Fall Colors in Utah

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Since we are still waiting for the parts needed to get our Grand Cherokee configured for flat towing, we decide to extend our stay at Willard Bay for an additional 4 nights through this weekend. The site we are in now isn’t available so we will need to move to a different site but it will be a very short travel day. The hope is our parts will arrive by the end of this week and we can reposition to another Elks Lodge closer to the business where the modifications will be done after the upcoming weekend.

We have been having quite nice weather here in Willard Utah (45 minutes north of Salt Lake City) but haven’t really gone for any good hikes yet.  The local news channels have been raving about the excellent fall foliage up in the Wasatch Mountains to the east of us. It sounds like there are several canyon roads that would be fun to explore and do some leaf peeping. For our first outing, we pick a drive to the northeast through the town of Logan and on to Bear Lake. Logan Canyon runs between Logan and Garden City Utah which sits on Bear Lake. Going this direction will let us get a cache in one of the remaining Utah counties we haven’t been to yet. We look for decent hikes along this route. There are lots of options but the Wind Cave Trail sounded good. It’s a 4 mile out and back hike with about 1100 feet of elevation gain and reaches 6000 feet. The trailhead parking is right on US-89 with room for about 10 cars. It was a chilly Tuesday morning so we were somewhat surprised to see half a dozen cars already parked here.

The trail starts out it’s climb parallel to the road before they diverge. We have a few geocaches along the trail to keep us going. The news reports were correct, the colors are outstanding. Lots of maples and oaks with some evergreens interspersed for contrast. It reminds us of the great fall colors back in western New York.

Starting Out on Wind Cave Trail

Amazing Colors

At one point early into the hike, we could see some exposed rock on the mountainside in the distance. There seemed to be some sort of cave-like feature and suspect this may be the “wind cave” we are hiking to. From this vantage point, the thing seems to be perched on the edge of a cliff so we are curious how the trail will get us there.

Wind Cave?

After about a mile up the trail, the views are incredible with much of the mountainside covered with orange and red leaves. There are numerous bare rock cliffs and some sections with only evergreens. As we continue to climb and get closer to the cave, we discover we are now actually higher than the cave looking down on it. We can see people inside the cave, so we suspect we are heading the right way.

Colorful Valley

View of Wind Cave from a Distance

A hard left hand turn about a quarter mile from the end leads us along another ridge with nice views. No portion of the trail was especially scary with steep drop offs so we do fine along the route. As we approach the cave, we see there is another couple inside with their dog. The main cave has two openings and a skylight and is quite large. We stop and chat with the couple who are local (Ogden Utah) and have been here before. They give us some suggestions of other hikes in the area as well as options for the return trip from Bear Lake. There is a side cave not connected with the main one. To get to it, you need to go down the steep floor of the main cave and walk out on a small ledge to go around the corner. Chris passes on this option and stay seated on her rock she found near the entrance of the cave.

Inside Wind Cave Looking Out

Outside Wind Cave Looking In

It is a rather remarkable place especially with the large skylight similar to the hike we did last week near Goblin Valley. The other couple left and we enjoyed the view while having a snack before starting the descent back to the car. I did manage to convince Chris to walk out onto the top of the cave for one picture. Given the steep nature of the area I wasn’t sure she would be up for it.

Skylight View

Looking Through Wind Cave

Chris Climbs Atop the Cave

It was an easier walk back down and equally beautiful. As we got closer to the parking area, we noticed the couple we met at the cave we’re about 100 feet off the trail. Since we had found a geocache there on our way up, we were pretty sure what they were up to. This was an excellent hike with a unique destination. Having the wonderful fall colors made it that much more special.

Back at the Trailhead

We continue our drive up US-89 stopping on occasion just to take in the views. The aspen trees are near their peak color with vibrant yellows dotting the landscape. Our next short hike is at the Limber Pine Nature Trail about 25 miles from the Wind Cave trailhead. This trail only 1.3 miles in length but straddles two counties and we can take in the views and get the geocache we wanted. It was a nice walk at one of the openings, we had a decent view of Bear Lake about 4 miles to the east.

