Grand Gulch Day 2

We woke up that morning refreshed, but not too eager to put our packs back on!  The boys had explored around our campsite the night before and found (and climbed up to) another ancient ruin.  There are many more ruins not listed on the map.  The rest of us were none to eager to explore it the night before, but come Tuesday morning after breakfast, we all went up to check out the cool ruins.

 Without our packs on, we felt like we could fly!  There was a lot of sketchy scrambling up steep inclines on this trip.  Not Ben and I's favorite thing for the kids, but how else can you explore cool things?!

 I loved this one!  So neat!

 Then it was back to putting our packs on and heading out on the trail.  The trails I should say - plural.  There were so many trails and not one sign ever.  It was crazy.  Thankfully the boys are not as directionally-dumb as I am.

 We crossed the washes many, many times each day - which meant you go down one side, and then up a usually pretty steep incline.  Again, with our packs, it felt very hard!  I think we probably crossed a wash over 100 times in our four days of hiking!

 What is this picture?  A sweet brother getting burrs out of his sister's hair?!  Sure, but that "sweet" brother was the one who threw them at his sister - hoping she'd catch the clump of burrs instead of landing them in her hair . . .

 The "Green Mask" was one of our destinations for Tuesday.  A pretty cool pictograph!  I guess the archaeologists found a real mask that looked very similar to the picture at this site as well.

Water was a tricky thing in the Grand Gulch - as there are no reliable sources.  Luckily we saw the water report at the ranger station and knew the canyons and areas were water could be found.  They were usually not obvious and off-trail a bit.  The sources were also not lovely mountain streams, but more like puddles - some larger than others, and some nastier than others.  Luckily one of Ben's friends who was familiar with the area told us to get some Propel packets and that saved us!  Grape water never tasted so yummy.

 Ha, I can't believe this is the only picture I got of this area!  This was another ruin site not mentioned on the map, but very cool.  Most of these ruins were so far up the rock wall that it was unreachable.  But we did like this ancient "Y" on the mountain.  :)

 Break-time!  We were getting closer to our final destination . . .

 Our final destination for the day - Split Level Ruin.  Another very cool site!

 Ben thought this had more of a "modern" look to it.  :)

 We backpacked 6 miles that day - another full day and we were all again exhausted, but in a way that feels so good, too.  This was our campsite for the night.  It was cold that night and Ben and I didn't sleep as well as we had the other two night.  But for camping -  I couldn't complain!