So after out first night together in the B&B we hit the road and made our way down to southern Utah. We got down to Capitol Reef National Park around 5, or so, and the park ranger guy rode over on his little National Park bicycle as we were starting to pull out our stuff. He was super nice, and told us that we might wanna move a site or two over because the people we were camping next to were a bunch of loud guys. That was really nice of him! Then he found out that we were on our honeymoon, after the obligatory questioning ("Long drive?") about the Alaska license plates on our truck, and he offered us some of his own personal firewood. So nice! Then he invited us to their evening see the night sky program.
We got our campsite all set up and got dinner ready. Tin foil dinners - delish! The sky was just getting dark as we were eating. It was really pretty there at Capitol Reef - it's like a little oasis in the middle of a really, really, really big desert. We made our plans for the next day and then hit the hay.
We slept in a good bit the next morning, which was nice, but put us on the trail during the hottest part of the day. We finally got the trail head about noon - bad, bad, bad. We parked, grabbed my little day-pack and hit the trail.
The hike we were going on took us along a wash down into a small canyon and creek, and eventually (~5 mi later) back to the visitors' center. It started out great, although quite hot. We were just taking our time, getting lots of pictures, as you can probably tell, and enjoying ourselves. Eventually there started to be water in the river bed and so we ditched our shoes and just walked in the water, which felt SO good...for about 1/2 mile, then all those nice smooth river rocks started to feel a lot harder, and then about another half-mile later it felt like my feet were cuddling with sonic the hedgehog. The canyon was beautiful and it was awesome because there were some incredible waterfalls that we had to climb down. About 5 hours after we started we made it to the visitors' center - dehydrated (we ran out of water about 3/4 of the way done), tired, sweaty, and with no way to get back to our car that didn't involve walking. Unsurprisingly, Jess had been in this situation before and she used her thumb to great effect, and got us a ride down the road the couple miles to our car. Awkward...but it worked...even if the whole time I was just imagining Scruff McGruff saying "remember, kids, don't ever hitchhike".
After we got back to camp we headed into "town", if Torrey, UT (population 6,500) can be called that, and grabbed some mexican. It was the weirdest mexican either of us had ever eaten. I mean, I'll give you creativity points for putting cauliflower in your tortilla soup, but then take them all back for the wrong-ness of it. Whatever, it was food.
The next day we broke camp and grabbed a shower, clutch. Then we headed to Little Wildhorse Canyon. We got there about 1pm, another heat-of-the-day hike. This one was arguably worse though. We were both sore from the day before and so this hike was destined to be long and hot. I tried to pack a little extra water in my small daypack, but it just wasn't enough. Little Wildhorse Canyon is a slot canyon, which means that it is, by and large, a very narrow canyon (sometimes only barely wide enough for one person at a time). It's gorgeous in the canyon though from all the water that has raced through it after flash floods leaving very cool designs in the rock. The canyon was totally dry when we were there because their hadn't been any rain in that area for a while. We made it all the way to the end of the canyon, turned around, and were about out of the canyon on the way back and we were just sitting down to eat our apples. We both look up as someone walked around the corner, someone that looked really familiar... I had to do a double take, is that Dennis, my father-in-law? Wow, what a ridiculous coincidence. He was there with a high-adventure youth trip that he was leading (he's got a sweet job).
We stayed in the same camp area with them that evening in Moab, UT since we couldn't find any empty campsites. That night we went on a night hike out to Corona arch. It was fun, but we learned that night hikes are a lot easier when it's not a new moon. It was PITCH black on our hike and about half way to the arch we were sure that we were gonna get lost and eaten by a chupacabra or something. So basically we turned around and high-tailed it out because Jessie was so scared. She said that she's never been so glad to be in the car.
The next day we went canyoneering with Jessie's dad. That was, in a word, SICK. It involved having to jump over/wade through pools of rain water, rappelling 30-40 feet into the canyon, and then rappelling 75-80 feet into the deepest part of the canyon. It was a blast and it was fun to get to do some rappelling.
After taking in all that beauty it was time to come back to Colorado Springs. We spent a couple days there with family and friends before heading out for part 2 of our honeymoon. At this point I couldn't believe how much we had done in 1 week and the thought of getting to do this for another month was so exciting. Having 60 days of paid vacation is officially AWESOME!
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