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My brother was in Utah for work and wanted to head down south to do a bit of hiking. We tossed a few ideas around and found out Kendall had yet to visit Arches National Park. By 5:30am Kendall, Spencer, Clint and I were leaving Orem and driving to Moab. We arrived at the Devils Garden trail head at 9:30am and started hiking the loop soon after.

Kendall on a Fin on the Devils Garden primitive loop.

We took a long break at Private Arch to toss the frisbee around and take some photos.

We ran into hordes of people at Double O’ Arch …. as always Arches was packed . I took a few more photos on the way back to the car and managed to take photos of only one Arch on our 6-7mile hike. Awesome.

When we made it back to the trailhead the parking lot was jam packed so we got out of there as fast we could. We then drove out on the 4×4 road to Eye of the Whale Arch.

After we left Arches and made a quick trip into Moab to get some lunch and fill up on gas before we drove out toward Canyonlands – Island in the Sky.

We set up camp then drove into the park, we passed right by Mesa Arch because the parking lot was packed and a tour bus was just unloading. We drove down the road a bit to the Green River Overlook and enjoyed the view.

Soon we were back on the upheaval Dome road looking for the unmarked trailhead to Flase Kiva. I flaked on hiking out to False Kiva in March due to weather and cloud cover so I was pretty excited considering how big of a pain in the ass it was getting all the GPS information for the hike.

“The name False Kiva arises from the uncertainty around the circle of stones’ origins and purpose, not whether it is really an authentic” … more about Flase Kiva here.

Once you know where you are headed navigation is simple, was a pretty easy hike and the light was a bit dull but I had a great time.

We slogged back up the steep hill towards the car as the last of our daylight faded. We made it back to the car, tossed our packs in, and drove back towards the park exit. As we drove out we noticed the empty Mesa Arch parking lot so we stopped and got the camera gear out to hike the short trail to the Arch. The full moon had yet to rise so we took some long exposure shots on Mesa Arch in the dark and a bit of light painting with head lamps and my little LEDS.

Kendalls Ring on Mesa Arch

We made it back to camp just after 10pm, ate dinner and did a bit more painting before we called it a night.

In the morning we packed up first thing and drove home to spend mothers day with our families.

The weather report did not look very promising for the weekend but we packed up the kids and headed down to the San Rafael Swell anyways.   We arrived mid afternoon to North Temple wash and had to settle for a second rate campsite. We set up camp then drove north to hike the lower end for Fransworth Canyon. We hiked up the slot to the point where we hit water where the boys threw rocks while the dog swam. We took photos and leisurely walked back to the cars and made it back about 90 minutes after we started.

We left the Farnsworth Canyon trail head and drove up North Temple wash to the west side of Temple mountain. We took a few photos of the old car and the cabin at the Vanaduim king mine.

Lanik and I

We ate dinner sat around the camp fire then tried to do a bit a light painting. The clouds were to thick to get start trails so we spent our time making orbs and getting eaten by bugs.

The rain started around 2 or 3am and went all night long we woke up around 8 and packed up camp.  After we drove to the Goblin Valley VC to check the weather reports we decided to drive back to Green river to top of the tanks and try to drive up to the north end of the swell.

We arrived in Black Dragon Canyon under threatening skies but the rain had stopped and the roads were dry. We parked at the main art panel and hiked up to show the kids the cave, On our way down to form the cave the rain slowly then turned into a down pour. Within 5 minutes we rushed down to the car and started driving the rough road down canyon. Water falls poured into the canyons from all sides, this was my first flash flood.

The rain stopped and the wash not running very high to so we took some photos and made the four wash crossings to get out of the canyon. We got on I-70 and drove east towards Buckhorn Wash.  We stopped ad the San Rafael River bridge to eat lunch and let the kids play in the water.  As we drove up Buckhorn wash we made a quick stop to show the kids the Dinosaur footprints in the sandstone but they had more fun playing in the puddle next to it.

Next stop was the Wedge Overlook – perfect clouds and light this time. Bowen was far too busy to join us for a family photo.

While we enjoyed the Wedge we decided to stay one more night, we drove back down Buckhorn and found a great campsite not far off the road. We had never camped in Buckhorn but have drivien through it many times and were pretty shocked to see how little traffic actually passed by.

Camp

The clouds parted after sunset and we were able to take some photos of startrails.

Good times.