Needed to Pull Over for the View

Limber Pine Nature Trail

A Glimpse of Bear Lake

More Bright Aspens with Contrasting Evergreens

There is a large pullout a bit closer to Garden City that has an even better view of the lake. We originally didn’t have a destination at the lake or in town, but in our talk with the geocachers in Wind Cave, they told us we “have” to stop for a raspberry shake in Garden City. Apparently this area is well known for them. There are several places in town that serve them but they said the best was at a Chevron gas station. That sounded a bit odd to us but we spotted it on our right as we were heading down into town so we went in to check it out. The building had one section decorated as an old time diner. We put our order in for two hand made raspberry shakes. I will admit that they exceeded our expectations. Each of them stuck out of the top of the cup by 2 inches. We enjoyed what likely was the best shake of our lives. We drove into town and headed north along the lake for 3 miles to cross over into Idaho and find another geocache.

View of Bear Lake from Overlook

Awesome Shakes

The people that suggested the shakes had also suggested we head south past Bear Lake and take a different route back to camp. We checked it out on the map and decided that would be a much longer route back and since we had killed most of the day with hikes, a fair amount of that drive would be in the dark. So we simply turn around and head back into Logan. We wanted to stop at Utah State University to get a few geocaches that were highly rated. We arrived just after the student parking lots switch from needing pass to being open to the public. We got the geocache we wanted and had some daylight left so we wandered around the campus. It’s a large university and there are plenty of old buildings. Plus the surrounding landscape makes for a really nice setting. We grabbed some dinner in town before heading back to camp in the dark. What a wonderful day!

On USU Campus

View Near Campus

The next day, we moved the couple hundred feet from one site to another. The only advantage to that short of a move is not all things need to be stored away for the drive. We could just walk the bikes and hoses from one location to the other. At least this time we didn’t have the issue of somebody else occupying our new spot. We ended up taking it easy. I worked on de-badging the Jeep so that washing and waxing it in the future will be easier. It is a simple but tedious process. A short length of fishing line to “saw” through the double sided tape will remove the plastic letters. The remaining part of the tape is carefully rubbed off with my fingers and Goo-Gone to remove the final residue.

The next day we would try another canyon for another hike. Ogden Canyon heads up into the mountains just east of Ogden. Our goal is a 4.7 mile loop that AllTrails lists as Wheeler Creek, Upper Wheeler Creek and Icebox Canyon. It will gain over 800 feet in elevation. The trailhead is right off of Highway 39 near the base of the rather large Pineview Reservoir. Just before we got to the side road, we run into construction. A work crew was paving right at the drive back to the parking area. It looked like we might be able to get in but the concern I had was could we get back out? Fortunately we had noticed there was a second trailhead option off of Old Snowbasin Road. So we head there. Lots of other people were starting from here as well. There are several other trails that start at this spot so we needed to be careful to select the correct one. To do the loop in the clockwise direction, we start out on Upper Wheeler Creek heading west.

View at Snowbasin Trailhead

Upper Wheeler Creek Trail View

The trees are very colorful here as well. That simple fact seems to make any hike more memorable. As we approach our turn onto Icebox Canyon Trail, a group on horseback were heading our way. I thought we had gotten far enough off the trail to allow them room but the one horse showed no interest in following the trail and started off across the field. It was eventually steered back onto the trail with the others. The section through the canyon is downhill but not overly steep. It was a pleasant section with the tree lined hills on either side of the trail.

Bright Maple Leaves

Horses Approach

Icebox Canyon

This trail intersects Wheeler Creek Trail. A right hand turn to the south will take us back to where we are parked, a left to where we had planned to park. Turning back now would shorten this hike by almost 2 miles, and since the area was so pretty, we decide to go north. This section of the trail is in a wider and taller canyon with even more colorful trees. We go far enough on this trail to get several geocaches but stop short of the parking lot by a quarter mile. We find a nice spot to sit and have our lunch before heading back uphill to the car. This was a nice hike.

