This was a nice weekend.  The weekend of 11 Nov 06 was a three day weekend...well, at least

for us spoiled federal employees it was a three day weekend.  So I headed down to southern

Utah to do some good canyoneering.  I went Thursday night by myself and camped just

outside of Goblin Valley State Park.  I got up bright and early on Friday and hiked the Little Wild

Horse Canyon (Google Map) and Bell Canyon loop in the San Rafael Swell.  Little Wild Horse

was a great slot canyon.  It wasn't technical at all, but it had some really long stretches of slot.

But then I really liked the desert hiking between Little Wild Horse and Bell.  I don't know what it

was, but I had been on call for work for two weeks in a row, so I had pretty much been cooped

up for almost three weeks.  As a result, I was REALLY stir crazy and needed a solitude fix.  So,

when I came out of Little Wild Horse into the desert I had planned on taking a break and doing

some reading.  But when I stopped, my ears actually HURT from the complete and total silence

of the desert morning.  It was incredible.  I actually had to keep moving just to keep my ears

from hurting from the silence.  So after over a year in Utah I finally fell in love with the desert.  I

need that silence.  But then I dropped down into Bell Canyon, and it was getting later in the

day, so I passed a couple of groups of people and the spell was broken.  Bell wasn't as much a

slot as Little Wild Horse, but it was still nice.  Then I got back to the truck, tried to do some four-

wheeling, chickened out, did some easier driving in the desert, got ANOTHER flat tire, drove

back to Green River, got the tire fixed, and then met Tracy.  We stayed the night in Green

River and then got up the next morning to hike in The Maze of Canyonlands.  Well, we drove

50 miles of dirt roads for hours, before I finally chickened out because my tires weren't in the

best shape.  We never made it to the Maze.  I honestly don't think anyone could get to the

Maze, hike anything significant, and get back out in less than four days.  That was, by far, the

most remote place I have ever been to.  But we turned around and went back to Horseshoe

Canyon and did lots of hiking there.  Horseshoe was nice with its old pictographs.  We did

some speed hiking in that canyon, but we had a great time.  The next day we did lots of

exploring in the northern end of the San Rafael Swell.  All in all, I put about 140 miles on my

truck on dirt roads in three days.  That's an amazing amount of seclusion that I have never

done before.  So it was a great weekend.