The first canyon of our trip, and a spring to welcome us

Because Brian has lived here in Moab in the past, he's relatively familiar with the landscape and has several different places that he wants to share with me. The first of those places ended up being a beautiful canyon that leads into the boundary of Arches National Park.

Even though this adventure was on Veterans Day weekend and the rest of Moab and the parks in the area were booming with visitors and tourists, the canyon we explored was obscure enough that we shared the entire space with only one other couple and several ravens. There was an old cattle ranchers trail that dropped us down into the canyon and a couple of small social trails in the canyon itself. Except for a small sign declaring the boundary of the National Park, the rest of the area is unmarked. We traveled cross country – our path guided only by the steep canyon walls and the low-flowing river at the bottom of the valley.

Down the valley bottom we went walking among the debris of fallen trees and shrubs that got wiped out by a seemingly recent flash flood. Just past the confluence between the river we paralleled and an adjoining river was a surprisingly large pond being fed by a spring.

The time of day was perfect for just relaxing in the sand near the water. We took quite a long break to enjoy the sun and solitude, seeing tiny fish swim through their vast ocean and watching floating leaves create patterned shadows with their surface tension.

As the day stretched on, it was time to get a move out, so we hiked a ways until we got to our exit point, where we could break the rim to get back above the canyon. A few steps up on a couple of precarious logs and a short but steep shuffle between two walls of rock got us to an amazing vantage point of the valley bottom that we had just explored.

We said goodbye to the canyon and hiked out across slickrock as the sun set, creating darker and more defined silhouettes of the towers and mesas that lie further on the horizon.