Monthly Archives: November 2019

8th Annual Hassey “Goat Vacation – Utah: Day 11 Continued

On the return trip, Sputnik informed us that he was feeling left out of the packgoat experience. He was right. I pulled the pack off Finn and let Sputnik carry it back. Proud goat!

It was hard going in the canyon bottom. That soft sand was brutal on tired calf muscles.

It doesn’t matter how tired you are or how late it is… there’s always time for a goofy photoshoot! Phil discovered a pile of bleached bones and…

“Water! Water!” 

I remembered this grand pedestal from our last trip. Phil stood up there and made muscle poses with yearling Finn.
But was the rock still sturdy enough for the two of them? Finn’s a little bigger these days (and Phil might be too)! 

Satisfied that the rock was sturdy, off came the shirt. Finn eagerly bounded onto the rock at Phil’s call and gave us his most magnificent pose.

I think we need a different kind of NAPgA Calendar next year…

How Sputnik felt about the whole thing:

And now it’s my turn to show off. Remember the big stone beehive we passed in the morning? Well it was still beckoning to me when we passed in the late afternoon. Sometimes discretion feels like the cowardly part of valor. 

It looked steep but doable. It was steeper than it looked.

They were not invited, but the goats had to follow me nonetheless. As always, goats make a steep ascent look easy-peasy.

About here my nerve almost failed me. It was a looong way to the bottom and my boots were slipping. So I took them off.

Barefootin’ it!

Whew! I made it! I wasn’t sure I wanted to look down. I was sitting on a very narrow perch with a very steep drop on three sides. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to climb down. Gravity can sometimes be too helpful in these cases, and I possess a lot more gravitational pull than I once did.

The goats wondered what the big deal was about. 

And at the day’s end, Sputnik finally mastered the bottle of Gatorade! Although he did dribble enough to earn himself the title of “Bluebeard.”

8th Annual Hassey “Goat Vacation” – Utah: Day 11

Get ready for WAY too many photos! It was our last day and we wanted to go somewhere awesome. We remembered Bighorn Canyon from our trip in 2015 and we wanted to return with goats that could go further than old Cuzco had been able to. The patterns, swirls, and colors in this canyon are incredible and it’s hard not to take photos of everything.

We passed the big stone beehives which I remembered from our previous trip. I longed to climb this hill of stone and take a closer look at the nifty little hoodoo at the top, but it was very steep and I chickened out this time just like I did in 2015.

Still, this is such an enticing little cherry on top!

We hiked past Bighorn Canyon to see some sights further along the wash. I love this bacon rock!

We discovered some perfect little seats in the rock wall. This one even looks like it has a person icon in the background.

The goats checked out the other cubbies and nibbled the cobwebs growing along the sides. I’m not sure why goats like to eat cobwebs.

“Finn, stop photo-bombing!”

An indentation in the rock looked like an enormous sarcophagus. When I stood back far enough to capture the whole thing the photo didn’t come out good, so I took a close-up of Phil playing dead and got the magnificent swirls in the stone instead of the coffin shape.

I climbed up this swirly rock and found a really nice pothole up there. It was dry and looked like it would be easy to get stuck in it if you were dumb enough to climb into it. Thankfully me and the goats weren’t dumb enough to climb into it.

Sputnik recovered nicely from his Death Hollow trek and was climbing and jumping all over the place.

Finn didn’t want to jump down the easy way like Sputnik did… No, he had to show off by climbing as far as he could along an impossibly narrow ledge a few feet above the canyon floor.

Last time we were here there was a shallow creek in the riverbed, but it was almost bone dry this time and the last puddles soon ran out. The goats were without water. Finn watched Phil guzzle a Gatorade and tried to beg some off him. But Finn’s lips couldn’t quite work the bottle without spilling most of the drink. So I cracked open a Gatorade for Finn and poured it into an empty water bottle. His clever lips soon worked out the nipple and he gulped down every last drop.

Goatorade… er Gatorade lipstick–it’s all the rage.

Sputnik wasn’t so interested in the Gatorade but he was happy to split an apple with Finn. Actually, he wasn’t happy to split the apple. He wanted it all for himself. Sputnik quickly gobbled down his own half and then licked the piece that was still hanging out of Finn’s mouth. Finn immediately spit it out and Sputnik wolfed it down.

Into Bighorn Canyon at last.

“Is that bacon?!?”

Sputnik the Bacon King.

Into the Baconverse!

Yellow rock soon appeared beyond the swirling pink and red.

Mummy head.

Looks like the surface of Jupiter.

We decided to drop down into the slot canyon for a while. Sand made the going pretty tough compared to the slickrock above.

Eventually we encountered a rock obstruction that Finn couldn’t pass with his pack on. I scouted ahead for a bit and found more blockages further up and decided it wasn’t worth the bother of carrying his packs. The view up top was much prettier and the hiking easier anyway.

Sputnik: Sandstone Warrior.

Check out that yellow! Just above Finn’s nose you can see some holes in the rock that looked like part of a Moqui ladder but I believe it was just a couple of natural indentations.

Diving boards!

Mini bacon burger?

Stay tuned! There’s more of Bighorn Canyon coming up!