We arrived to Canyonlands National Park via the most beautiful drive EVER! Honestly how have I never heard about this place before? I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, and it is quite GRAND, but imagine thousands of canyons everywhere you look! It’s unreal. Probably the best view from outside a visitor’s center I have seen at any national park.
As we were obtaining our back country camping permit the ranger casually asked for make and model of our vehicle.
We responded “Blue bird international”
Ranger- “oh buddy… color?”
Us- “ yellow… and green..”
Ranger- “What? You gotta be kidding me. I have to see that one. State?”
Us- “Georgia, it’s an old modified school bus.”
Ranger- “You made it from Georgia in a school bus? I’m impressed”
I feel we have had similar conversations all along this trip, each time it cracks us up as we remember that this trip is odd. We get very used to it. The bus is home now, nothing out of the ordinary, but apparently it is.
Our back country permit was for the Murphy trail in the Island of the Sky district. It was an 18-ish mile loop, no water. The trial started by taking us down a huge cliff ridge. It was 38 
switch-backs to get down it. The view was absolutely incredible. Breathtaking. Then the trail went along one of the canyons, it was a dry creek bed at the base on the canyon with really cool random plan life and rock formations that blew your mind. The weather was perfect, and we were in high spirits joking along the whole way. We decided to make a board game about our trip west. It will be similar to Candy land where there are different places you have to past to get to the end destination. Different events we had encountered will be the wild card, each of us being characters of play. Get pumped because we are gana make this and the next adventure trip we will play it all the time.
The trial then came out of the creek bed and hit this “road” that is just dirt and can only be driven on by all terrain vehicles with
4 wheel drive. This “rode” took us almost straight up to a huge mesa in the canyon. Honestly it was the steepest rode I had ever seen, making it up the crazy incline took a lot of effort and group motivation but the view at the top made it all worth it. We collapsed on the warm rocks in the sun overlooking all the canyons below. It was the best time to ponder life. Ponder how all this came to be, how we came to be, I got very deep for a while.
We continued on the trial which traversed this mesa. There are no plant life over 12 inches tall in canyon land. Th
erefore the views are wide open on top of mesas or ridges it feels like you are walking on top of the world. After a few miles more we left the trail to find some place to camp for the night. The rules there are that you are supposed to camp far 
enough off the trail so that others on the trail are not disturbed by your tents. Apparently tents can ruien a hike for someone. But that is easier said than done in canyon lands because like I said there is nothing to block your view. So we had to walk quite a way to find a ridge and some boulders we could “hide” behind. The wind was starting to pick up so we set our tents next to a large bolder for some protection. We cooked over on the edge of the Mesa over looking canyons and a river than ran through the park about a couple thousand feet below. Awesome? Yes. We played our favorite game of New Mexican Pictionary while sipping Hot Chocolate & peppermint schnapps and whine on that cliff face for hours while we watched the most beautiful sun set. It was quite and evening.
That night a huge storm came through. Lots of rain and extreme wind gusts through out most the night, it was also the night that Sean had decided to go without a tent and sleep under the stars. Somehow he stayed the whole night out there while I stayed quite warm and dry in my new tent.
Morning was beautiful, breakfast back out on the cliff and a great game of Frisbee while we packed our stuff up. It was quite the hike back out of the canyons. Those 38 were much harder going up than coming down. And a couple small rain storms came through while we hiked. But Chris was teaching me Spanish while we hiked and it didn’t bother us one bit. We made it back to the bus in good time and headed back to Moab with the intention of going rock climbing that day.
That was the intention, the only problem was the constant thunderstorms coming in every hour for 20 min. the rock was soaked, and it wasn’t safe being on a cliff in all that lightning. So plan B consisted of parking in the McDonalds parking lot, meeting up with 2 of Sean’s friends from 
camp- Nick and Kenny, and playing board games in the bus. It was fun. It was Andrew’s and Alex’s last time on the bus as we had to get them to the Salt Lake City airport by 10 am the next morning. Later that evening we decided to start the 7 hour drive to SLC and camp somewhere just outside of SLC. I volunteered to drive, it was dark and there was a steep pass and no one was quite sure where we were staying that night. But we did find a National Forest around midnight, and there was space and the stars were divine. We climbed up on top of the bus and laid there chatting late into the night while we gazed up at the incredible night sky.
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