Escalante - One more campout before school starts!

Paul and I planned to do a last of summer vacation campout the Mon-Wed. before I went back to school.  We were having a terrible time deciding where because wherever we checked around us the weather forecast was for rain.  We talked about Cedar Mountain, Beaver mountains and about over by Escalante.  In the end, the weather that looked the most promising was by Escalante, so we went over there and had a wonderful campout.  We were going to do a dispersed camp, but found that the Blue Spruce Campground (one of our favorites) was empty and we ended up having the whole place to ourselves with the bonuses of a bathroom and water.  

We started off our trip by driving over Cedar Mountain and stopping by a funny little café where Juge told us has great fries...and they were!  Then for lunch we stopped over by Bryce at the Johnson's family campsite to check out their new kitchen.  We had a nice picnic in their covered picnic area.  Then we decided to check out a road over by Pine Lake and John's Valley campgrounds near Bryce.  It ended up being a beautiful drive to an awesome overlook near Powell Point.  There were bristle cone pines/limber pines at the overlook.  Such a beautiful drive!  Then we had to get going to our campsite...another beautiful drive.  We had an easy dinner and then enjoyed an evening hike up the stream.  It was perfect cool/cloudy weather.  

The next day we drove over the mountain, stopping to enjoy Hell's Backbone and then drove down and hiked to Escalante Natural Bridge/some ruins and petroglyphs.  It was an amazing little hike with perfect weather. We hiked quite a bit of it in the Escalante River on the way back.  Then we drove over to Boulder and ate our lunch at the church's outdoor picnic area there.  Next we drove the Burr Trail to the Singing Canyon.  What awesome scenery that was and the canyon was really cool!  Then it was time to head back over the mountain to our camp to make a delicious beef stew/biscuits dinner.  

That night the rain finally came.  We had to zip up the tent in the middle of the night.  It was great to be safe and dry in the tent with the thunder and lightening and rain going pretty good outside.  Luckily I made my bathroom trip just before the storm started!  The next morning everything was so fresh and clean and beautiful.  We ate an easy breakfast and packed up and took some backroads home.  It was such a great, relaxing little vacation!  And we did it in our new truck which was so nice and comfortable!