I've still never been backpacking

I just got home from the backpacking trip. Unfortunately we never really got to the backpacking part, but I don't know that backpacking would have made the trip any more eventful.

This is the group that ended up going: Me, Glen, Gile, Dorian and his two kids Rebecca & Joe, Bill, Allen, and Bill's son Jake. Bill was Glen's scout leader, the rest of us are cousins. Surprisingly Bill and Jake not only stuck out the entire trip with us, but they even claimed to have a good time.

So this is how the trip went. Glen and I talked on Sunday and he said we'd be meeting in St. George at 1pm on Tuesday. He called on Monday and told me we'd meet at 2pm. He called Tuesday morning and told me we'd meet at 3pm. We met in St. George at 4ish. We had lunch at In-n-Out, took Gile to Wal-Mart to buy some hiking boots, and then out to Aunt Betty's and Uncle Atwood's to drop off my car and pick up the keys to the ranch house. We finally started the 2 hour drive out to the ranch at 6ish. Glen tried to tell me it was my fault we were late because he decided to go searching for my rifle at the parent's house. My rifle is sitting in the gun safe at Glen's house, so you decide whose really at fault. Regardless, here's a picture of the ranch house from the old schoolyard:

I realize it's a crappy picture, but it's the only one I took of the house, and look on the bright side, you can kind of take in a little more of the setting with this shot. We spent the first night there.

Despite our delayed arrival we actually managed to beat Dorian out there. Once Dorian did arrive he stayed up with Glen and Allen plotting out our hiking plans for the next day. Somewhere in there they decided that we would drive out to the rim of the Grand Canyon, hike down, hike back up, dink around and do whatever for the rest of the day, spend night two back at the ranch, and go backpacking on Thursday. The ranch is nice, so nobody was going to whine about not getting two nights on the ground.

We caravaned out to the canyon with Allen and Dorian. Apparently we weren't in a hurry to get started since Allen made the mistake of briefly pausing in front of the bar 10 ranch just long enough for Glen and Bill to bolt out of the suburban "just for a second." Half hour later we caught back up with Dorian who had pulled over to target shoot while he waited for us to catch up. We started driving again, but the guns were out and the shooting didn't stop. Glen, Dorian, and Gile all took turns leaning out the car windows firing at stuff, while Dorian's kids sat in the back of his truck shooting their BB guns.

We finally go out to the the rim where we were going to hike down. Naturally we had to stand around snapping pictures and...just standing around for no apparent reason for another half hour or so before the hike actually started. Here are some of my pictures from the rim:

Doesn't Gile look wistful standing there? Don't kid yourself, there's nothing wistful about that guy. He told us when we got back that his friend died while we were gone, but when Allen pointed out that he didn't really seem all that broken up about it Gile responded "well there's no use cryin' over spilt milk." Allen told him that he could have at least stared off in the distance for a minute or two. I guess we know how broken up he would have been if one of us had toppled over the edge.

Glen and Bill lagged behind the entire hike, and as Allen pointed out, you have to hike much slower if you want to talk the entire time. If you click on this picture, and then look very closely you can see Glen and Bill, momentarily separated making their way down the canyon. Look closely though, because they're a ways up there.

Dorian stopped about halfway down to wait for everyone to catch up, everyone but Glen and Bill, they were too far back.

...and here we are at the bottom:

Here's a shot of the eagle on the canyon wall:

Here's Glen trying to clean off the mouthpiece of his camel pack after discovering that he'd been grinding it into the sand with his foot all through lunch:

This next shot is of Glen with his little bag of Asian trail mix, which he generously offered to share with Gile. Gile actually ate a handful before Glen told him it was four years old and he'd just found it in the bottom of his bag. He also offered some to Dorian and Allen, who both tasted it, and then immediately spit it back out without actually digesting any of it.

Another picture of the canyon from the hike back out:

After we got back out of the canyon, we waited around for Bill and Glen to chat their way back out before we loaded up and started heading back to some other sites. Somewhere in there Dorian spotted a vein of quartz on the side of a mountain, and we decided to detour over to check it out. Dorian turned off onto a little dirt road that was in pretty bad condition, and Allen continued on the other dirt road around to the other side of the hill, mountain, whatever you want to call it. We got out and Allen, Jake, and I hiked up to the top of the hill. Gile refused to do any more hiking for the day. Instead he stayed behind to do some target shooting, and Bill understandably made the prompt decision to leave Gile and his gun to take a hike of his own. The view on top was fantastic:
This is looking back at the suburban:

A picture of me on the top:

We could even see Dorian and Glen on the other side, they look like little fence posts, and you can see the little blue dot out in the distance that is the truck:Unfortunately the truck stayed in that same spot for the rest of the night. Glen shot a Quail, and was ready to head back to prepare what Gile referred to as his "quail mcnugget" for dinner so we got all loaded up again, but the truck wouldn't start. The men stood around and talked and seemed to reach some sort of a conclusion about what was wrong with the truck and then everyone crammed into the suburban and we headed back to the ranch.

