We had to move sites today which put a bit of a wrench in our plans to do the morning ranger-led hike at Fiery Furnace. Brain fart. D'Oh. Bill asked the camphost if it would be okay for us to drop the trailer in the Visitor Center parking lot for the morning until we could come back and relocate to our new site. No problem. Sweet. I still wasn't feeling well but we had pre-paid for the hike and I really wanted to do it so I dragged myself out of bed and even with the trailer relo, we still made it to the Fiery Furnace parking lot/meeting area with 45 minutes to spare.
The ranger, Lauren, rolled in at 9:57. She gathered everyone's tickets and began the hike. The hike itself was kind of neat...
...but the program was a huge time suck. We are not "program" or "group hike" people. First, I don't care about the "billions of years ago" lectures. Second, a hike is only as fast as the slowest hiker. Usually, that's me, but in this case, it was the woman seen here.
She sat down on the tree that was being used as part of the lecture on how durable yet fragile the flora and fauna of the desert environment is. This made me chuckle...In my mind, I was running my own commentary... "The Utah Juniper is an extremely resilient tree that can withstand the most harsh desert environment. While it relies on its ability to cut off water supply to some of its roots and branches during dry spells to aid in the production of carbon dioxide processing via its leaves, it cannot withstand the abuse of the human butt. Sadly, this 300 year old tree perished the very next day". ;P
It took about 2 hours longer than necessary to do this 3 hour hike. We agreed that we would avoid ranger led or group hikes in the future.
Since the trailer was occupying prime RV and bus parking at Dead Horse Point's Visitor Center, we rushed back to get it and move to our new spot.
Afterwards, we drove into Canyonlands NP to get info at the visitor center and plan our time there. We stopped at a couple of overlooks and chilled on the rocks awhile before heading back "home".
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