Our first includes a six-mile round-trip hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls. We are hiking along beautiful canyon walls on a perfect weather day. We are so blessed to be here!
A bonus is the fall foliage that is turning trees and bushes into shades of red and yellow.
We're not the first people to wander this way. Hundreds of years ago Native Americans were camping in this area. They must have had some spare time, because they did some art work on the bottom of the flat-faced cliffs in the picture below.
Because that wall was some distance from the trail, we had to zoom in to get a picture of the pictographs.
One of our neighbors at our RV park said that this was the most beautiful hike of his entire life. It was lovely, but he obviously hasn't been hiking with us for the last three years. It won't make our top ten list, but we still felt blessed to be here enjoying the weather and the beauty around us.
At the end of three miles, we found Lower Calf Creek Falls, and took the obligatory pictures. During the driest part of the year, there is still water flowing over the 130-foot waterfall. We have heard that in warmer weather this is a great swimming pool.
We definitely didn't have the waterfall to ourselves today. This is a popular hike every day, and the parking lot at the trail head was full. A forest of camera tripods was at the base of the falls today. It seems a photography workshop was going on, teaching the best way to capture the beauty of falling water.
Denisa is usually bored on out-and-back trails where we hike back the same way we arrived. She was surprised with the number of wildflowers still in bloom in October, and they kept her entertained. She spent the return hike taking pictures of unusual red,
and purple,
and yellow blooms still found along the trails in Southern Utah.
We had visited with the camp host at Lower Calf Creek, who told us that his favorite hike was actually to Upper Calf Creek Falls--but it was a tougher hike. That sounded a little like a challenge to us, so we drove the 5 miles to that trail head. That took us back over "The Hogsback." We described that experience from our drive over it in the motor home a couple days ago. We're in the car today, taking pictures of some other crazy motor home going over the narrow, curving ridge drive with no guard rails.
The camp host told us that Upper Calf Creek trail descends straight down 800 feet, and he wasn't kidding. The first part of the trail was painfully steep over white slick rock. (It really didn't hurt us now, but it's painful knowing we have to climb a mile back up this 45-degree canyon wall.)
The rest of the trail continued downhill, until we got to the waterfall. It seems taller than the last one, because the water falls 88-feet straight down. Mark made the extra hike to get this picture, while Denisa happily waited at the top of the falls.
We also made the hike to the clear water pool, an extra climb above the falls. Someone warned us that hikers like to skinny-dip in this pool. But it was cool enough, and our fellow hikers were old enough, that there were no naked swimmers today.
It was a tough hike back out of that canyon, and we can report that we got some good cardio exercise by the time we got back to the car. In other words, we were huffing and puffing to get up that hill. Then Mark pointed the car down the title road--Hell's Backbone. It was a crazy winding gravel road that climbed quickly to give us mountain views.
The nicest thing about that increased elevation was the increased fall foliage.
The aspens at these heights were at their peak golden color. We love the aspen leaves, set off with their bright white trunks.
Besides being a narrow gravel road with a continuous flow of blind curves, it is also open range. Cattle beside, or in the road just become another obstacle in this drive.
This is the route used to deliver mail and milk to the town of Boulder, Utah, until the 1940's. At that time, it wasn't wide enough for car travel, so the mail was transported via mules. Those lucky mules had some great views over some of the most rugged mountain canyons in the world.
In fact, this area of Utah was the last part of the United States to be mapped. It was too rugged for any of the map-maker/explorers to find their way through. This bridge at the top of Hell's Backbone was the last piece to make the road navigable by automobiles. We took a picture of the one-lane bridge, a gnarly twisted tree, and a handsome wanderer at the summit of Hell's Backbone.
It was getting late in the day, but we had one more stop to make along Hell's Backbone. When we put our destination of Posey Lake into the GPS, it was only 17 miles away. But it estimated it would take over an hour to get there. The road is very curvy and rough, but we doubted that estimation. Because we stopped so many times for photo opportunities, it worked out that the GPS was right on the button for the timing. Too many beautiful aspen trees just begged us to stop to take their picture.
We stopped in at Posey Lake to see if it would be a good kayaking spot. The sun is already low in the sky, and the aspens are gold around the edges. If it wasn't 40 degrees by now, it would have been a great lake for an autumn sunset kayak trip.
No one was camped here on a weekday, but we thought the views and the trees here were particularly lovely. The only problem would be getting an RV up the rough roads of the backbone.
We took a few more pictures around the lake, with the sunset filling the sky, then headed down the mountain towards home.
We missed out on some of the mountain scenery on our driving loop because of the time of day. The moon was already rising over the mountains as we hurried to get back to the motor home before it got completely dark. It had been a long day, full of wandering God's wonders, even over the top of Hell's Backbone.
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