Escalante River Adventure: Day 3

Wednesday was forecast to be cold, with chances of rain or snow. We actually considered calling off the trip because of it,... but ended up deciding to go any ways and hope for the best. If it rains and you are in the canyons, flash floods can come on suddenly, and can be really dangerous. Besides, it is no fun to be stuck outside all day with a little baby when it is snowing, you know? The morning dawned clear and blue skied. It ended up being a little cold, but not as bad as we thought it would be. There were wispy clouds lurking about, but other than that, not a drop of precipitation! For breakfast we ate our CLIF bars instead of starting a fire for oatmeal so we could get a head start on the day. Then for lunch, we stopped and made pudding with graham crackers....only on a backpacking trip would I ever eat this way!!! Ryan discovered a new invention he liked- mixing his pudding with instant oatmeal...Dallin loved it too! It was pretty good, but really sweet. Again, I'm sure only when you are out in the middle of the desert would this actually be desirable!! That evening, Spencer found the ultimate shelter to set up camp...A cave!! We were excited to have a place to be out of the breeze. Not only that, we started a fire at the mouth of the cave, so that the heat would reflect. That night we had seafood pasta with salmon and crab! We kept the fire going all night, and had a nice toastyAND cozy sleep!

It felt just like home all set up in the little cave with our bags and clothes, and walls around us. Not to mention lots of spider webs and other friends of nature. We slept on sand, so had some padding for the ol' hips. There was just enough room for us to line up all of our sleeping bags in a couple rows.



The next morning while we packed up, the kids hiked up on top of the rocks above where our cave was.

I have to do a little side tangent about Porter. The whole trip, he would stop and pose in different positions, flash a winner smile, and say-"Hey mom, is this a good picture?" He would change position a little, then say "Hey mom, what about this?" It was so cute, I had to include some of his many poses. I couldn't not take his picture, fearing I would hurt his sweet little feelings.