It all started very innocently, a beautiful sunny day of hiking around Antelope Island watching the buffalo graze…and then it started!
The wind was the beginning. Unpredicted 30 mph relentless cold wind that blew tents over and would not even give us a break to drop the tent and put up our emergency ground tent (the family next to us finally dropped their tent and made for a motel in town and the guys down the way dropped both their tents and crammedinto a tiny RV). Hours and hours of 30 mph wind with hours and hours of sitting inside holding the tent poles up, hoping we didn’t fly to Kansas or flop over. Thank goodness Darrin had devised our new anti-wind, keep the heat in, elastics. The night was long, sleepless, and nerve wracking …but we came out the other side with absolutely no damage of any kind thanks to Darrin’s amazingly designed tent! Phewwww!
The next morning dawned bright and cheery, if a bit cold. Our time at Antelope Island was at an end, so we wandered down a back road to Maple Canyon, a well known rock climbing place. There were no spots available at the tiny canyon campground, so after consulting a group of local hunters, up the canyon we went to 7,600 ft, snow on the ground and a beautiful aspen grove. We made dinner and snuggled in to a night that dipped to 25 degrees. We were toasty warm all snuggled under our layers of down with our new propane heater blasting (Luckily, I said we should buy it even though Darrin didn’t want to 😎!)
The next morning was quite cool and crisp with snow in the forecast, so we packed up and headed further up the canyon to the ridge we were told was a nice drive…2 hours later, a bazillion switchbacks, a few hairy go arounds with vehicles going the other way, and lots of rocks and drop offs, we made it back down to the valley floor. We cleaned out our shorts, decided it was a grand adventure…the Wee Rover did awesome…and continued on.
