot out, so Caitlyn and I did not follow along to the back.

As we continued down the trail, you can see the storm moving into the area. It was still afternoon when we finally made it over to Hole-in -the-Rock. Lake Powell is at the bottom of the trail. It looked pretty neat so we decided to make our way down to the bottom.

While Christian was busy taking pictures from the top, the girls and I decided to make our way down. Shortly after we started, Caitlyn decided that she didn't want to make the hike all the way down. It's really more of a class 4 scramble than a while most of the way. There were a few areas that was a little sketchy and you had to climb your way down so she went back up while Emily and I continued on our way down. 

Emily and I were starting to wonder if the trail was worth our while at some point. We were a little dirty, hot and tired and at some point, we started to smell Lake Powell and I gotta tell you, it didn't smell too nice. I made it about three-quarters of the way down when I stepped off of a small boulder and turned my ankle really badly on a small rock. Emily was quite a bit farther down from me. At this point, I saw Christian finally making his way down. We were wondering where he was and why it was taking him so long to catch up with us. Apparently, he took the wrong trail and came down the hardest possible route.

While I was resting, he passed me by on the other side to check out the bottom with Emily. I guess I should have started crawling my way back up instead of just waiting for them to come back up to where I stopped. I was letting the excruciating pain subside while partly still in denial of my circumstances.

Christian had Emily go on up ahead of us. She took my camera so I wouldn't have to drag it along with me. Christian tried to help me but in the end, I had to slowly drag myself up most of the rock as it didn't really allow us to walk side by side and it was precarious enough that he couldn't just simply carry me back up.

It took us hours to get back up and it was excruciatingly painful. Christian had to scout out the easiest route for me and pull me up some of the hardest sections for me to keep my balance using mostly one foot. When we were nearing last 25 percent of the climb, the wind started blowing really hard and we were getting sand blasted during this whole ordeal. We could barely see where we were going. I can't believe we made it back up. It was quite a harrowing ordeal that I will not forget for a long time.

When we finally made it back up, Caitlyn brought be some water near the top. Christian was nauseous. We had sand all over us. It was just everywhere. We had to move fairly quickly out of the area though as the storm over us looked eminent. There was only a small amount of daylight left and we had to make sure to get past the roughest areas before it got slick with rain.

We got through it okay but there was lightning all around us. We seemed to be in an area where two or three storm fronts were converging. We got a pretty spectacular light show. We were moving too much to try to capture any of it on film. The girls tried to get a movie of it but it was too difficult and our equipment isn't really good enough to capture any of it in the circumstance. We had to drive through many big washes on our way back out. 

It was pretty late by the time we made it back out to where we were comfortable enough to camp. Of course, it was raining when we decided on a spot so Christian through up our tents as quickly as we could and we scrambled into our tents as we were all pretty tired from the ordeal. We didn't even bother with dinner. We got rain on and off in the beginning but the storm moved off again fairly quickly.

In the morning, Emily taped up my swollen ankle and we decided that we would definitely have to cut our trip short and head home. Before leaving, we took a side trail to Egypt. That seemed like a pretty neat place to explore, but on foot, so I definitely wasn't going to be able to do any of that this time. We had originally decided to go back to the first area we visited to do a hike that next day but that was definitely not going to happen either. 

We passed the Cedar Breaks National Monument on our way out. That seemed like a pretty neat place. I would like to go back there some time as well.

We stopped back by Austin's house to pick up Emily's truck. Caitlyn drove back with Emily while Christian and I drove back together in his truck. 

Utah-Idaho-Montana Road Trip

For our biggest trip of the summer, we decided to head out to Montana to meet up with Christian's dad at Christian's uncle's ranch. On the way, we were going to pick up Emily for the weekend.

Our first day was spent just traveling, mostly through Nevada. We passed by some pretty nice little towns and some nice camping areas, but we wanted to put a little more distance in for the day. By the time we got near the Idaho border, the nice camping places kind of ran out. It was slim pickings at the end, but we found a nice enough emergency campsite for the night. 

