Utah - Road trip

Today I have only one short hike planned for the morning, so we start towards Black Dragon Canyon, about 14 miles out of Green River. It's a bit off the beaten path but we like adventures like this. We park about 100 yards away from the entrance, and before we know it we are inside the canyon.

Mikey is in rare form today, alternating his pace between a snail and a sloth, talking back, arguing, and doing everything in his power to stay away from the trail. He complains about hiking yet he choses the most difficult paths, usually those that involve climbing. I am really irritated by this, and also by the fact that I can't find the pictographs. All the articles said they are easy to spot, at the entrance of the canyon, yet I can't see them. We end up hiking about .75 miles inside the canyon and I only find three figures, but not the black dragon the canyon is named after.

I know I missed it so maybe we'll find it on the way back. In the meantime Mikey busies himself with a balancing rock sculpture which he wants to finish, so I take the time to breathe.

The canyon is impressive, very rough terrain, lots of rocks washed through over the years, its walls over 100 feet high, and this makes me feel so small, it's just Mikey and I in here, two little people alone in this wilderness. I calm down, and so does Mikey, we make peace and I hand him the camera since he wants to be a photographer now, and then we head back.

Mikey  is excited about the prospect of lunch, and I am hoping to still find those pictographs. No luck with that for me, but we find some other interesting works of art belonging to the canyon itself, we name them "The Ram Skull" and "The Old Man of the Canyon". All in all we spend almost 2 hours here.

We head back to Green River for lunch at a local café. The food is good, the waitress friendly, I load up on coffee and then we're on the road. We drive through San Rafael Swell and we take the time to stop at all the view points because, let's face it, that's as close as we will get to the true thing. Not that I am brave enough to even venture there. It is absolutely phenomenal, you can see the forces of uplift and erosion at work, and wonder how did people even survive in this environment, but they did. Apparently it was a great hiding place for the outlaws of the 1800s, and I can understand why.

When we leave San Rafael Swell the road becomes less interesting; I drive west at 80 mph while Mikey sleeps, so I am alone with my thoughts. This morning was rough, and I feel that it drove an edge between Mikey and I. I do what parents do, examining and dissecting our interactions, trying to put them in a context, figure out what went wrong, what caused it, and what the heck I can do so we don't go through it again tomorrow. One thing I noticed is that the boy barely eats two bites at breakfast, then as soon as we get on the road he starts asking for food, he's hungry, he does not want to hike, and he complains a lot. Usually he gets better after lunch, so maybe we can eat an early lunch for the rest of our trip. We need to work on listening and impulse control, and me on being calmer with him. I was impatient today because I knew, as soon as we got to the canyon, that I'll have to scratch off some other things I wanted to do in the afternoon. I know that I am pushing it and to him it does not matter where we go as long as he has fun and we are calm and happy together; what he will remember most about today will probably be the rock climbing and the rock balancing, not the pictographs that we did not see or the canyon itself. I am not taking this trip just for him, but also for me, because sometimes I think I hear the faint "tick tock" of time and I want to do what I want to do before the sound becomes too loud. And I want to teach him that too, to have big dreams and go after them. To not be afraid. To push himself. The road is long and my thoughts heavy. Another storm rolls through.

But then Mikey wakes up; he's in good spirits and I answer all his 759 "what if" questions until we get to the hotel.
Here, the usual deal: pool, hot tub, dinner. and then a little hike down to the Virgin River in the soft light of the sunset. Tomorrow is another day, and we'll do better.