Saturday

We got up around 6:30 to take down the Go trailer and eat breakfast. We started our hike around 7:30. On the way in there were some cool bugs all over. They were burrowing in the sand to get out of the heat for the day. 

As soon as we got down in the gulch, we dropped our packs and headed upstream to check out Jacob Hamblin Arch and then head upstream a bit further since the canyon is super pretty through there. 

We retraced our steps, picked up our packs, and started heading downstream. I ended up in the front for the most part, but we took it super easy and enjoyed the scenery. Swiss Cheese Falls had less water than it did when I did this before. 

I had a few placemarks for some of the pictographs and petroglyphs in the canyon. We stopped at a few. We hiked up to one without our packs and it was pretty cool to see them up close. There we also the remains of some cliff dwellings with lots of artifacts. 

Marci was super excited to check out the black lagoon. When we got up there, there was a big group with some guys doing some cliff jumping. We stayed and watched them jump, all the while thinking how crazy these guys are. Marci thought it would be fun to swim in it, which was fine until we saw what we thought were leeches. Yep, no thanks! A thunderstorm came through when we were leaving the lagoon and it made it windy but the temperature was super pleasant. 

We hiked down to Jug Handle/Cliff Arch and heated up water to make for dinner. It was only 4 o'clock, but we were getting hungry and it was sprinkling on us. We got our dinners hydrating and headed off to find a camp site. I had spotted a potential one upstream of the arch but we weren't sure if we wanted to camp there or not. We looked around for a bit and then decided we wanted to try that one. It was a winner. We had some good trees for hammocks and room for out tents. We didn't see a single person while we were at that spot. We set up camp and then played cards for the evening in the tent. Ondy slept in her hammock while the rest of us were in the tents. 

Sunday

We took the morning slow. We mostly packed up our stuff but left the tents up so we could leave our stuff at camp until later. We packed water and lunch in Marci's pack and we took turns during our hike so no one carried everything the whole time. 

We headed down canyon to continue our hike. We saw lots of waterfalls and I even checked one out with my head but decided it was still too cold to get all the way wet. 

By the time it started warming up, it was a ton of fun playing in the water. 

We hiked out the bottom of Coyote Gulch and then headed up the Escalante River to check out Stephen's Arch. Marci had found a description of how to get to the arch. Ondy and Becca were a little nervous since it looks like you are on a sheer cliff for the hike when looking from the river. We started up with the understanding that Ondy might turn back if it looked too sketchy where we were up on the cliff band. It definitely looked worse from below than it actually was. 

We enjoyed our lunch in the arch before reversing our hike to get back to camp. I kept up a conversation with Ondy to keep her distracted from the fact we were very high up. We did see a really cool lizard when we were hiking back. It even did a little dance for us. 

We hiked back up canyon and I made a goal with myself to stand under every waterfall on the way back. Partially to just enjoy the cooling effect of the water and partially just to be goofy. We hiked back to camp, packed up, and put on a good pace so we could make it back to Jacob Hamblin for the evening. We still took a few pictures on the way back. The natural bridge was pretty with the light coming though it in the evening. 

We found a great camping spot directly upstream of the arch that was perfect for setting up our hammocks. After setting up camp, we checked out the sand art previous campers had left. They were pretty impressive. We also chatted with a guy who was on a solo trip until he met up with his wife in California. He was the only other party camping close to the arch that evening. Ondy and I both slept in our hammocks while Becca and Marci shared the tent. We got to enjoy listening to the frogs all night. 

Monday

We took the morning slow and didn't really head out of the canyon until 9. 

We got to the car around 11 and then decided to head just down the road to check out dance hall rock. 

We made one last stop at Mossy Cave in Bryce Canyon before driving home.