We got into Rexburg in the afternoon the next day. Emily was done with classes for the day, so we went to her apartment and met some more of her roommates. She had another roommate that she didn't like and no one got along with. One of her new roommates has become a pretty good friend. That, however, has irked her old roommate and they don't seem to be getting along as well anymore. Apparently, she wants Emily to just stay at home alone when she isn't there even though she has a job and a boyfriend on top of school that doesn't include Emily since she is an education major and Emily is an engineering major. They had one more roommate which seems nice but none of which are super close to. 

We took Emily out for dinner that night. Our favorite Chinese restaurant, Fong's closed down since we were there last unfortunately, so we went to try out a Thai restaurant instead. It was fairly good, but a bit pricey.

Afterwards, we dropped Emily back off at her apartment before heading out to our camping area out in the Dunes. Emily and her roommate, Laney, decided to come out with us.

We hit a pocket of rain on our way there. When we got there, we found someone had taken our usual spot. We were a bit irked. Apparently, Emily even knew them. I guess she has a class with them. We had to go in further to find another spot. In the end, we liked it a little better because it was a little further from the road. Even though it was getting late, there was still some daylight left, so we waited for the ground to dry up a little before setting up camp. Even though we were not getting any more rain at the time, the sky was lit up with a ton of thunder and lightning in the distance. Emily and Laney left shortly after.

The next morning, we took down camp and headed onto campus. We had Emily arrange for a tour of the campus for Caitlyn while she finished her last class for the day. We tagged along with her. We had a short tour of the campus and got to see one of the neat pipe organs in one of the chapels. Caitlyn got a BYU t-shirt and a bag of miscellaneous goodies. Afterwards, we went into the music department to take a peak around. A nice lady there gave us a tour of some of the practice organs available. We are hoping that Caitlyn will continue her organ training at BYU.

When we were finished, we went to get Emily. Emily was going to drive her truck and caravan over with us so that we could change her oil when we got there. Christian ended up driving her truck and the girls and I went in Christian's truck. We stopped by the temple to take a few pictures and picked up lunch on the way.

We got to Montana around 5:pm. Unfortunately, our idea to show Caitlyn the Montana Big-Sky Country pretty much failed. Apparently, there were a lot of fires in Montana, and all we got her hazy, smokey views. I think we had more blue sky in California. It was pretty smokey in Idaho as well. 

We went with Terry to pick up burgers for dinner and we watched the sun set at the ranch.

On the first night, we got to stay in one of the bedrooms in Tony's basement that we've heard so much about from Emily. It was nice and cool and quiet. We got some much needed showers!

In the morning, after breakfast, I made a coffee cake for everyone while Christian helped Emily change the oil on the Ranger. Then, Terry gave us a quick tour of the ranch.

Afterwards, Terry wanted to go to Phillipsburg to his favorite sweets shop, so we piled into Christian's truck. Tony was out working in the fields when we left. As luck would have it, the sweet shop was closed, so we left disappointed. We stopped by the local market on the way back to pick up some things for dinner.

At the last minute, we had found out that we were not the only guests for this weekend. We found that Christian's Aunt Linda and her husband was also expected...or decided to visit, anyway. I don't know how many of us were actually expected! Terry was supposed to pick them up from the airport in the evening. I decided to make a pot roast for everyone for a late supper. I brought some of our apples to make an apple pie as well. Dinner turned out to be quite late indeed, since their plane was delayed an hour. Christian went with his Dad to drive them back and forth from the airport.  Tony paid the girls to help clean the upstairs shower. He also wanted us to move upstairs to the bedroom on the other side of his. Apparently, he didn't want his sister and her husband in there because he claimed that they made too much noise. 

I guess Tony normally eats supper pretty late anyways as he goes back out to work before the sun goes down since it is a little cooler then. He takes a break in the worst of the heat during the late afternoon. Emily got a bit of homework done.

