October 2018

 OK, so I'm sure that we didn't spend the whole month of October playing in the desert, but the photos sure make it look like we did.  We are definitely making up for not having been able to do overnight trips for a few years!  Amber took care of the goats and birds for two multi-day stretches, which allowed us to fit in two trips, both to the Moab, Utah area, both with mountain bikes.  One involved car camping and day rides on several trail networks.  The second was a five day adventure, towing off-road bike trailers for two days up one canyon, across the high desert for a day, then back down to the trailhead through another canyon.

The first photo above is from the bike packing trip, in Pritchett Canyon, with Jeanne negotiating a portion of a (jeep!) road that required taking off the trailers, carrying everything down over the ledges and reassembling.  This happened a few times on that trip!

The next is from the first part of the trip, as we traveled 20 miles or so up Kane Creek Canyon, crossing and recrossing Kane Creek (over 50 crossings in 2 days).

Near the head of Kane Creek Canyon, we climbed out along a jeep road with the La Sal mountains peaking up over the rim, our route visible halfway up the canyon wall.

 Below shows Jeanne soaking up some morning sunlight while sitting high in an alcove on the SE side of Prostitute Butte.  The desert colors are intense, and have a way of burning into your memory.  When I see this photo, I can immediately feel the warm sun, rough sandstone, cool morning air, and smell the sage and juniper (and even the rocks!) around that morning's campsite.  It all stays very vivid.

Below is shot from our campsite near the head of Hunter Canyon.  The large pour-off beyond forms an alcove with springs and hanging gardens of water loving plants clinging to the wall.  A beautiful spot to spend a night under the desert stars.

 Another photo of our campsite at the head of Hunter.

 Jeanne pedaling into the head of Pritchett Canyon, near Pritchett Arch.

 Desert pothole water, the La Sals in background.

 Jeanne up on the canyon rim overlooking Kane Creek, looking down at the route that we had bicycled up a couple days before.

Jeanne negotiates a typical ledgy downhill along the jeep road route we took through the Behind The Rocks area to get from Kane Creek to Pritchett Canyon.

 Petroglyphs found in Kane Creek.

 Same spot on rim overlooking Kane Creek as before, just looking up canyon.  You can see the road that we'd traveled 2 days earlier at bottom (before it began crossing and recrossing Kane Creek).

Kokopelli lives for sure - we saw his shadow!

 Jeanne drags her bike/trailer combo up a ledgy section on way out of Pritchett Canyon.

 More ledges in Pritchett.  It's amazing that rock crawler vehicles can climb this stuff, some of it was difficult enough to scramble on and down on foot, never mind a bicycle and loaded trailer.

This is what the inside of the Prius looked like, packed for the bike packing trip.  Putting the bikes on a rack on the back would have decreased the gas mileage by 10 mpg.  Not frugal!  So, we crammed it all in and smugly got 45-50 mpg on the drive over and back.  Only problem with this method, is that when you want to sleep in the car at the trailhead, you've got to remove just about everything to do so...

 Third morning out, we climbed up to Picture Frame Arch for a morning view of the Behind the Rocks WSA.  Picture frame - I wonder why they called it that?

 Obviously no particular order on these photos - another shot of Jeanne sunning herself above our campsite by Prostitute Butte rock.  I've got to say, that's a lousy name for this intensely beautiful rock monolith, perched by itself up in the middle of the Behind the Rocks area.  It looks and feels more like I imagine this spot in Australia, sacred to the native people there, does.  Uluru - Australia

OK, so we did play a lot this month.  Great pics though, right?  

Other than that and the usual farm chores, Linc started building a workshop out of a salvaged 20'x10' hoophouse frame, some leftover greenhouse plastic and an old wood stove for heat, started (finally!) cutting, splitting and stacking firewood for the winter (I know, it's supposed to be done a year ahead of time, but that hasn't happened since we moved here 9 years ago).  And, it was time to finish harvesting everything out of the garden and getting it inside before first frost, so that occupied some time too.

Wait, just one video from the bike packing trip.