Utah/Arizona road/hiking trip

[kaniukr]

This isn’t so much a hike trip report as a road trip report of a series of hikes – none longer than about 9 hours - during a 3-week vacation that took us to some amazing places. So rather than pick one hike I thought I’d run through the trip and some of the best photos, and include a few slightly lesser visited places. Unfortunately though, I took 2 cameras and the pics are on 2 computers so I had to upload them separately, and it means they sometimes don't correlate with the words.

The first stop was Valley of Fire State Park where temperatures at sunset remained 108F, but the next morning brought more bearable temperatures for a few hours of exploring around the slickrock.
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By contrast the morning shade in Kanaraville canyon was actually unexpectedly cold.



After a day doing the Narrows,






it was Poverty and an exit out of the East Fork of the Virgin through the short but beautiful French Canyon



Heading east a morning thunderstorm restricted our plans to a short hike up to the Nautilus, where my 6-year-old thought she was in rock playground heaven – scrambling up and down the corkscrew of rock probably around 50 times!
She then had a thoroughly good time with her new friend from Kanab hiking Round Valley draw – leading the pace in the canyon and having fun in the ankle deep mud at some of the rockjams, but slowing to more of a bored dawdle along the rim which didn’t offer the same fun and excitement. Thankfully there was some cloud cover.













A long drive then took us to Arch Canyon where an unpaved road led us to a gorgeous sunset rim viewpoint.



The next day brought another stunning 7-hour hike through the Black Hole, which had rather deep and cold water, but it never got so unbearable as to detract from the thrill of the slot within a canyon.











That was our turn around point to head back west to tackle the Spencer trail which offered another amazing Colorado horseshoe similar to the more famous one in Page. It was a steep slog up and I was thankful both for my dawn start and the fact that the whole way up was in the shadow side of the cliff, but on my return to Lees Ferry I was so hot that I couldn’t resist a dip in the ice cold Colorado waters released from the depths of Lake Powell. Unsurprisingly for August, no-one else was doing the trail.



After that we visited the Hopi Reservation












before a drive down to the Granite Dells where we caught a good dusk with a distant rainstorm threatening to get us, but it never did. The panoramic shot there doesn’t quite line up!



and Lake Powell was in there once above and once here.

[cw50must]

Looks like a very nice trip, congrats.