Memorial Day Trip- a slot canyon travelog

As I mentioned in my last post, we went on a great camping trip last weekend. We did loads of fun things including bike rides, early morning trail runs, campfire smores, exploring around Kodachrome State Park, hikes, and late afternoon trips to the ice cream parlor in town :)

But probably the most noteworthy were the slot canyons.  We visited four really awesome ones. And, since that’s also the only time we had our camera, this post will be a re-cap of our slot-canyoneering adventures! So, here we go!

1st slot canyon- Bull Valley

First you hike along the edge of a cliff for about 1/2 mile. Yikes!

Then you take your turn “dropping in” via the human waterslide.

Next, enjoy wandering through the meandering canyon, complete with obstacles, scenery, and lots and lots of mud.

You know you’re almost to the end when you look up and see a CAR wedged between the rocks.  crazy!

Apparently its been there since the 1950’s, and its made such a nice plug there in the slot that they decided to go ahead & build a ROAD over the top of it.  Wow, that was cool!

From here we hiked a little ways further, then billy-goated up a huge boulder field to get out of the slot.  (btw- this is NOT a good idea with more than 8 people in your party.  Since we had around 50, lets just say there were some scary moments with some rocks flying down the face and nearly hitting other people in their face)

 

Slot #2- Peek-a-b00

Peek-a-boo was the opposite of Bull Valley in that in order to get in, you needed to scramble UP a wall, instead of down.  When we arrived we found an older man who was traveling alone & had fallen & injured himself trying to get in.  Luckily there was a doctor in our group who was able to set his shoulder (he had dislocated it, which I am told is incredibly painful!)

Baby J getting a lift into the canyon.  So spoiled!

 

Once inside, you could choose to crawl UNDER…….

or OVER…..

Or just make your way through!

We made it!

Slot Canyon #3- Spooky

No technical entry on this one.  You just walked right in. 

It didn’t take long to find out why they call it spooky, though.  It is by far the narrowest slot I have ever been in. 

We had to take J off of Seth’s back & hold her out in front because they couldn’t fit through together!

I screwed up this next photo by turning my camera on an angle, so you cant tell that the kids really were holding themselves UP on this rock!

Here come the Whitemyers! Nellie was the best child canyoneer I have ever seen.  She couldn’t get enough!

On the way out the kids found a lizard.  They wanted to keep him, but us adult hippies told them “take only pictures, leave only footprints” :)

Ahhh, that was fun!  Well, I just realized that we forgot to take our camera into slot canyon #4, so I’ll explain.  We drove down past Escalante to go to calf creek falls, but when we got out of the car the wind nearly blew us over, so we all hopped back in the car & kept driving.  We ended up driving over the spine (the dreadfully scary section of road just before Boulder) and then a little ways down the burr trail (apparently this will take you straight to Lake Powell), where we stopped to admire a tiny, easy as pie slot canyon that we discovered last year.  It was just what we needed after all those hard hikes! The only picture I have is of Seth & Rich snuggling on the bluff after we stopped the car to clean up throw-up.  awesome.

OH we had so much fun!!  It was a great trip!  To end with, I’ll leave you with a group photo (our group was HUGE!) from a camp potluck dinner that we hosted for all the non-campers.  Thanks, ya’ll!  It was real!