on which lmmh concedes that if her trip had lasted as long as posting about it has, she would be really happy with her benefits package.

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day seven meant leaving. heading back to slc. as much as i thought it would be great to shower, i had no desire to actually go back, i have to admit. we decided to try to hike a trail we had started on last year and had turned back after a while. This time, we set out to do the entire loop - heading up a hill and then down into a canyon and then coming out along the road again - or so we thought.

near the top of the hill, there is a lot of petrified wood. so much in fact that you would be amazed that there is some random guy out of torrey who has ‘placed’ petrified wood along the trail in attractive poses so that he can charge people to take them on his tour. what is amazing is that if you walk past these obviously positioned objects, you run into massive tree trunks of petrified wood emerging from the ground, and it is so natural in comparison to his placed objects that their configuration looks silly.

we headed down into the canyon, scrambling over rocks and down slots, making sure as we went that we could always get back up what we were going down in case we had to turn back.

the walls got steeper as we went, of course.

but we were still pretty sure we could make it through and get back down to the road.

until we ran into this:

at least a 100 foot drop to the next flat surface. thwarted! we turned back, enjoying scrambling up all the rocks as much as we enjoyed scrambling down them.

the rest of the day, we played tourists. We went to the visitor center in capitol reef and bought postcards, went up a pamphlet-guided nature trail, but stopped short of walking along the boardwalk to see the petroglyphs - too many people! it was rough running into so many people after 5 days of near solitude! then we stopped at a friend of sop’s in Torrey and hung out and talked and then slept on their floor. a great trip indeed!

in which pictures that sop has taken are shown and lmmh lives up to her name.

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lmmh decided to try sop’s ‘floating the river’ hypothesis as well (not a theory, since it failed to be proven by sop earlier).

the floating thing didn’t quite work out, but was fun nevertheless:

a lovely walkthrough beautiful landscape while drying out and ending the day.

i think they are all out to annoy me.

in which sop and lmmh do not use proper care when dealing with the sun.

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the day started with two cups of tea, one was just not enough on this fine morning - we had to say hello to both earl AND lady grey. then we slowly gathered bits and pieces from camp and headed up pleasant creek (river? stream?).

the trail starts out on a road, which then turns off along a canal created by the diversion of pleasant creek to the town of notom. after a fence, the canal becomes stream again, going back to its natural state. there were so many things to discover and explore: lots of side areas to wander (or is it wonder?) around in.

first, some still nameless flowers;

then, this cool flower/bean-pod plant that also marks a point where the gaffer’s tape that had been holding together my camera since day 3 gave out and ruined another roll of film. but let’s just focus on the cool flowers for now, why don’t we:

this was the hottest day of the trip so far. we hiked until we finally got up on a ridge where we could enjoy the beauty of … a rancher’s house. just when you think you are alone. on the way back, with our sunscreen well sweated off, we went to float the river:

the river was not quite deep enough - i think i managed to float about 5 feet once - but it was loads of fun anyway! i’ll hit up sop for the pictures he snapped of me and add those later. this would be no fun at all if i couldn’t embarrass myself regularly, you know.

ah, the power of a comma.