The Maze District is the southwest portion of Canyonlands National Park. To get there from Moab you either have to ford the Colorado River or drive 250 miles around the top of the park and down the other side. Smartly, we chose the second option, which included 70 miles or so of dirt road, wash outs and slickrock, which we cranked through in the dark. Actually, we didn't get all the way to the Maze District, being sidetracked on a little hike in Horseshoe Canyon where there are many Anasazi sites. The Anasazi are long gone, but their paintings remain. Very interesting seeing such old things made by people. They seemed to be a bit deformed though, if their pictures are an accurate representation of themselves. They had no arms or legs. But they did have a head, and I guess when it comes right down to it, a head is all you need, especially if it has a brain in it.

We continued our trek to the Maze, and upon our arrival at the Hans Flat ranger station, we discovered the unfortunate reality that all the permits for the Maze were taken! Doh!! But I must say that the rangers there were much more helpful than those in Moab. They helped us plan a canyoneering trip in Robber's Roost Canyon, which is on BLM land, thereby not subject to such limiting things as permits. Since we had two SUVs, we could park one at each end, and hike from one end to the other, a great advantage over those poor one vehicle groups! Ha! Robber's Roost Canyon is probably about 15 miles long, and it houses a wash that empties out into the Dirty Devil river (which, as you might well imagine, is quite dirty).

The canyon required a rappel to get into at the top, and at times was barely wide enough to walk through. It kept getting deeper, narrower, darker, narrower, deeper, etc. until it was as deep and narrow as something that's really deep and narrow, or possibly even deeper and narrower than that, depending on the deep narrow thing you decided to use for comparison. Sometimes we chose to take the "high road," stemming across the V-shaped canyon and bypassing some of the really deep narrow parts, but that was often scary because of the very deep, narrow parts below you, which you would end up firmly implanted in if you were to experience a disastrous failure of stemming power. We planned to do the whole thing in four days, but that was too long. We were out of the very narrow part by the end of the first day and found our beloved campsite underneath a small arc. Upon returning from my conversation with the Duke that evening, I saw a very large scorpion, which, though intriguing, seemed to cause a certain amount of fear to exhibit itself in us, and we made sure we zipped up our tents that night.

The next day was pretty lazy. We walked down the wash, and instead of getting deeper and narrower, the canyon began to get deeper and wider. We only went three miles or so before finding our beloved campsite up on a ledge of rock overlooking a very wide section of the canyon. It was very bright out at night; the moon was almost full. We ran around in circles in a dry whirlpool, and Forrest climbed up to a place where he said there were hordes of naked women and gold and diamonds, but I'm skeptical. The third day in Robber's Roost was probably the hottest day we had. The sun beat down unrelentingly on our heads and shoulders and inner ears if we turned our heads in the right way. The canyon became very wide and walking on the wash reminded me of the beach, except for the lack of water. It wasn't long, though, before we got into a zone of sloppy, gucky, ucky muck with horsetails and hobgoblins (we didn't actually see any hobgoblins, but I'm sure they were there), and then there it was: the Dirty Devil.

We had about a quart of water between the four of us to drink with our lunch; we didn't want to clog our filters with the nasty Dirty Devil water. So we cleverly downed the last of our water & headed up towards the canyon rim where we'd left my vehicle. The next hour and a half afforded us a delightfully hot and dry brisk hike; so delightful, in fact, that I felt nauseous and delirious. HINT#1: If you don't have any water, it's bad to go wandering in the desert at midday in the sun with a heavy pack for several miles uphill on a south-facing slope of slickrock. Fortunately we all made it back to my SUV without being demolecularized by the solar radiation, where there was a partially full 5-gallon jug of water. HINT#2: If you want warm, plasticy water to taste very good, go wandering in the desert at midday in the sun with a heavy pack for several miles uphill on a south-facing slope of slickrock.

The next day was our last day in Canyonlands; Forrest had to catch his plane at 1:30pm on Friday. We decided to allocate it bringing the Pancake Pavilion (one of its many resurrections since its birth on the Pica glacier) to Panorama Point, where we could drool over the cliff at a spectacular view of the Maze District (which by then we'd already decided we'd do next year, getting our permits well in advance). This entailed navigation of a 30 mile extreme high-clearance 4x4 road, which Marshall handled with ease in his SUV. It made for a very relaxing day to put the cap on a thoroughly fabulous vacation.

We went back to our beloved campsite just outside the park boundary (on BLM land) and sorted gear. Then we went to sleep. Then we got up at 6:00. Then we ripped back on dirt roads, 250 miles in all, finally returning to pavement. Arriving in Green River, we celebrate with a "trucker's breakfast", then drove on to SLC and eventually through the salt flats towards Nevada. Heading through Elko, Nevada, where I won $5, and ate a very bad enchilada, we spent the night on a dirt road out in the desert. Then we drove up through Oregon, arriving home with some sadness because everything is over and gone and done with... But we all recovered from our sadness and now life is back to normal. We're looking forward to NEXT YEAR of course! Anyone want to join us?

— Livin' the Life for MountainZone.com