Sledding at the Rock Glacier and Swimming in Brown Lake

 My friend Jenny had some visiting nieces, and I had a day I could take off work, so it was time for two moms and eight kids to head out for a hike. We've done most of the hikes in the area, so we wanted a way to get the kids excited. So we decided to go sledding at the rock glacier and swimming in Brown Lake.

That was enough to get them hiking. And then they were happily talking to each other, and the miles passed quickly.

I pointed out some SPLAT verbenone that had been applied to a limber pine. This synthetic pheromone mimics the scent that mountain pine beetles give off when they have invaded the bark of the tree and the bark is full. Basically it tells the incoming beetles to pick a different tree. This tree is being protected because seeds from it are being tested to see if they are resistant to white pine blister rust, a non-native pathogen. If they are resistant, then this tree could help start many more trees that are resistant.

We had some fun poses as we got up to the bristlecones.

I love the beautiful colors and lines of their wood.

Even the roots are amazing. And roots are often exposed because they've been there thousands of years, and the surrounding soil has eroded away.

We didn't stay in the bristlecones long, though. We continued up into Wheeler cirque to see the rock glacier.

I had to pause to admire some beautiful wildflowers. The pink ones are in the saxifrage family, white-daisy ones are Erigeron leiomerus, and the white matted ones are Phlox pulvinata.

And then we were there! On the east side of the rock glacier, we found some nice snow patches. It turned out to be slipperier than we expected. 

Which made it good for sledding! Even Jenny and I gave it a try.

We found garbage bags and backpacks were good items to slide on.

We kept at it for quite awhile.

Eventually, though, we headed back down the trail. You can see Brown Lake from the trail, but there's not a trail to it, so we had to step carefully on the moraine, which has lots of big boulders that like to move.

Eventually we got to the lake. It's obviously brown in color.  It's also not very deep. I walked all over it and found the deepest spot to about 1 meter (3 feet).

Even though it's not deep, it sure has a scenic background!

The water was quite pleasant in temperature, but the rocks in the lake were covered with algae and very slippery. We found it was better to crawl around than risk falling.

Eventually it was time to get out.

The hike back was easy, and we even managed to bring back all the kids!

Jenny was much better about posting this hike on her blog in a timely manner. Oh well, I guess better late than never!

Floating the Sevier River-Leamington Canyon Utah

One day in June, our friends Andy and Bonny asked if we'd like to go kayaking the Sevier River through Lemington Canyon with them. That had been on our bucket list and we had nothing going on that Sunday, so we said yes! Then we had to figure out what we were getting into! It turns out there isn't much information about floating/rafting/kayaking the Sevier River. We were able to find a little information, and it suggested that the river, at 385 cfs, might be a little low, since the website recommended a minimum of 500 cfs for kayaking. I checked with someone from Leamington, and he said that locals usually tube the river on Fourth of July and he thought we'd be okay, so off we went. We met our friends at the put-in, near the railroad tracks in Leamington Canyon, and stationed another vehicle in the town of Leamington.

The river started off mellow. Andy and Bonny had nice inflatable kayaks.

Meanwhile, we brought a menagerie of boats. A kids' hard-sided kayak, an inflatable kayak, a SUP, and an inner tube for just-in-case. We figured that since a highway was nearby, if we ran into trouble we could always get out and hike over to the highway.

We quickly figured out that the inner tube was very hard to steer, so we ended up dragging that along. That meant one person (usually Desert Girl) doubled up either on the paddle board or inflatable kayak.

Eventually the mellow section ended. We pulled over to shore to investigate the loud, roaring noise ahead of us.

This was the first diversion dam. It was quite impressive.

Downstream was quite rocky, beyond our family's ability, but Andy and Bonny were able to negotiate it just fine.

Here was our portage, with a couple trips for my husband and me. It wasn't too long.

Then we were back into the water, this time moving faster.

Eventually we came to another dam, this one made of boulders. Here's Bonny easily negotiating it. (Our family also portaged this one!)

Downstream was quite exciting, with lots of white water. Desert Boy loved it.

But you couldn't go too fast, as a barbed wire fence crossed the river! Andy stopped and held it up for us. This was just the first of many more (I think about eight). We never knew when they'd be coming.

Once in awhile we could see more from the river, like the Leamington Canyon cement facility.

At a third diversion dam, a rancher warned us about the upcoming barbed wire under a trestle. It turned out to be at the second trestle down, and it was easy to miss, just out of the water a couple inches.

Navigating yet another barbed wire fence. I'm not sure how the kayakers do this at higher flows--some of the places it was hard to go under or over and if the water was moving faster, you might have a hard time getting out if needed.

Can you spot this one?

The river mellowed out and had lots more big turns. Still plenty of barbed wire fences.

It took us about 6.5 hours to negotiate 10 miles of river. It was a fun trip, and I'd do it again. (My husband probably wouldn't, he found it got a bit tedious after awhile--maybe partly because Desert Girl took a two-hour nap slumped against him in the kayak!)

Here's a view from Google Earth of our route. I couldn't find all the fences on Google Earth--there are many more than shown!

A Visit to Rock Corral Recreation Area, Milford, Utah

The kids and I wanted to go to Cedar City, so we left the afternoon before so we could go camp someplace interesting. I wasn't exactly sure where we were going to camp, but as we approached Milford with the beautiful sunlight on the granite rock of the Mineral Mountain Range, I decided that would be the place.

I had been wanting to check out The Rock Corral Recreation Area for many years, but had always just gone by this sign along Utah Highway 21 on the south side of Milford.

It was a Friday night, so we were expecting to see lots of people up there. But it turned out we didn't see anyone else! We found a nice place to camp that even included a bathroom.


The moon was rising early, so I tried to get a photo of an awesome tree in the camping area with some of the stars showing.

The next morning I woke up early and wandered around. Even though I was in flip flops, I couldn't resist scampering to the top of a ridge for this view.

We left our camping area and headed to the day-use area.

We found more amazing rocks--and no one else!

The end of the road has a nice picnic shelter. 

We took a social trail from there and went by some maple trees.


And some oaks! We don't have oaks by us, so I'm always excited to see them.


We wandered for a bit, admiring the rugged scenery.


Then we headed out and actually saw one other person! We also took a short walk out a ridge, and down in the ravine next to a spring saw a deer.


We also stumbled across a Utah Life Elevated Geocache.


There are lots of opportunities for rock climbing and rock hounding in the Mineral Mountains. We didn't come prepared, so we headed on to Cedar City, taking the scenic way across the mountains. Some cows joined us on the road.


We didn't know where we would end up, but eventually we got to a tiny town with some interesting ruins.

Our morning explorations got us to Cedar City about lunch time, where we ate at the Hong Kong Buffet, which has really good sushi. Yum, yum.

Our next stop was to the Mastermind Room Escape. Desert Boy had gone for his birthday with my husband and Desert Girl, and with some hints, they had made it out of the Ski Lodge in 65 minutes. I had made a snafu ordering the tickets, so had the ones that I had gotten on Groupon that were only valid during the open hours (meaning you might be paired with another group). The snafu meant that I had the opportunity to go too, so we signed up for the Detective's Room.


While waiting, we worked on some other puzzles.

Well, I'd like to say we were awesome detectives and got out in 39 minutes, but we didn't. We didn't get out at all. But it was fun (for the first half hour) and then a little frustrating (when we couldn't figure out clues).  Overall it was a good experience, and we learned some things about ourselves (like we need to be a lot more thorough searching).

On the way home, I snapped a photo of this wildfire that had burned right across the highway near Minersville. The retardant drops were really obvious.

It was a fun short trip, and I always enjoy checking out new things!