I’ve been to the Escalante region many times. Last week, my friend Becca and I squeezed in another set of trips before winter snows started. She lives up there now. Just getting off a long stint as an itinerant truck dweller and hiker, she’s settled onto a really cool farm. It’s her first step towards the good life in a straw bale house in that beautiful country.

We didn’t backpack. We packed for it, but didn’t. The lure of the farm house was pretty great. I say we packed for it, but that’s often a faulty process. Both of us hike so often, that packing for trips is overly casual. So we often make casual mistakes. A forgotten compass, botched directions to the trailhead, forgetting the powdered milk, etc.. This time, she forgot the stove. Not a big deal as we cooked on wood fires instead. There isn’t much wood in canyon country, so our fires were tiny. One night we cooked dinner on a single stick. On the day that we *really* were going to backpack, we spent too much of the morning dayhiking instead. Regardless, we did four day hikes. Just existing out there is reward enough. We’re lucky.

We car camped at Dance Hall Rocks, on the Hole in the Rock Road. We drove to the end of this famous road, and walked down the famous hole. We hiked along random red rocks, to rare springs, in notable canyons, beneath large arches, ruin sites and rock panels.

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