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It had been at least six years since April and I had been down to Escalante so for one of our last desert trips of the year we packed up the boys and headed way down south. The drive did not take nearly as long as I remembered and before we knew it we were searching for a campsite along highway 12. We found an excellent spot with a great view then drove to the Escalante River gorge to take a short hike along the river before dinner.

The first night was fairly cool so we had a large fire and tried our best to stay warm. Our campsite would have been a perfect spot to shoot star trails had the moon not been full, so I had to settle on taking only a few long exposures of the Canyon below.

Saturday morning I woke up early and went on a short hike around our camp taking photos of Micro Death Hollow – Check out Dan Ransom’s TR for this canyon here.

By the time I made it back to camp April was making breakfast and the kids were up and ready to hike. We packed up the car and headed down the Hole in the Rock road towards the Dry Gulch trail head. When we arrived we were only the 4th car in the parking area, we put on our packs and headed down the trail. Soon we arrived at the the mouth of Peek-a-boo gulch and got stuck behind a large and slow group of hikers. They had just made it up the 15′ dry fall and were starting to negotiate the first of the 3 potholes in the canyons entrance. We were waiting on the group for a half hour when it became obvious they were not going to complete the obstacles anytime soon, so we bypassed peek-a-boo and headed down the wash to spooky gulch.

The kids LOVED Spooky Gulch so much and it was impossible to keep up with them in the narrow sandy slot.

I could not make it beyond this point. The canyon was just too narrow for my 6′2″ 245lb frame so I had to stay behind while April chased the kids further up the canyon.

We hiked back towards the trail head and took a short hike up the Dry Gulch Slot. I also scrambled up into peek-a-boo to get a shot of the Arch.

By the time we hiked out and made it back to the trail head the parking lot was completely packed. We made some lunch and drove back up the Hole in the Rock road to Devils Garden. The light, sky, and clouds were prefect in the garden. We spent over an hour wandering around with the kids taking photos and enjoying the cooler weather.

April at Metate Arch.

A few hours later we were back at camp making dinner just before sunset. We hung out around the fire and took a few more long exposures of the cloudy sky and full moon.

We packed up camp first thing in the morning and again ate breakfast on the road. I made a quick stop at the Phipps wash overlook along highway 12 to take a shot of the coolest and most scenic stretch of highway I have ever seen.

Our last hike of the trip was Lower Calf Creek Falls. Again we were one of the first cars at the trail head and only ran into a few people on the 3 mile hike up to the falls. The boys hiked really well but Bowen being only two was carried a fair amount of the way up by April. The mist from the falls was quite chilly and hard to keep off the camera lens but I ended up with some some decent shots.

For the hike down I placed Bowen on my shoulders and hiked ahead of April and Lanik. We saw dozens of European tourists hiking up to the falls on our way down and were glad to have the falls pretty much to ourselves while we were there. Once back at the car we made some lunch and made the long 4.5 hour drive home.