The Joint Trail, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

     It's been years since I've posted. I don't know if I even remember how!! I had a baby I took camping last time and then another surprise joined our family in 2015! So now we are a family of 8!! I never thought I would have so many kids!  We've still been camping, I just haven't been writing about it. Camping is really the only thing we can afford to do with so many of us!!

     Last fall I had the hair brained idea that I wanted to get out and backpack again!! It had been more than 10 years since I had been out with everything I needed on my back into the woods.  So my friend Karen and I cooked up the idea of taking our oldest girls on their first backpacking trip.  S and A are both 10 years old.  Karen's oldest E, is 9 years old.  They are all pretty good hikers.  They had a Friday off school at the end of September so we decided to go for it.  Karen had hiked The Joint trail years ago and thought it would be a good place to take beginners.  The Joint Trail is in the Needles Section of Canyonlands National Park about an hour from Moab, Utah.

     We convinced my parents to join us for extra support and let's be honest, to help carry the weight, haha!!  In my mind I pictured walking on an established trail in the desert through miles of sage brush! Boy was I wrong. I'm glad my girls are so tough or this trail would have destroyed them.  It was up and down, over and through with more elevation change than I ever expected as we traversed through canyons and washes.  It was the prettiest place I think I have ever seen! I love desert camping! I feel at home around red rock and sandstone!
     We started in the Elephant Canyon parking lot and took the Elephant Canyon trail into Kesler Park.  It was about 3.5 miles from the parking lot to our first camp site.  We spent three days and two nights camping.  The first night we stayed in Kesler Park Campsite #1.  It was definitely the prettiest campsite in the area.  In the future I think I would try and reserve that spot for all the nights we are there.  In the morning we picked up and moved to Campsite #5 to stay for a night.  Ideally we wouldn't have had to move to another campsite, but we planned this trip late and didn't have many camping options.

 



















    We spent a day hiking The Joint. The Joint is about a mile long slot canyon that you can hike through.  It's like God took a pie cutter and cut waffle marks in the rock. There are side canyons branching off in perpendicular directions.  We had so much fun exploring all the canyons we could fit through.  There was one crack the kids explored that I couldn't even squeeze into.  They had a riot!!
     My favorite part of the trip was leaving my busy, harried, anxiety ridden life behind for 4 days.  It's such relief to only worry about your basic needs for 4 days.  Do we have enough food and water? Will we stay dry if it rains? Are we warm enough? I left drama home. No worrying about if the cleanliness of my house is tolerable, or if I'm going to make it to the carpool in time, or if so and so is going to eat his dinner or choose to go to bed hungry.  We had some awesome meals.  There's a reason why we like to bring Karen the gourmet cook on our adventures!!   Life is so simple when backpacking.  The food tastes so good, the water satisfies so much more, and the clean up is so quick!!
     Overall, the best part was spending 4 days and 3 nights of uninterrupted time with my girls, my parents, and Karen and her daughter.  We played card games, went exploring, and enjoyed the scenery.
     I'm hoping to revive the blog and be more regular in posting from now on. I hope to start by posting more details about this trip: including, menus, pack lists, gear reviews, etc.  Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions and I can hopefully address them!!