Between the smoke and the unseasonably hot summer Montana was experiencing, we did not get to explore much of Montana. Unfortunately for us, it was much hotter up on the first level bedroom than the basement room with half the space for the four of us. So, we frankly didn't get too much rest. Luckily, we decided to leave a day early with Emily. Tony is a bit of a grumpy old curmudgeon and was a bit of a pain to live with. Plus, we didn't want to impose on him too much since he is used to his solitude and apparently, so many of us decided to descend on him at the same time during haying season. All of it turned out to be bad timing.

In the morning, Tony bade us fairwell and went out to work. We had breakfast with everyone else and stayed outside chatting a bit too long as usual.

We then headed out to the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest to do an easy trail there. We wanted to see at least a little bit of Montana before leaving. We were originally going to stay an extra day exploring the area and camping one night in Montana but we had heard that there were thunderstorms moving in and decided to just go back to Idaho with Emily.

The area was beautiful with wildflowers and butterflies everywhere. It is definitely worth coming back to explore some more if we ever get the chance. We nearly even had some blue sky here and there.

We then made the long drive back to Rexburg. It's about a 4 hour drive. We saw a fire back in Idaho. It looked like that it had just started shortly before we drove by. Emergency equipment was just moving into the area to battle the new fire. 

We got back and had dinner and went our separate ways. Emily, back to her apartment and us, back to the dunes. We thought we were clever in finding a new area of the dunes to camp near. There was no one there and we had the whole place to ourselves. We explored and little and then set up camp.

Unfortunately, as the sun was setting (and keep in mind, the sun doesn't set until some time after 9:pm up there), we heard a huge group arrive just over the hill from us. They were yelling and screaming as they unloaded a bunch of quads or razors to race up and down the dunes on. They are not even supposed to be allowed to ride their vehicles on this side of the dunes...not that that ever stopped any of them. They road out there for hours! We tried to sleep but they were too noisy and we were too miserable until they finally packed up and left...but it was like 1:am at that point.

We were not too happy the next morning. Since we had an extra day, we went to explore the mountains near the Tetons. We went up and down the trails in the Caribou Targhee National Forest. That was beautiful as well, but there was just an endless maze of narrow trails. There were not many places to stop and most of the trails ended in dead ends. Many were just blocked off except for horse or foot travel but you can tell that it wasn't meant for that, the Forest Service just decided to block off certain areas for some unknown reason because there was absolutely no where to park your vehicles, much less horse trailers to use any of them. Christian mapped the area there as best he could for future reference.

The only area with enough room to stop without blocking trails was beautiful, but filled with clouds of mosquitos.

We then headed back to town. They were doing some road maintenance on one of the roads we took out of Rexburg. It was reduced to just one lane for traffic going both directions. It seemed exceptionally long for our turn to go. We've run into similar road maintenance everywhere we went. After about half an hour, cars started to turn around. They told us that they "think" there was some accident and that they didn't know when the road would reopen. We were told that it could be 5 more minutes or another hour. They hadn't the slightest clue what even happened. They vaguely told us that they think that there was supposed to be a road to our left that would take us around. At this point, there was a line of cars on our side at least a mile long. As we were aware of only one other major road that would take you back into Rexburg (but it would take us on a 50 mile detour), we decided to take our chances on that vague, unknown road to our left that may or may not take us into town. 

Luckily, it did indeed take us back to town in a bit of a round about way. We were tired and irritated and decided to go into town to pick up pizza for dinner. We got a hold of Emily to see if she wanted to join us for dinner. We saw two pizza joints on the main drag. One was super busy and packed, so we decided on the other one. We ordered pizza and Emily's roommate dropped her off to join us. We found out (too late) that the place is a Take 'N Bake shop. They make the pizza but they don't bake it for you! We were even more annoyed at this point. We went back to Emily's apartment to use her oven since we apparently had to cook our own dinner anyway! Frankly, the pizza wasn't even that good. It is slightly better than frozen pizza, but not a whole lot. It is comparable to uncooked fresh pizza at the market for half the price of what they charged us for this pizza. A total fail, but Emily broke out some ice cream for dessert.

Afterwards, we headed back out to our normal camping spot in the dunes. Emily had half a week left of finals. In the morning, we started on our way home. We saw another fire that looked like it just broke out moments before near the border of Idaho and Utah in the Sawtooth National Forest.

