Fall Break

All the schools in Utah had Fall Break so I wanted one too.  I had Thursday and Friday off so I wanted to go somewhere.  I did a series of things:

Thursday I stayed home because I was down with an ear infection but I started taking antibiotics earlier on Tuesday so I can have a weekend.  So my dad asked me on Thursday to take him up on the mountain for a drive up to Skyline Drive.  It was a very mellow drive and the dogs had fun, we were dog sitting Jeri because my brother and his family went to Arizona to see some friends.  My mom and little sister also went to Arizona to see my aunt.  We were dog sitting my mom's dog too.  It was very pretty up at Skyline and very pleasant.  We learned about the water system up there, there were some kiosks that talked about it.

On Friday, my ear finally stopped hurting and I was feeling better so I took off for my planned trip I planned for a few weeks befiore.  I drove to Goblin Valley first which took 3 hours, then biked on the Wild Horse Trail System.

Wild Horse Trail System is a system of mountain bike trails in the Goblin Valley State Park which consisted around 8 miles of fun singletrack.

The trails were just barely built last June so it needed to be packed down more still so I was bogging down on some parts.  It was pretty hard to pedal on that stuff but I still pretty much rode the whole thing and it was fun.

The scenery was great but still no trees, so I felt like I was on a different planet, like Mars.

Then down a little bit from the trails were the goblins at Goblin Valley.  There were a lot of people in mini vans and the place was packed.  I just rode down the road to check it out and then rode back up.

Later in the day, I went over to Factory Butte near Caineville which was an hour further southwest.  I met my oldest brother and his family.  They were dirt biking and camping.  They love this area because the dirt biking is great and it is not crowded and desolate.

My 9 year old niece started the campfire all my herself.  She is awesome.  I couldn't start a fire when I was 9! Holy cow!  Later that night we all ate taco soup and sat around the campfire then watched "Pixels" in the trailer.  It was fun.  I slept really good in the bed of my truck with the Softopper.

The next morning at 6:30, I got up and so did my niece.  While everyone else was sleeping, my niece and I played sports all morning.  We played football, frisbee, soccer, and basketball.  It was fun and good exercise.  Then when everybody got up, we ate breakfast burritos.

Later in the morning, we headed to Goblin Valley, me for the second time.  The kids wanted to hike around the goblins.  There were a lot of people again, in mini vans.

We hiked clear south of the area and then went up through a wash where there was less people.  It was fun.  We've never been in this area.

We hiked over a lot of goblins and through washes.

Then we made it to the top and went down the other side.  My brother calls it the "Dome to Dome Loop".  Then we went to Stan's Burger Shak and ate some burgers.  It started to rain.  We headed back to camp and I left to go home.  Everyone else stayed and dirt biked.

I went home on the Capitol Reef way and on the way home, it was raining.  I decided to stop in Capitol Reef to do a short hike but I wasn't so sure because of the rain.  But I put on my rain jacket and went anyway.  I went on this trail I hiked before.

About after 5 minutes of the hike, it stopped raining.  And everything was beautiful.  I hiked up to the viewpoint and back down.

Then I went through this wash towards to the Capitol Reef campground.  Went down a little then went back up and backtracked through the wash again.  It was pretty!

Campground

Wow!  Always pretty after a rainstorm.

It was so nice that I kept going and I went further on another trail after the wash, then after at the top, I went back down to my truck.  I ended up hiking exactly 5 miles.  Then I drove back home.  That was a very nice Fall Break and I had a blast.