Hiking the Black Dragon Canyon

We planned to use our last day in Green River, Utah, to go back to Arches, do our big shopping, and get ready to head out of town.  After driving to Arches and seeing that the line stretched all the way out to the main road (with two lanes of people waiting), we quickly modified that plan!  Totally didn't think Memorial weekend would mess with our plans since we got there early, but we were wrong!

After doing our shopping, we decided to hike Black Dragon Canyon instead.  It got great reviews and we were not disappointed!

Finding Black Dragon Canyon was tricky business!  Google Maps took us to the viewpoint instead of the trail, but Google redeemed itself by showing me to a site that gave good directions to this backroads site.  It's on BLM land, so you have to look for a cattle guard fence, open it, close it behind you, and then drive about 1/2 mile down winding sandy roads.  Had it not been for the Memorial weekend traffic of boon docking RV's at the entrance, with their ATV's and Jeeps, I may have thought we were in the wrong spot!  Nothing is marked out here, so we were trusting the instructions I found online.  

Another massive site visited.  The canyon walls were so beautiful!

"Break!"

Jackson doesn't hesitate to let everyone know when he's ready for a rest.  Lol.  There wasn't really any shade, but we did find this spot in an open cave, which was also home to some incredible petroglyphs!

SO AWESOME to find these!

SO FRUSTRATING to see graffiti over the top of them!  Thanks so much, Vida Gunnarson.

We crossed paths with a lot of ATV's, who had congregated at the cave on our way back.  It was like a mini rally, with a few dozen of them.  We also saw a lot of dirt bikes, and horse tracks in the sandy road.

Looks like stacks of books to me!

We really loved this hike.  Due to the holiday, it was just as busy as Arches had been when we visited, but most of the traffic had wheels, so they were only nearby for a minute.  I'm sure it's a lot quieter normally.

The next day, we loaded up and headed down the road, to our new home for a few weeks.  We've only been here for a few days, but so far no allergies and great weather!  Our two weeks in Green River were great.  We got a lot of school finished, and enjoyed the amazing sites so much.  I wish we hadn't all been so allergic to the area, though!  I told Jeff that we need to make an allergy map.  Ha ha.