The weekend of 17 Jan 09, Tracy and I went down to southern Utah to enjoy the nice weather down

there.  We first drove the Wild Horse Road behind Goblin Valley.  We had tried to drive this road twice

before, but the early section through the wash had been too muddy.  We didn't have any problems this

time, and we crossed Muddy Creek without any problems.  I wanted to hike a little at Muddy Creek, but

the area didn't really interest me that much, so we kept driving on to Hanksville.

We then hiked up on slickrock above North Wash.  That was fun, but Tracy got a little spooked on the

steep rocks I was climbing up.

We continued driving by White Canyon, and did some stargazing near one of the darkest places in the

United States.  Oddly enough, it was so dark, Venus was bright enough to wash out the the entire

south-west corner of the sky.  Good times!

We spent the night in Blanding, and then drove down to Lake Powell on the Halls Crossing side, and did

some hiking over slickrock to the top of Moqui Canyon.  We had thought about paddling up this canyon

when we kayaked here in november, but we didn't have enough time, so it was nice to see the really

deep canyon from the top.  After that we hiked out to a geocache, and then hiked down into White

Canyon in Natural Bridges.  The hike in Natural Bridges was nice, even if it was a little slick on the

steep descent.  After that we headed the 6 hours back home.