We stopped across from the TL Bar Ranch Preserve in Utah and saw a herd of elk. As they moved off, a herd of antelope came racing through. It was really neat but my zoom lens and photographic skills could not capture them to my satisfaction.

As we continued on our way, we skirted around the Great Salt Lake and popped back into Nevada. We drove though Dolly Verden in search of a possible campsite. We were originally going to try to get a bit more distance down but the area looked very promising. We saw a neat herd of wild horses .

Initially, we were a bit frustrated as it seemed like, although there was no one here at the time, that these were fairly well used OHV trails. We did not want another sleepless night of noise and aggravation. In the end, we did find a respectable spot and was able to get a decent night's rest.

In the morning, we continued on our way once again. One more day of travel! We decided to pop back into the edge of Utah to try a 4x4 trail there, west of the 15. 

We got to the general area without too much trouble, but we could not find the turnoff for the road we needed. We spent about an hour driving back and forth before just trying the only road that seemed like it could be it. The problem was that the name of the road on our atlas and trail book did not match what was on the actual sign and apparently google maps!!! Were so close to just giving up but we are so glad we finally found it as it was really beautiful. It was super hot out but the clouds made the views just perfect.

Indian Springs Trail, Beaver Dam Wash Conservation Area

We finally made it back home around 10 that evening. We didn't end up stopping for dinner or gas. We ate a small meal and cleaned up for bed as we were very tired from our weeklong journey.

Northern California Road Trip

 At the beginning of the month, we decided to take a tour of several places in Northern California. One of which was Mount Shasta. Unfortunately, a fire broke out near the bottom of the mountain as we were making plans. As we were getting ready to go, a second fire got going near the same area. We decided to scrap the plans to Mount Shasta. We tried to see if we could just go somewhere else instead but a heat wave that has the entire west in triple digit or near triple digit temperatures which pretty much makes it unpleasant to be anywhere. 

We decided, in the end, to continue with our original plans, while skipping Mount Shasta. So we headed out on the Fourth of July. We spent our first night in the Lassen National Forest. It was a bit difficult to find a place to camp because much of the forest was closed off due to past fires. The weather this year has been so bizarre. Even with the triple digit temperatures we had to endure, we drove through a torrent of rain at one point. The intermittent thunderstorms is causing about half the fires during around us currently.

Our campsite was fairly nice except for the clouds of mosquitos.

In the morning, we continued on our way to the coast and cooler temperatures. The drive was beautiful but tediously long and we passed far too many pot farms to be pleasant. Plus we kept having to roll down our windows as we kept having to drive through marijuana fumes, either from the growers or the drivers ahead of us. It was difficult to tell.

When we arrived on the coast, we decided to take a hike up the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood Grove Trail. It was a lot more crowded than we would normally like but it was really beautiful.

Afterwards, we went in search of our campsite for the night. There are not a lot of possibilities for disbursed camping any where near the coast. We ordered some new maps and books to help us find a place to stay. The books did indicate that there were some possibilities on BLM land out there. When we got to the place indicated, we found that the road was closed. Basically, they close it all summer so that when people would most likely want to use it, they couldn't. What a great management of our public lands!

Basically, we were screwed at that point since three of our options were down that same road which made it totally impossible for us to stay anywhere near the coast. We were out of options and decided to just use the rest of our time looking around instead of fruitlessly searching for some little hole we can hide in to spend the night.

We stopped by the Stone Lagoon along the coast.

I could have spent the whole day just exploring along the coast there. As we were leaving though, we saw a little girl screaming and crying for her dad. There were not a whole lot of people along the beach so I don't know where he was. We reluctantly started towards her, afraid of what was going on. As we got about halfway to her, an older kid went to talk to her and took her further down the beach to hopefully find her father. I'm hoping they were just friends of the family or a relative that the dad left her with and she was just over reacting....I don't know.

