Hikes – On Our Way To Washington

I established a hiking regimen for our 21-day drive to Issaquah, WA. Except for our 5-day stop at Hill AFB, UT, the remaining 6 stops were each for 3 days. My plan was to chill on the day we arrived, hike a minimum of 3 miles each morning thereafter (except for the day of departure). As a result, I took 16 hikes during our drive. Some were little more than walking neighborhood streets or along rural roads in order to get my exercise. I’ll only provide the basic details of those walks. But others were out in nature on spectacular trails, which popped up on my AllTrails app. The details and pictures of those were definitely worth sharing.

Olde Town Cotton Gin RV Park, Quanah, TX. Two flat road hikes for a total of 5.56 miles.

Clayton RV Park, Clayton, NM. Two flat city-street hikes for a total of 7.14 miles.

Silver Thread Basecamp, South Fork, CO. Two hikes around and on Lookout Mountain Loop (summit at 8,468′) for a total of 6.14 miles. The elevation change for the summit hike was 387′. The 0.3 mile summit climb was rated hard and dangerous in my opinion. A fall off several steep spots near the top would have been fatal. The rest of the trail was easy. The views from the top were beautiful.


OK RV Park, Moab, UT. Took two hikes. The first was 3.8 miles on the Cowboy Jacuzzi’s via Mill Creek Trail (yeah, weird name). The hike ran above 4,200′, and there was an elevation gain of 456′. The trail followed Mill Creek Canyon for half its length, then climbed out of the canyon and returned to the parking lot along the ridge. It was rated moderately difficult and required several easy (I didn’t get wet) creek crossings. About a half mile in, the creek and the trail split, and I was momentarily headed along the wrong fork. There I encountered a hiker headed out and asked her for help, but she readily admitted she “wasn’t good with directions.” Great – I used the AllTrails app to get back on track. MFI hiked several shorter trails in the vicinity of the parking lot while she waited and trekked up to meet me on my final descent. Who says she hates hiking? Well, she says!

The second hike was 5.7 miles out-and-back on the Grandstaff Trail. The trailhead was along the Colorado River north of Moab on UT 128. The trail started at over 3,900′ and had an elevation change of 837′. The route followed Grandstaff Canyon Creek into Grandstaff Canyon and turned back beneath the stunning “Morning Glory Bridge.”

Grandstaff was rated as moderately difficult; however, there were more than a dozen creek crossings (again I stayed dry), and despite following the trail tracker on my phone, I ended up in a number of precarious deadend situations, which required some hard climbing to recover. The problem was that the trail gets heavy traffic, and over time, multiple trail paths have developed on both sides of the creek. As a result, those who know the trail are able to complete it with minimum difficulty and fewer crossings, while those like me made it far more difficult than necessary out of unfamiliarity. That said, I saw a fair number of parents with young children in tow and seriously doubted their ability to complete the hike and stay dry, or both. Nonetheless, everyone was having fun. The “Morning Glory Bridge” spanned a point where the creek snaked down from a higher elevation and also included a natural stone arch. It was a gorgeous site as the pictures will attest, but can be even more spectacular if you’re there when the afternoon sun shines through the arch. For scale, the base of the arch is about 10′ wide and 20′ thick.


Hill AFB FamCamp, Hill AFB, UT. I was able to hike four trails during our Ogden, UT visit. The first was the 4-mile Centennial Park Trail on base with an elevation change of 69′. Given the name, I expected to see several static displays of former Hill aircraft, but the paved trail only circled several ponds, and sadly, there were no airplane displays. However, each morning I watched and heard F-16s taking off for daily missions. Gotta love the sounds of freedom!

The second hike was a 4.58 mile out-and-back called Kays Creek Parkway. It followed the creek as it flowed out of Hobbs Reservoir. It was an easy trail except for the steep 358′ elevation change getting up to the reservoir. We were here during a beautiful time of year, so I took pictures, which capture the colors.

