a new hiking champion

rewind back to the first of october.

i worked a day in escalante; so we decided as a family we would do a bit of hiking.

mary is really champion when it comes to hiking.

when we first moved back to utah we purchased a toddler hiking pack on ksl.

dale took her first to coyote gulch while I worked and then we took her to what we thought were peekaboo and scary canyons.

which come to find out, after hiking forever, we were in a completely different canyon and had almost gotten lost.

in said canyon we saw about 4 tarantulas and this mama about wet her pants every time.

after we escaped tarantula infested canyon we did find peekaboo.

there were about 8 people surrounding the entrance.

to start the hike you have to climb up a small cliff area.

we had the whole slew of them telling us they wouldn’t do it with a kid- so we didn’t do it, but we probably could have.

so upon these strangers advice we headed over to scary canyon.

now scary is magnificent- a nightmare to anyone claustrophobic.

i’m not real claustrophobic but there was a time or two i shut down a little internally and pondered heading back out.

such small spaces are prime locations for toddler travel.

we ditched the back; dale hid it in some bush by the entrance of the hike and we let mares try out her canyoneering abilities.

teeny champion.

she ran through that baby like it was nothing.

there were a few spots where we had to assist her abilities, but she pretty much did the whole hike by herself.

 i’m going to be bold in assuming she’s the youngest (at not even 2) to ever hike that canyon.

a guinness canyoneering world record….  (ok maybe that’s taking it a little too far).

anywho it was solid day of slot canyon hiking.

on our way to pine valley we had another exciting experience.

A flat tire-

by Bryce canyon

with no tire stores open

and a hotel room for $250…

then a kind man helped us put the donut on

then my panguitch mother trudy just happened to have a friend that owns a tire shop in panguitch that was willing to help us out.

so we bypassed the $250 hotel room

got our tire fixed

and arrived at pine valley for a bit of r&r.

it was one crazy day in southern Utah for our little trio.

thanks to the kindness of strangers we made it out successfully.

happy crazy adventuring ya’ll