In 2016 Kaden spent several weeks in the Canyonlands and Moab area of Utah. They had the best time and remember thinking about how fun it would be to bring someone there for the first time and show them all the things. Fast forward 8 years, and this is what we are doing for Shanako’s 45th birthday.

We left Portland on Thursday after work and drove out to a pass in Eastern Oregon where it dropped to freezing overnight, and we bundled up under our heavy comforter and barely noticed. Kaden overall is a wimp about driving long distances, but they were a champ and we drove most of the next day, with a short break for Kaden to go running down a dirt road, past cows and elk, and then pushed on to Price Recreational Area where we rolled up in the dark and stole camping.

On Shanako’s birthday proper, we were up and on the road early and wound through the desert into Moab around noon, where we resupplied and then had our first EMERGENCY of the trip, which was when we learned the true capacity of our toilet by overflowing the pisser, and Kaden had the challenge of moping piss off the floor as Shanako was driving. Just or luck, at Lions Park, we were able to dump a few gallons of piss in the men’s restroom and fill up on a water at a free tap in the city park. Fully resupplied, we headed into Arches where we waited in line twice because the ranger was a pedantic jerk with no soul or heart.

But! it was still worth it because we wandered through Devil’s Garden and saw all of these things….

following a primitive trail & trying to get back to the car before sun fall (success!)

The trail, like all National Parks trails, thinned out after a couple miles and we had most of the back few miles on our own, following cairns and footprints through winding paths, and making it back to the car just as dark was falling.

We ate Shanako’s birthday dinner at Sunset Grill, a restaurant perched on a cliff overlooking the canyon. But after sunset, so we mostly saw lights in a dark sky. We spent some time reminiscing on a year full of love and adventure and considering goals and intentions for the year ahead.

Next, we drove up curving roads and dispersed camped outside of Canyonlands. The next day we entered the park, where we drove around and ate sandwiches Shanako meditated on a rock cliff while Kaden ran around in a canyon, looking at bright yellow cottonwoods sitting together where springs came out of the canyon walls.

Views from Kaden’s trail run on Neck Spring trail

We read about how the Fremont era people and ancestral Puebloans lived here hunting and gathering for thousands of years, and how in the last thousand years, they began farming corn, beans, and squash. How they thrived here, and the land provided everything needed: farming, gathering, sport, ceremony, and medicine. We felt happy and sad at the same time contemplating this.

We ate dinner from camp chairs set up on a rock ledge, with this view. Then we drove off in the sunset and are currently dispersed camping a few miles outside the Canyonlands, typing this. Shanako reports they are enjoying their 45th year, so far.

Another trip around the sun

Round the Mountain