Desert Tortoise

 School's out. It is only May 17th and we are nearing the end of our days in St. George area. Still, we had never seen an adult desert tortoise in the wild until today. Years ago, I had found one the size of a sand dollar, probably just born out in the Babylon area of Red Cliffs. It would be much more exciting to see an adult tortoise. My friend Matt Swartz told me that he saw a desert tortoise on the Chuckwalla Trail. I had never been, but it was a popular trailhead right outside of Snow Canyon. It was becoming summer in the Southwest as mid-May meant a hot sun, so an early start was necessary. We made it to the trailhead before the clock struck 10. 

The trail started near a climbing area and there were climbers out and about. We walked right on past them and into the early morning heat. The trail descended initially until it found its way to Halfway Wash. From here it split and there were a series of small loops that you could do. We were going to head up to Beck's Hill, but were quickly distracted by a large desert tortoise. Here it was right where he said he had seen one. We watched him for as long as he would let us and while he did not do much except eat some green vegetation and walk around, it was still a sight to behold. The kids were really excited, but probably not as excited as Jacqueline and I. 

When you live long enough, you realize that sometimes you have to accept the many hikes where nothing extraordinary is seen. On this one, we got to spend some time with the turtle, so the hike was already worthwhile. The rest of the hike was still nice. The trail took us past the red rocks and into some open country. The desert flowers were still abundant and the kids hiked well. We climbed up rather moderate slopes until we were able to make it to the junction with the Scout Cave trail. This was our spot to make a loop out of it and we continued back on the Turtle Wall trail hoping to see another tortoise along the way.

 Instead, we just saw red rocks and got a decent hike in before the sun turned on its full heat lamp. The turtles were absent as we passed by the same spot we had viewed them before, but we were pleased with the lucky find on the short jaunt on this beautiful spring day in Southern Utah. 

Zion to Ourselves

 

How do you get Zion to yourself? Well, you go to a trail that is off the beaten path during a weekday. A lot had changed for us. School was let out early because of covid, so it was now summer break! We had already accepted jobs at McKenzie, so the whole staff knew that we were going to be gone soon. We had a farewell at the school to the students at school and for us it was a farewell to our teacher friends that we had met. Our house was already on the market. Jacqueline had spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning it out.

 We had some boxes packed and we were starting to sell furniture and throw things out we were not going to need. Our time in Southern Utah was ticking away. So each hike could be our last. When the house was sold, we were out the door and heading back to the Northwest. Today we were off to one of my favorite trails, the Connector Trail. The Connector trail connects the Hop Valley Trail to the Wildcat Canyon Trail. It has a really boring name but it passes through many beautiful areas. You start by looking down into Hop Valley.

 Then the trail takes us across the feet of Spendlove Knoll to an amazing view down Lee Valley. It crosses the plains with flowers and views to the cliffs of Kolob in the north. Jacqueline took many, many pictures of anything she found charming and pretty. That means we got a lot of pictures. The kids were doing great. They were finally at this great age where we could take them anywhere at any distance and they seemed to be able to handle it. My favorite part of the whole trail was when we got to climb up the slickrock near Pine Valley Peak.

 Picking our way up the route using the cairns up the slickrock, it gave us a little off trail feel on an established trail. I convinced Jacqueline to let me drag her and the kids to an archeological site that I knew about near the Wildcat Canyon Trail. They were not too excited when they got there to realize that it was just a couple of logs from an old cabin used when they were logging the Wildcat Canyon area many years ago. This was our turnaround point, but I did convince them to go to a nice slickrock spot with a view to stop for lunch. We really were having a great day and the kids were so easy. Once we were out there, they loved to hike and just be out with us. I felt pretty lucky to have the family that I have. Heading back to the trailhead, we knew that we were going to have some interesting adventures in our future, but for today, we really had a good day having Zion to ourselves. We spent a huge chunk of the day out there and we really did not see anyone else. You really cannot beat that. 

Back to Back Starvation Point Hikes

 

Jacqueline, the kids, and I love hiking to Starvation Point. It is just an ATV road right across the Arizona border in the Virgin River Gorge. We do it every year to see the wildflowers and the wildlife. This is where I saw my only in the wild Gila Monster and there are always numerous lizards. We even have a scoring system for wildlife. There are different point totals for different lizards. My favorite is the leopard lizard, but you can also see lots of horned lizards which is fun. The cactus flowers are in full bloom and it is perfect the last weekend in April. 

We had been looking forward to this. While the views are not spectacular most of the hike, we usually have it to ourselves with an occasional ATV driving by to ask if we are hurt or lost. They can never believe that someone would actually want to hike out there. We started off with a great hike. There were many lizards being spotted and Conrad even saw a young rattlesnake. The hike was going well until about 2 miles in, we saw some people off in the distance. When we made it to where they were, we talked to them for a little bit. It seemed that they were out there doing long distance shooting. This seemed like a great way to spoil a beautiful area. We kept hiking for a bit longer until the nervousness of having people out there shooting overtook Jacqueline. She decided that this was too much. We were going to have to turn around. I assured her that where they were shooting was far away from the direction that we were hiking, but she just couldn't take it. We had no choice but to turn around. I was frustrated because this had taken a great little Saturday hike and turned it into a short walk. We took our points and our tails and headed home with me expressing my displeasure for quite some time on the way back. 

This made us determined to return because we were not going to let some random people ruin our favorite hike. When we came back the next weekend, the random people were gone and the lizards were still there. The kids were troopers and we were able to get a full 10 miles in with many flowers and many lizards. We made it all the way out to the Virgin River Gorge view where we could see down to the Virgin River. My kids were amazing and we really had a fun day to make up for the lost hike from the shooting people. We had a lot to talk about on this hike because we had just accepted positions back at McKenzie. 

There was going to be less hiking and a little more packing to do as we had to sell our house, buy a new one, and get all of our stuff moved a 1000 miles away. We had just made the pandemic more interesting for ourselves by trying to do a big move in the middle of it. At first, we were just focused on getting our house shown and sold. So Jacqueline was cleaning up the place and making it look just right. The unfortunate thing about that is as soon as you do that, the place will be not yours anymore. For now though, it was just going to be a lot of work making this project happen. So it was nice to be out with the kids enjoying a beautiful spring day hiking there and back to Starvation Point.