MJK Thrills N Spills: Backpacking in Canyonlands

I spent another Memorial Day weekend backpacking with Lindsey, Rob, and Shaun. Our adventure began with driving down Friday night to Green River and trying to find Crystal Geyser thinking we would camp there that night and the drive the remainder of the way Saturday morning. Well.... we were a little mistaken on our directions of how to get to the geyser and so we took some wrong turns.... and ended up driving over some crazy dirt roads and we were thinking the whole time, "No wonder no one knows about this geyser! No one can get to it!" We even took a sketchy, winding dirt road up to the top of a hill where there was a tower with a blinking light on it. The road was so sketchy that Lindsey and I got out of the car to walk it while Shaun and Rob drove to the top. At another point we also had to drive over a metal pipe that was laid across the road. And then wouldn't you know it - we found a lovely, graded dirt road - that any vehicle could drive on - that took us directly to the geyser. What a happy accident! And then in the morning, that dirt road was super simple to follow out back to the freeway. Oh brother. Sadly, the geyser never went off for us ... it would only bubble and hiss. So we dubbed it the "bubble pot."

Stairs leading up to Chesler Park

We went to Chesler Park in Canyonlands National Park. We all packed in 9 liters of water since we weren't sure that we'd find water to filter - the only reported water source was 3 miles away from our campsite. Thankfully, our campsite was only 3 miles from the trail head so we didn't have to pack in all that weight very far.

The Needles District

Chesler Park is a big open, grassy area in the middle of the Needles District of Canyonlands. Our campsite was beautiful.... except for the wind vortex we had. There was some serious wind the entire weekend, and the wind would just circle around our campsite picking up all the sand and filling out tents, food, and ears with it. Sunday was the worst with maybe 40 mile per hour gusts. I was even hit by a tumble-weed when we were hiking back to camp from visiting Druid Arch! And it didn't just roll into my legs - it struck me from the side up on my upper arm! I guess there is a first for everything. It was actually kind of cool to see the dust devils swirling around and even more cool to watch the tumble-weeds swirl around in those dust devils!

Even better view of the Needles

Hiking Joint Trail and to Druid Arch were definitely the highlights of the trip. Joint Trail was a hike through cracks in the rock. Some of those cracks were so tight! We couldn't get through some of them. They were way fun to explore. Then Druid Arch was pretty cool too - especially the little rock formation at the bottom of it that looks like a hamster on oxygen. Ha! We took a little nap on the rocks at Druid Arch. I seem to do that on several of my camping/backpacking trips .... Hmmmm.

Anyway! Enjoy the pics!