We woke up on day 3 to the most epic views ever. With the sun rising over the canyons and zero other humans around, it was pretty much the most amazing hot chocolatey start to a day EVER.
We explored our campsite as long as we could, hiking the slick rock, taking a million pictures, and yelling at Cole when he got a little too adventurous jumping a huge gap. We even got our inflatable couch on a cliff picture, which I had been excited about the entire trip.
If we ever do this trip again, we'll try to spend two nights on the trail, because we wished we had a little more time at this camping spot. But we had a lot of ground to cover that day, so we eventually had to pack up and hit the road again.
We had another beautiful day with lots of car snacks and stops at overlooks.
Then we hit Hardscrabble and my anxiety levels ramped up significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY. There are a few sketchy parts on the rest of the trail, but nothing that made me too nervous. And then there was Hardscrabble. You are right next to rock on one side and a sheer dropoff of 17 million feet on the other side, with about 6 inches of room to play with. It is so steep, there are obstacles to climb over, and very little room to maneuver.
At one point I was literally sitting in my seat, buns clenched, praying we wouldn't all fall to our deaths, when Tukk announced, "I could really go for a sandwich right now."
How does he have ZERO anxiety? I guess I got his share.
Luckily Cole was an excellent driver and got us off that scary part with no problems.
We dropped back down by the river and stopped for a snack, then started making the last climb up and out of White Rim.
On our way up some bikers flagged us down because their friend was sick and they didn't think he'd be able to ride out of the canyon, so we gave one of them a ride to her car so she could drive back down to pick him up wherever they'd left him.
It was such a cool adventure! But we were definitely happy to get back to town, a hotel room with real beds, and a hot shower.
