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.