Dead Horse Point State Park was really fun (despite its name), but I wish I could have switched our four nights staying there with two and stayed four nights at Needles Outpost instead. Needles is a branch of Canyonlands National Park, a park that we had visited recently during our stay at Dead Horse Point. We had visited Island in the Sky, but Needles was really different. Our campground, Needles outpost, was a privately owned little place right next to a huge wall of rock. There were zero rules against climbing it.
One thing that I miss about home while on the trip is my rock climbing lessons each Monday. At Dead Horse Point, we visited Arches National Park and got to climb a bit, but then Mama said it made her to scared and we had to stop. But here we could climb. We weren’t allowed to right away because Mama and Daddy were going to look at other campsites, and they wanted to be able to watch us while we climbed. (They were looking at other campsites because many were unoccupied and not reserved, and we were allowed to take our pick. We ended up not switching, and I’m glad, because ours was right next to the rocks.) When they came back, Miriam and I split a can of root beer (warm, of course, but still good) and drank it while sitting in a low nook in the rocks. As soon as we were finished, I wasted no more time in finding a place where I could climb higher. The rock was smooth and had hardly had any handholds or footholds, but it was slanted enough to be climbable. Still, I tried several places and couldn’t manage to climb up. Actually, I probably could have, but I didn’t want to try without a mat. Sorry- my parents wouldn’t have wanted me to.
I eventually found a perfect place for climbing. There were these parts in the rock that weren’t smooth, and although they hardly stuck out, I decided they counted as handholds. I found the perfect place to step on, sort of shimmied to the side, and with some trial and error, found a way to climb. After a bit of climbing, I found a bit of a ledge that I could sit on to prepare for the next climb. Mama asked me not to go any higher. When my break was done and I started climbing again, I did go higher, but just a bit! I had in sight a perfect place to sit- a little string of caves. I scooted sideways a bit, climbed some more and I was there. Now I didn’t even have to climb, because it had flattened out enough that I could literally just walk. I found a suitable cave and sat in it to enjoy the view.
After a few minutes of this, I decided to build something to commemorate my stay at this cave. (I began to refer to the cave as “my house”.) I built a stack of rocks that sort of resembled a person and named it Mel, then labeled him with his name made out of rocks. I had done something like this earlier in the trip at Monahans Sandhills State Park in Texas, where I built a sandman named Tex. (By “sandman” I mean that Tex was built like a snowman, just replace the snow with sand.) Miriam then called me down to look at her cave, which she called her “kitchen”. It was filled with these tiny holes in which she had stored plants as her “cooking materials”. I helped her gather some, then gathered some flowers for myself and stuck them in my pocket for the climb back up to “my house”. A small hole above the main cave was perfect for the flowers, so that’s where I put them.
At Dead Horse Point our nightly temperatures were about 0-5 degrees Celsius and my clothing layers were about 5-8 during that time, so Needles Outpost was a good change. Mama had told us previously that the night was going to be warm compared to our nights at Dead Horse Point- about ten degrees Celsius. I only had to wear a few layers to be comfortably warm as the night went by.
The next day Mama told us that she planned to go on a long hike in Needles to continue to prepare us for the Grand Canyon (which I will also post about soon). We brought two sandwiches per person, a few additional snacks and some brownies for desert. To me this seemed like a lot of food to bring, but it was made clear when I asked for exact distances at the beginning of the trail. Mama and I were a bit ahead, and quietly, so that nobody would hear, Mama told me that the trail was about twelve miles. I worked this out in my head.
1 mile = about 1.6 kilometers
12 miles x 1.6 = 19.2 kilometers
We were going on a hike that was almost 20 kilometers. I told Mama what I’d figured out and gave her my honest opinion that this would be better as a backpacking trail. Mama asked me not to tell Miriam how long it was. I didn’t, but if Miriam ended up finding out, she would not be happy.
Despite its length, the hike had some beautiful views. The particular section of Canyonlands was called needles because of jutting rock piles (the needles) which were striped red and yellow. When hiking, we would sometimes walk a bit up or down and the colour of rock would completely change- not gradually, but suddenly. We called it entering “Redland” or “Yellowland”. At the point in the hike where we were done and started hiking back, there were these long, thin cracks in the rocks that we could walk in and explore. Interesting rocks were everywhere, although to be honest I was getting a little tired of big red rocks after being in Utah so long. The only mistake was near the end of the hike when we thought we might have gone the wrong way. We hiked back for a while to check, only to realize that we hadn’t gone the wrong way. Because of that extra addition to our hike, we decided to just go back the way we came, because that was the shortest. We were successful, and celebrated at the end of the trail with some brownies. It was almost 5:00PM, but there would still be plenty of time for Miriam and I to climb. That was good, because I wanted to do some experimenting.
I climbed to the highest spot I could easily climb. This was just a level higher than “my house”, which I had already replaced the flowers of before doing this. I sat and enjoyed the view for a while, occasionally casting annoyed glances at the site of our earlier overlong hike. Then Miriam asked me to come and visit her “kitchen” again. It took awhile for me to figure out how to do it, but I eventually got down from the slightly higher level. From there it was easy- I’d figured out the previous day that I just needed to scoot down the wall with my back to it and the heels of my hands hanging onto whatever they could. I then went over to Miriam’s “kitchen”, where Miriam was waiting for me. She said she wanted to explore a particularly large cave that she’d heard another kid talking about. Unfortunately she was unable to climb up to it, but I could, and Miriam satisfied herself with a lower cave.
That evening we had been attempting to find a way for Miriam to visit my cave, but so far we had failed. I instead took up a camera to take some pictures of my cave, my spot for the flowers, and Mel the rock-pile-that-sort-of-resembled-a-person. I will include those at the bottom.
The night was warm again, and the big rock wall was still dry enough to climb the next day. Miriam and I went for one last climb, and I fixed up Mel to be there for whoever climbed next, though he will eventually be kicked over by somebody. Then we had to leave, but like I said, I wished we could have stayed longer. I hoped we would get another rock climbing chance on the trip (which we did later, but I personally don’t plan on writing about it- maybe someone else will. I do know what I will write about next- I will give a full account of the Grand Canyon!
Enjoy the pictures!
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