Maple Canyon

Kennedy had wanted to go camping lately really bad. I don't have school on Monday and I'm all caught up on my homework, so I decided that this weekend we could go on an overnighter. I told Kennedy and Nicole more than a week ago that we should go and everyone seemed to enjoy the idea. But when the day came, Kennedy decided that she was going to stay home because her mother was having a baby shower for her new baby boy Ethan. Cole and I went any way.

We were going to go to the San Rafael Swell, but as we were climbing Fairview Canyon to cross over the mountains between Ephraim and Castledale, the Subaru over heated and the radiator broke. We turned around and cooled the car down as we coasted down the canyon back to Fairview.

Once in town, I got some radiator stop leak and bought some more coolant. (all the local mechanic shops were closed) Surprisingly, the radiator stop leak worked, so we headed back up Fairview Canyon, but about 1 mile up we started overheating again, but now the radiator wasn't leaking. We drove back down and asked one of the locals if there was a place to camp that was close by that didn't require us to climb up over the mountain. They said there was a really cool place just west of Moroni called Maple Canyon that was only a small climb.

We head off and sure enough Maple Canyon was awesome! The fall colors were amazing. The Subaru stayed within temp range just long enough to make it to the first campsite and than overheated.

The canyon walls were really neat. It almost looked like someone had cemented these giant cliffs with cobble stones. I don't know how well you can see in the pictures, but the cliff walls were made of small stones with the biggest stones being about a foot in diameter.

Another interesting thing was

these HUGE nests of caterpillars that looked like big spider webs. The were everywhere. While we were making breakfast, the caterpillars kept falling from the trees on to us. They were really fuzzy and cute and because Nicole missed Toby, she took a liking to them. Nicole found one caterpillar, I guess they are called Wholly Bears, that was black and orange and really fuzzy. She really liked that one.

Even though we missed Kennedy dearly, we still had a great time. It is nice to go and enjoy being outdoors from time to time.