Sunday, April 6, 2008

Blue and Flat Wade

This weekend we had some guests that we had to entertain. The first of which was Flat Wade. My nephew has a school project where they send a likeness of themselves to someone else and they take it to fun places. So Eric and I went hiking out at Red Cliffs Desert Reserve with Flat Wade and Jacqueline and my other house guest, David's dog Blue. It is always more exciting with a dog around. We went on the Prospector Trail. It turned out to be a rare trail in Southern Utah that actually was a path. It lead us through a desert landscape with views of the cliffs until we hit the road up to Leeds. We saw from the map that we could take a different path back, so that is what we did. This time we were right next to the cliff. The trail was in and out. Blue was not as excited about the cross country hiking but he did well. In total we put in about four hours and probably about an eight mile hike. The next day, Jacqueline and I headed up to the mountains. An old timer told Jacqueline at the visitor center one day about a Sequoia tree that was planted in the Pine Valley Mountains. I was expecting a longer hike, but the dirt road ended up being very good to a gate. There was a strange man there who told us that he passed a kidney stone last night and he did not seem to be in a good mental state. We worried about leaving the truck, but we had to do it, so off we went. The weather was perfect and the trail was an old road. Blue and Flat Wade were having a good ol' time. The mountains looked nice with the spring snow melting swiftly. The rivers around showed the signs of intense snow melt. The road lead up a long way and we were doubting the existence of this Sequoia tree. Right near the Browse Guard Station, we ran into two guys who assured us of the existence of the tree. Sure enough, when we went behind the Guard Station there it was. It was not as big as it will eventually get, but it seemed to be thriving in this dry Utah environment. We had some lunch and let Blue play in the creek a bit. Both of us were still in the mood to do some more hiking, but there seemed to be not many options ahead of us. So we headed back down the hill, stopping only to check out the

creek. It ended up being a very nice Sunday hike. I was happy because we had much better luck with this trail then others we have tried to hike on the east side of the Pine Valley Mountains. When we got back to the car, the guy with the kidney stone was gone which made us both happy. An excellent day outside and we both even got a bit of a sunburn to prove it.

1 comment:

Mark said...

I remember wanting to hike to the Sequoia tree when we lived down there. I think I heard about in the newspaper one day. Sounds like your nephew sent his likeness to the right person...Uncle Pete is nothing but adventures!