This picture of today’s Great Salt Lake is but a mere remnant of Lake Bonneville, the largest paleolake (Pleistocene period) in the Great Basin Desert of western North America. Bonneville covered most of western Utah, as well as, parts of Idaho and Nevada. Because it sat in a hydrologically closed basin (no river outlet), it had multiple shorelines as water levels fluctuated due to weather and climate changes over 12,000 years. These varied shorelines formed the distinctive terraces now visible along the west side of the Wasatch Mountain Range, and play host to hundreds of trails. I hiked two of them.

The third hike was a 3.7 mile out-and-back section of the Farmington Upper Terrace Trail. The route was above 4,400′, had an elevation change of 883′, and was rated easy. The scenery was spectacular, but just how many cool pictures can you tolerate?

The last hike on this stop was a 3.5 mile section of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail: Fernwood Recreation Area to East Mountain Wilderness. This trail was above 4,800′, had an elevation change of 308′, and was also rated easy. The scenery was similar to that on hike 3, so I’m including some closeups of the Fall colors.


Mt Home RV Park, Mt Home ID. The two hikes here can only be described as unexpected and different, maybe even strange. On our way into town, I noticed a sign for Bruneau Dunes State Park, and since it contained a trail approaching the proper length, we drove there for hike 1 on the 2.3-mile Burneau Dunes Loop. The map on AllTrails showed the trail circled Dunes Lake above 2,200′ with an elevation change of 522′. I thought, “how hard can that be”? Well, turns out the answer was “damned hard.” The trail climbed several monstrous dunes (hence the park name) running along the entire east side of the lake, and of course doing it on sand made it all the more challenging. Despite the shorter distance and my being in great shape, the trail was physically exhausting. The videos below help bring this hiking experience to life.

The second hike was ten miles out of town on a 2.7 mile out-and-back trail called Teapot Dome. It was at an elevation of 3,600, climbed 971′, and was rated moderately difficult. The morning temperature was 20 degrees, by far the coldest we’d experienced all year. Strangely, the carcass of a cow greeted me where I started. The terrain was rugged with ankle-snapping, pock-marked flats and loose rocky slopes. Even using my AllTrails tracker, I had trouble following the rarely discernible path. The dome was a 10-15 feet high miniature mesa perched atop the mountain. I squeezed through a narrow access slot to reach the summit. There were great views from the dome.


Pilot RV Park, Stanfield, OR. My final two hikes. The first was called Oxbow Trail, starting in Riverfront Park and following an associated greenbelt along the west side of Hermiston, OR. The trail was an easy paved 4.02 mile loop at 400′ with an elevation change of 89′.

The second was a bike-worn 4.07 mile loop section of the 11.5-mile Echo Mountain Bike Trail located in the middle of nowhere. I enjoyed seeing a gorgeous, healthy looking coyote, when I came up over a hill and surprised both of us. He was focused on a meal and mostly ignored my presence before trotting off when his meal failed to pan out. I stumbled upon a very strange, eclectic trail totem and wondered why this rusted front end of a 1940’s Dodge pickup ended up along the trail.


Overall, I hiked 57.21 miles on 16 trails across 6 states during our 21 day drive from Carrollton, TX to Issaquah, WA. These hikes allowed us to more deeply appreciate the beautiful, changing scenery we experienced. As always, MFI dropped me off at the trailheads when needed and waited up to two hours before my return or picking me up. She busied herself mostly by reading books or knitting, but on occasion, she scoped out a morning coffee joint, enjoyed a cup, and brought one back for me. She really gets tickled when this search is successful. It even makes her squeak with joy. Yeah, she squeaks!

Male member of the BunMack team. Happy to be Ms Fix It's lovely assistant on past and future projects. Maybe I'll learn some skills along the way. 69 years old when this adventure began, with expectations to help family and friends with their projects, see great sights along the way, and enjoy our life together.

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