After spending most of February, first recovering from a "water borne illness" from drinking bad water in Patagonia, then taking care of Zyla each day, Jacqueline and I went on a few weekend trips. We went skiing in Salt Lake with the Winter side of the family and then we decided to take a weekend trip to Death Valley and Valley of Fire State Park. It was a last minute decision after evaluating the weather and bailing on a trip out east to Moab and Norwood to see some other friends. Still we would have an opportunity to see some friends on this trip as the Nydell's had just moved to Death Valley. We spent the first day of our trip just driving out to Valley of Fire which is only a few hours from our apartment in Springdale. We thought that we left in plenty of time as we got there around 3:30 in the afternoon Nevada time. Still, as we drove around the first campground, there were no campsites left. Zero! So we went to the other less desirable campground. As soon as we pulled in, Zyla threw up all over herself. I think she just got car sick, but this led to us becoming more apprehensive about finding a site.
We drove around and one of the state park rangers motioned at us to slow down. I ignored him and asked if there were any of the walk-in sites left. He said yes. When we went over there, there sure were, but only two sites and these were the last left in the entire park! We made sure to claim one immediately and felt lucky to have found a site. Some Japanese guys took the other one two minutes later and then other people pulled in about five minutes later expressing their frustration. Who would think that this place would fill up on a Thursday in February. I left Jacqueline to clean up the mess and I went to set up our new tent that we got for Christmas. I had a few early struggles, but eventually figured out how to set it up. By then, most of our stuff was in camp and we were able to get set up and eating.
We spent most of the rest of the evening playing in the tent. Zyla had her nice thick down suit on which kept her warm. Still we were a bit concerned with the temperature as the new tent was not quite as insulated as the old tent. Jacqueline was very concerned about this. We knew we could handle mid-forties at night, but it was already there and still dropping. We tried to just put Zyla to bed in her sleep sack, but that didn't work and we knew she was going to get chilly. Finally later in the evening we decided to put her in her down suit and her sleep sack.
That change was met with some frustration, mainly from us waking her up. But after a bout of crying for half an hour, Zyla was rather comfortable the rest of the night in her pea pod. I can't say the same for her mother who had to check if she was still alive every hour for the rest of the evening. But when we awoke in the morning, there was our happy girl ready for the day.
We got some breakfast and got our stuff all packed up. We didn't want to get to Death Valley too early because Mark was working until 5 or so. Instead, we got a bit of hiking in. We looked at the map to try to find some places that we had not been to before. The first place we settled on was Elephant Rock. This was an easy hike, but there was a long way to get there. We decided to take the long way.
Zyla was asleep almost immediately. It was near nap time anyway, but she was probably tired from not staying in her bed for a while. Jacqueline and I were able to enjoy the hike in the red rock area. The hike was nowhere near super exciting or anything like that, but it was still pretty. We were enjoying in while we could because we had decided to get pregnant again and soon Jacqueline would be packing some extra weight around with her. There were other groups of people on the trail including other people carrying kids. I guess this was the place to go for that.
Elephant Rock was semi interesting. It looked similar to an elephant, but definitely nowhere as neat as Elephant Arch. We hit the road and turned around from here. When we got back to the car, Zyla was now awake and we still had some time, so we decided to do a different hike for a short distance out to Clarke Memorial. This one, we were going to let Zyla walk and see how she did. We did not make it very far before it just became play time. This was fine with all of us as Zyla was really enjoying herself. She was playing in the sand, finding rocks, falling down, digging, etc...
We ate some lunch out there and let Zyla play for half an hour or so. Then it was time to take the drive to Death Valley. We had already done two hours getting to Valley of Fire, but there was still some driving to do. First to Vegas, then to Pahrump, and finally down to Furnace Creek. We stopped by the Visitor Center and met up with Mark. He directed us to his house. There we met up with Mark's wife Tamara and their kids Grace and Ava. Grace and Ava were a bit older than Zyla, so they were not quite able to play together too much, but Zyla was really excited about Mark and Tamara's new editions, Gideon and Oliver who were there new less than a year old babies.
We spent the evening catching up with the Nydell's. We wished that they could spend the next day hanging with us, but Mark had work and Tamara had to teach school, so we made plans of our own for the day. Mark had a book that he shared with us and we picked a loop hike that went from Golden Canyon to Gower Gulch.
If you want a hike with no trees and lots of crumbly rock, this is the hike for you. It started in a dry wash with some low cliffs all around us. It is a fairly high use trail going from near where the visitor center is located. I carried Zyla and she was asleep once again nearly right away. We took a short cut-off to the Red Cathedral. It was neither red nor a cathedral, but it did slightly have an interesting feature to it. We went back down the cut-off and took the trail that went toward Zabriskie Point.
This was very barren, but pretty. What a frighteningly dry landscape to have no vegetation at all. The trail lead us up nearly to Zabriskie Point and then around the badlands area to another canyon. This one was Gower Gulch. Don't let the name fool you because Gower Gulch was actually more interesting than Golden Canyon. We let Zyla get out and play for a little bit here now that she woke up. She enjoyed that and we got some lunch in her system too.
The canyon narrowed up for a short bit after this and we had to do a bit of work with the baby backpack to get around some obstacles. Still nothing too risky as I am sure Jacqueline would not allow that. The trail eventually spit out the end of the canyon and we walked in the open dry plain around to the car. It was a decent hike worth doing once. We spent the afternoon hanging with Tamara and the kids and also driving out to Dante's View. The evening was spent with Mark, Tamara, and their kids catching up. They are such a great family and we were so happy to get to share their home for a few days. They seemed to handle their four kids with so much patience and love. We hope to see them again sometime soon as Death Valley and Zion are really not that far away.
Back to work again! It had been a great winter of traveling and hanging out with little Zyla. But now it was time to get paid money for hiking. On this day, which just so happened to be Leap Day, I was scheduled to hike in the Southwest Desert. This area is fantastic in the winter time. There was still wisps of snow on the peaks above, but where I was the trail was mostly dry.
The views were just fantastic on this day and the trail was very nice to hike. Quiet and it was nice to meet the people that I did. It made me excited for another season of hiking the trails of Zion. 
