One summer vacation is not enough, norms of our society be damned. One of my first orders of business this week is to go into my annual negotiating session and get an increased salary and a guarantee of more vacation days in the future. Or else.

Because vacations are my friend. I get itchy. I like the ritual of traveling almost as much as the places themselves, be they new and unknown or old and still new. It creates local inertia within the enterprise, which is good.

What is more problematic is the inability to actually rest, which has plagued me (and M!) repeatedly on past trips. I don’t find it easy to kick back and enjoy the scenery when I’ve got energy to expend. This trip was different, and I may have found a solution.

The KMC kicked my ass, even if I didn’t finish. I put in a focused effort, and if I had been strong enough to keep going after I reeled in and passed Dara and Troy after the Rainbow (and if Fred had kept making wrong turns) I would’ve ended the day with a finish and third place. A moot point, of course, but I was feeling burnt hard when I made it to the store. Ergo, recovery time on vacation. The result? Peace.

And riding.

Sunday and Monday were off, socializing, swimming, eating, hanging out. By Monday evening I hatched a plan to get out, east from Cedar to Red Canyon and Thunder Mountain, one of the best trails in the universe.

This is the initial gravel road after you climb the nice paved bike path through the canyon.

The gravel ends in a few miles at a trailhead, and off you go through the high desert pines.

You’ll end up behind the bump on the horizon. At which point the views open further, the trail points down, and the fun begins to overflow.

Looking back east on one of the initial, only moderately so-fun-it-should-be-illegal sections. The highly s-f-i-s-b-i sections get no pics, too much fun to stop.

On the way back, we stopped and checked out Cascade Falls, the source of the Virgin River’s North Fork (aka, The Narrows). It comes out of this hole. A very idiosyncratic and innocuous start to what lies below.

M as tree. First in a series. Consult her blog.

On the way “home” we debated the eternal, banal question of outdoor junkies: what to do tomorrow? At times it reminds me too much of high school in small-town Ohio (“Let’s smoke shrooms and go kayak on the lake!” “But it’s 11pm!” “Got a better idea?”).

We decided to hike the Narrows, rather the repeat a canyon we’d done before, which meant securing a permit and a space on a shuttle van. Only space on the shuttle van is for the 0930, not recommended for day hikers. “Oh, we’re intimately familiar with hiking the Narrows in the dark.”

M told me this did not inspire confidence in the lady who sold us the reservation.

We load up with two other pairs, both backpackers, and after an 80 minute ride with the worst diver I’ve ever ridden with, we were off. The first miles are dirt road through a ranch being subdivided for more vacation homes. Hot, dusty, not so interesting. Eventually the trail starts along the stream, you get your feet wet, and after several hours the fun starts to build.

We made it to the confluence with Deep Creek in reasonable order, still watching our numbers w/r/t the maps splits for a 12 hours pace. We didn’t want that long of a day. At this point we were I believe an hour or more ahead on five, or 20% faster.

In spite of the vast increase in gawking, picture taking, and Pringle eating (gotta fill all that room in the pack), our margins only got better.

We like the Columbine. M’s enhanced my botany quite a bit this year.

We both have strong ankles, good balance (years of hiking and ballet, respectively), and a reasonable amount of experience with he boulder hiking and cobbled wades that make up the meat of the Narrows. We passed a few backpacking parties who demonstrated the conventional wisdom that pasty and untraining vacationers carry too much on their overnights and get eaten alive. The folks you see limping off the bus at the visitor center.

Not us. M told me, while taking the upteenth food break (at the mouth of Orderville), that she secretly hoped to break 8 hours. We were at 6:30ish elapsed. I asked her if she wanted to focus.

She did.

I like having a wife who is, on occasion, a badass.

We were two happy people on the bus in 7:58, though not to say that I wasn’t looking forward to sandals, salad, and pizza. The Pizza & Noodle was swamped, but we got our food quite fast. Still one of the best game’s in town.

Thursday was the solstice, and tradition called for a celebratory expedition. Fortunately both Ariel and Phillip, whose apartment we had been enjoying, rallied and got off work for the occasion. We spent the fall equinox with them, pulling an epic 13+ hour day in Kolob. The stage was set.

Phillip’s a “non-traditional” (read: reformed outdoor, truck-living, guiding bum) biology student with a summer gig counting Owls and Goshawks for the FS. So he had the local knowledge about some high meadows in the Tushar Mountains, the biggest range you’ve never heard of.

Rolling into camp after a slow morning and early-afternoon of packing and driving, I had to dust off with a bike ride. Spinning up the road, starting from our camp at 9.8k, crossing snowmelt streams, with plenty of O2 breaks to enjoy the scenery.

Eventually I ducked the gate, and got above treeline for the first time this year, before bombing back down, finding some fun singletrack to descend part of the way to camp.

Beer’s down there somewhere!

It’s like Crested Butte, but without the people and trail networks. Worth exploration some summer.

Once back, rest was not to be had. Gotta have a fire on the longest day, and that means using proper safety techniques and footwear with the pulaski.

Chopping woods’ fun when you don’t have to do it.

Ariel only brought one chair, and she and Phillip had a small fight over who got the first turn.

I don’t recall who won cuz I was laughing too much.

Lots of beer was drunk, excellent burritos consumed, pine burnt, and I may have stayed up until a whopping 11 pm. The day after we went for a hike and did some fly fishing, and more beer drinking. I was getting the hang of this “vacation” thing.

M hid out and tried to take a nap. but society called.

Eventually good things must come to an end, and by Saturday we were reassembled and back on the road. Obvious hideout before the haul home? Back where we started.

The infamous store, the infamous bench. 7 days and 3 hours before I was laying here trying to not puke or moan too loudly as the tourists walked by.

On the later occasion I just got an ice cream sandwich.

It had been while since we visited the North Rim lodge, so some sight seeing and beer drinking was in order on their superb back porch.

M got Martha Graham on some fossil-encrusted limestone. Note the San Francisco peaks in the distance.

We camped at a typically excellent Kaibab spot that evening. I got up early and rode 213 to the AZT, south through Tater Hollow (the Biig valley), to the pavement, and back to the car before M got out of bed. Already looking forward to KMC ’08.

And now, the heat of home and a mound of grading seems tolerable, if only just.