May 10 – Grand Wash Trail

The weather looked kind of threatening with lots of dark clouds but the forecast for tomorrow was even worse with it calling for snow. We couldn’t see ourselves staying in for 2 days in a row.

Since it wasn’t raining now we headed off after lunch to do a short trail. As we approached the park it seemed to be raining over it and we almost turned back. When we got there it was grey but no rain.

The Grand Wash is a wide wash through more tall cliffs similar to the Chimney Rock Trail except here you can drive right to the start of the wash and it is almost flat. Hence it is one of the more popular family trails. It is down a short dirt road off of the main park scenic drive.

To go to the end and back is around 7.5 km. As I said we were going to only do a short hike but as usual we kept going and got within 1/2 km of the end before turning around for a total of 6.5 km.

At the start the walls are quite far apart but still interesting.

We could smell the fragrance of this bush from a long way off. Very nice.

Walking in the washes is like walking on a beach. It takes extra effort to go the same distance as compared to a hard surface.

A strangely spiky large rock.

After about 2 km, the walls close in for the Capital Reef version of The Narrows, which is much easier to get to than the Zion version.

Notice the little tiny person at the bottom of the next picture.

A one spot we noticed that people had been throwing rocks up into the holes in the wall.

I tried and failed many times.

Jennie succeeded after only a few tries.

She even got it to sit right on the edge.

After the walls started opening up again we turned around here. There was even a hint of blue sky up there.

Heading back.

It started to sprinkle rain and then got just hard enough that we put on our rain jackets. It seemed like a good time for a snack so we ducked under this overhang. As you can see by the time I took the picture the rain had stopped.

We got little patches of sun with mostly grey skies on the rest of the way back but no more rain.

It still looked very dark off in the distance as we neared the start.

Once we got back to the car and were back on the scenic drive we noticed that the pavement was quite wet. It must have rained much more out here that what we got.

On the highway back to Torrey and the RV we got into quiet a heavy rain and sleet storm. It only lasted a few minutes but by the time we were home it was over.

We will see what kind of weather tomorrow brings.