We decided to stop and look at the Indian drawings (I can't remember what they're called.):

...and it was about that time that everyone began to become painfully aware of one member of our party who was struggling with some digestive issues. I won't say who, I'll let you guess, but let's just say that when this person claimed to feel very picked on, but then complained about being cold, rolled up his window and tried to gas us all it was hard to feel sympathetic.

When we got back the member of our party with digestive issues fell asleep on the couch where he treated us to interesting background noises throughout dinner. The next morning on our way back out to the truck he told us all that it was Glen's fault for feeding him the Asian trail mix, and who knows maybe it was Glen's fault.

Allen and Dorian had gotten up early that morning to drive into St. George to get car parts. The plan was to drive back out to the truck, fix it and send Dorian on his way back home. Then we would get down to the backpacking portion of the trip. Here are the men working on the car, well Dorian working on the car anyway:

Glen took a break to shoot a blow snake...ummm...well not really because that would be illegal, and he would never break a law. He just found that dead snake laying around out there.His plan is to use the skin to replace that hideous band on his hat. He was hoping for a rattle snake, but no such luck.

After a few hours of hiking around with Rebecca, dragging through bushes with Gile for a rabbit to shoot, and scratching around in the dirt with a stick, the men announced that the truck was not going to be fixed, and that it would need to be towed into St. George by the suburban. We spent the rest of the day slowly dragging the truck back out. We made multiple unplanned stops where everyone got out, walked around, had lunch, shot guns, and stood around talking, until Gile or Allen took a turn yelling at everyone to load back up again.

We stopped at the old school house, and this time Glen shot a little cottontail. He was showing me how to clean it when he discovered that it was full of worms. So no bunny for dinner after all.

Regardless we stood around out there for a while waiting for Glen to finish giving two very clean, well-groomed strangers a tour of the one room schoolhouse while Allen shot of a few rounds, and threw rocks until he realized that the strangers were going to start suspecting him of being some kind of vandal. Heaven only knows what they thought of us, with Allen out there throwing rocks and firing guns while Gile yelled at him about poaching and breaking the law, while Glen completely covered in a fine layer of dust, paraded them around the one room schoolhouse.

They must not have been too disturbed since they were nice enough to take that group shot I posted at the beginning. Here's the other one they took where we're all smiling since Glen had just pointed out that the woman's small dog was "having a problem," as it stood over to the side straining in a very odd constipated way. I think most people use the more traditional "say cheese" to get a good picture, but I guess that's just not how we roll:

After that we had only one more big stop when Allen had to unhook the truck and head back down the road to find Bill and Jake back fixing their second flat tire. We passed the guns around, stood around and talked until Allen got us all herded back into the car and well after dark we finally rolled into St. George. We dropped the truck off at a garage, stood around in the parking lot for a while, then went back to Aunt Betty's to get my car, drop off Dorian, and stand around and visit for a while. We finally decided to proceed to dinner at In-n-out and spend the night camped out at Gile's place in Toquerville.

It was late by the time we got to Toquerville, and we just threw down a tarp, rolled out our sleeping bags, and went to bed. Well that was after we spent a little bit of time trying to kick all the horse crap out of the way. We gave up at some point, it didn't really seem to smell all that much anyway, at least not until we laid down. We were laying there in a pile of horse crap while Bill asked Jake "well, how do you like camping on the rim of the Grand Canyon?" I'm guessing it's not quite what any of us had envisioned. The next morning I got a little better view, and you can see how it looks all muddy there at the top of the tarp...not mud.Glen made fun of me a little bit for sleeping with ear plugs in my ears to keep any bugs from getting in there. Nobody made fun of me the next morning for having ear plugs when it turned out that we were camped out next to a 4am rooster. I sort of heard him, I gather that everyone else did more than "sort of " hear him. The morning light also gave us a better view of where we were sleeping:

When I woke up Glen informed me that he'd checked with Gile and that there are no facilities on the property, just bushes. We pulled out and went to iHop for breakfast, and sat there talking until Allen tried to subtley suggest that we get going. His suggestion was met with some degree of confusion. So much for subtlety I guess.

Even though I've still never been backpacking, didn't get to camp on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and spent the night in a pile of horse manure, it was the best time I've had in a really long time, and I love that my family is just a little bit redneck.