Labor Day Weekends

Memorable Monday Moments
National Park Series # 6A

Part of the tradition of our yearly national park camping trips is to hike ALL of the trails. I'm not going to take the time to add up how many miles of trails there are in Capitol Reef, but it's more than can be hiked in one week. So, whenever we had a free weekend, we would continue to drive south and do some more. These pictures were taken in 1991 on Labor Day weekend.

"The Castle" Throwing rocks while waiting for the parents to be ready to start the hike.
Upper Muley Twist - showing the Waterpocket Fold
Finding a neat spot to take a rest

It's a good thing we had fun on those Saturday hikes, because on the way back to camp our car all of a sudden - and for no obvious reason - stopped. To make a long story short, the washboard dirt road had caused a safety bearing to pop loose and jam the carburetor cutting off the fuel supply. Fortunately, a ranch hand on his way home stopped to help and we were able to call AAA to come tow us the 40 miles to Hanksville - the nearest town. We spent the night in a dirty motel room (frogs jumped out when we opened the door) with no clean clothes and only a couple of diapers for the baby. (Fortunately, our food was all in the car so we didn't have to worry about that.) We spent several hours the next day in a dirty mechanics shop while they fixed the problem. Then we had to drive back down that same bumpy road to retrieve our tent and clothes. We were in no mood to stay in southern Utah any longer, so we drove home that night and spent Labor Day trying to recover from our "restful" mini vacation. (Oh, and on this trip I forgot the stove! That made fixing meals challenging - but since the menu was cold cereal, chicken noodle soup, and pork and beans from a can we survived.)

Fortunately, this year wasn't as exciting. To celebrate the "end of summer" we did some work around the house and then had a picnic, took a short "hike" (remember I can't call walking a bike trail hiking) and played tennis. Dad and Michelle were the winners!

We hope you all had a memorable Labor Day weekend!