We were quickly running out of daylight, so we headed back inland. We found a fire road that looked promising, but when we got near the end of it, it branched off. One side went to a hiking trail and the other was supposed to be a dead end. We went down the dead end road with some hope in being able to stay somewhat in the area so that we can spend one more day either at the coast or in the redwoods. Unfortunately, wben we got to the end, we saw some sketchy signs that claimed that it was "private property." We saw some make shift structures and what looked obviously like an illegal pot farm. We quickly left the area. we had seen some other possibilities along the fire trail, but they were not ideal and we did not want to be anywhere near the sketchy characters running the illegal pot farm. At that point, we gave up and just headed back across the state back into Lassen National Forest. We did see several roads that we might be able to camp at that would be hours closer, but it was getting quite late and we didn't want to spend extra time uselessly driving up and down the roads, only to be discouraged or disappointed with what we found, so we just powered through and stayed where we had camped the night before.

When we finally got there, it was like 1:am. Christian set up camp for us but we kept hearing strange scuffling sounds outside. Christian had to chase off what he thinks was a bunch of coyotes. He didn't get to bed until 2:am. 

We got a late start the next morning and headed back down the road to Truckee. Christian's boss from UCR who had died last year of cancer had purchased a large tract of land out there to donate to the Nature Conservancy. Dr. Gallie had talked to him about it some time ago and he wanted to stop by to see it. Truckee ended up being a miserable little resort town near Tahoe, full of round-a-bouts that were scary and impossible to get through.  You just want to go straight down a road but ended up getting all turned about because they wouldn't let you just drive straight through. 

We finally found Carpenter Valley after several tries. It was a small pretty little trail. The Nature Conservancy built a bunch of walkways through it with a few benches and picnic tables around. They wanted to buy and set this land aside so that it couldn't be developed, but there was a private gate at the end of the road with a bunch of private residences enclosed within. In the end, they can't develop this beautiful piece of land but it seems like they just use it for their own personal little nature walk as there is nobody else nearby except for the rich people who own the land adjacent and the rich tourists visiting the Donner Resort plus maybe a few people like us that happen to know that it is there or stumble upon it by accident.

Because of the water running through it, the place was full of mosquitoes. We sprayed ourself down with repellent, but was still swatting at the damn things. We kept watching other hikers walking through and could not figure out why they were not suffering like we were.

Afterwards, we continued on our way heading back towards home. We stopped at a campsite we have used in the past near Mono Lake. We got there just as we were losing the last light of the day. 

When we got up the next day, we had some breakfast and Christian and Caitlyn got a bit of exercise bouldering near the campsite. We just spent the rest of the morning exploring around the trails in and around the Mono Lake area. That was pretty fun and relaxing for a while but as we went back towards the main road, the dirt road we were on got pretty eroded. The ruts were so deep on both sides that we were scraping the center of the truck driving down them. We tried to take some detours to avoid the most heavily rutted trails but in the end, Christian had to get out and rebuild some parts of the road so that we could finish getting out.

In the afternoon, we went to explore Dunderberg Meadows. Christian had heard about a trail up there that is supposed to take you to the top of Dunderberg Peak. We did not find the trail but the ones we went down were pretty nice. It's a pleasant little place. We will probably go back there again to continue exploring the trails some other time. 

We considered staying in the area and just enjoying the peace and quiet and solitude that we've been needing but in the end, we got ambitious and wanted try another 4x4 trail near Independence. As we went down into Bishop, we noticed a lot of fire trucks going the opposite direction. We stopped by Bishop for some gas and found out that a fire just broke out near Mt. Tom. And as we continued on our way down the 395, the heat was just getting absolutely unbearable. Not that it was cool where we've been by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely worse there.

We found the trailhead and started down some of it, but the trail was just too hot and it didn't look like it was going to go up any great elevation that would change that fact. We also didn't want to do any very difficult trails as we did not have Christian's off-road tires on. We had his freeway tires on because of the great distances we were traveling across. We wanted as much of an edge as we could to get the best gas mileage possible with gas prices nearing $5 a gallon.

In the end, we just decided to call it a day and just go home. We were hot tired and dirty...especially Christian from digging in all that super fine sand to fix the road in Mono.