Along Wheeler Creek Trail

More Fall Colors

We took another day off from hiking and headed back to the dealership. We wanted to make sure they seemed to be on track with the paperwork they need to generate and send to Florida so we can register the new car. We have a 45 day temporary Utah tag but until the dealer sends in the paperwork, we can’t get anything started with the people in Florida. We also don’t know if the process in Florida will be done promptly after all the paperwork arrives or if it will be delayed for some reason. It’s only been a week, so it’s not like the dealer is late, but we do want to make sure they understand our situation since they may not have very many customers from out of state and we are likely the first from Florida. Plus we will be heading out of the area so this is our last opportunity to talk face to face. We are reassured that they will get the paperwork done in another week and will call us with a tracking number so we will know when the paperwork arrives in Florida. We walk out feeling pretty good about how things are progressing.

We also call Pard’s, the place near SLC that has our parts on order for flat towing the Jeep. We thought we were heading there for install on the upcoming Monday in a few days. Some of the parts were in but not all of them. At this point, the remaining item is still several days out and I question whether that date would hold. We had been told about a state park in southern Idaho that sounded really interesting. It was nearly 150 miles away so it wasn’t like we could do it as a day trip out of our current campground. We checked online for availability in the campground and found we could get a week pretty easily. So we proposed to delay the install for a full week which should give them ample time to have all the parts on hand and Pard’s was fine with that plan. So we reserve a site in Idaho for a week.

This plan gave us one more day here before we head north. We pick yet another canyon and another trail east of us. This time it’s North Ogden Canyon on a portion of the South Skyline Trail. This trail heads up to a ridge and continues on for nearly ten miles. We aren’t looking for anything that intense. AllTrails has a trail named the South Skyline Trail Segment that is a 3.2 mile out and back hike which doesn’t sound too bad. But it also gains over 1300 feet in that short of distance plus we will be topping out at nearly 7600 feet. Those facts should make this 3.2 mile hike more of a challenge. The trailhead parking lot is quite large but also nearly full although it is a nice Saturday morning so maybe we should have expected that. What we didn’t realize before picking this hike, the trails here are for more than just hiking or biking or horseback riding - these trails are open to motorcycles!

Start of South Skyline Trail

We start up the trail and from what we could see and hear, all the motorized vehicles were heading up the North Skyline Trail on the other side of the pass. This is a challenging trail, it starts out steep and rocky and gets steeper and rockier as we climb. Initially the views are obscured from all the trees, but occasionally there is an opening where we can get a good panoramic view of the canyon and Ogden below.

View of North Ogden Canyon

It was definitely slow going. There weren’t many other hikers but one couple less than half our age caught up to us and passed us almost effortlessly. We eventually make it up to the ridge which allows us to see into the valley to east and the small community of Liberty Utah. Surprisingly when we reached the end of the AllTrails route, we were still feeling okay and decided to push on along the ridge. It may have had something to do with that one more cache that was only another quarter mile.

Overlooking Liberty Utah

Ogden in the Distance

A View of Pineview Reservoir

After finding the geocache, we could hear the sound of dirt bike motors heading our way. We are not dirt bike riders but on our way up we had commented that this trail would not be able to be ridden on a dirt bike. I guess we were wrong. We stepped off the trail and let two riders fly past us. We head back to the overlook section we had seen earlier to stop for lunch. The colors of the autumn leaves were still wonderful and it was such a great spot to sit and spend some time. Going down the steep was a bit less strenuous but the loose rocky nature of the trail made for challenging footing. We found we needed to pay attention so our feet didn’t slip out from under us. There were several other groups heading up and we encouraged them to continue given how great the views are up top. This was a nice hike to end our 11 nights in this part of northern Utah.

Heading Back Down South Skyline Trail

View Across Canyon at North Skyline Trail

Monument at Parking Lot