Hutchison Adventure (caution...a bit lengthy)

So it was off on our annual backpacking trip last week. We went to the four corners area and backpacked through Grand Gulch Canynon. It's an awesome caynon. It's famous for all of its Indian ruins. They are the Anasazi and Pueblo Indian ruins and they are cool! This was one of the harder hikes that we have done. We went for 5 days and each morning we loaded up our packs and hiked to a new camp site. Overall it was about at 22 mile hike. I live for this stuff so I'm totally into the outdoors and like always...if I do something I'm hard core.

This year Braxton (my nephew) came with us. It was his first backpacking trip ever and boy did he start it out with a bang. He did really good though, especially dealing with us Hutchisons. For those of you who don't know we are teasers and it's relentless. So Braxton got a good deal of hazing from us...we like to say "if you don't have tough skins, you'll never survive around us" Also, there's Tracy and I being hard core!

Here's a few of the pictures of us exploring the ruins. If you want to see more detail just click on the picture. It was so much fun. Most of the dwellings were up on cliff faces in an overhang so we would drop our packs and hike/climb to them.

If you can see in this picture the ruin is at the bottom of that cliff...You can see little windows and stuff. Just to give you an idea of how high up they were.

There was a lot of pantings and carvings on the walls. I love the little rams or antelope or whatever they are....They had handprints everywhere and some of there were tiny tiny. Were were hiking along the river floor and when the moon came up over the cliffs its was awesome. That picture doesn't do it justice but you get the idea.

This first picture was named "Intertwinding Souls" (named by Tracy) then there is tracy climbing up this old old tree....next, is a picture of my dad climbing up a "ladder" made in that crack to get to the second level of the ruin.

Above is a picture of a ruin called "split level" It is one of the more intact ruins. Very cool! Then there is a picture of me and braxton in front of a turkey pen...also cool. My uncle Randy and his son Jake came on this adventure with us and I'm so glad they did. Jake is a crack up. Each hike he has a token saying and this year it was "You know what I do when (fill in the blank with any situation)..I suck it up!" we laughed for hours over this and had a completion to see who could come up with the best "suck it up" phrase...I believe I won because one night Tracy and I were giggling in our tent and Jake said "you're so noisy...I'm trying to sleep" and of course I immediately said "You know what I do when it's noisy and I'm trying to go to sleep....I suck it!" Everyone laughed and laughed...it was hillarious! Thanks for coming Jake! The last picture is of our hike out...it was straight rock climbing. We were bouldering over all sorts of stuff. We kind of lost the trail and after about an hour of rock climbing we found it again and it was smooth sailing.

After we survived our hike we stoped in Moab and when to the Posion Spider to take a quick shower before we made the long drive home. They give you a token and you have exactly 2 1/2 minutes to shower. There was quite the line and some honery bikers behind us....Tracy and I went in together to optimize our time (don't get any ideas). I showered and then got dressed while Tracy showered. We even got cheers coming out of the door we were so quick!

After our shower we went to a place called Zak's. It's a pizza joint that is the local hangout for all the bikers (when I say bikers I mean moutain bikers). My uncle was a little mad that they turned a perfectly good kanou into the salad bar...I personally thought it was awesome. We filled our bellies and then headed home.

I had an awesome time. I love backpacking. The pack isn't even heavy (only 40 lbs or so). I could totally be a park ranger! Well, after the trip we christened my car to commemorate the adventure.