#60 U-TAH-king to me???? Badass Utah Adventues with Oliver

Beth M. Grigg
Jun 20, 2022
7 min read

Updated: Jul 3, 2022

I love keeping track of favorite quotes when I travel with someone. Here's my list from yesterday as Oliver and I start our weeklong adventure trip in Utah:

"There is no way that my photos are going to look at all as beautiful as it looks in real life".

"I want to see a ram."

"That's a really, really long way down".

"I wonder how many people actually die out here?" (Spoiler alert - only about one per year. Shocking!)

"Where are the stars?"

"People are idiots".

"That is one *#&% chunk of a squirrel."

"I wanted to go out to the car to call Julie but a freaking deer stood between me and the car and we got into a stare down."

"That's a freaking long way down."

"Hypothetically, if I were to fall off this cliff and I grabbed onto a cactus to stop myself from falling over, would I reflexly let go of the cactus or would I be able to hold on?"

"I'm not doing bad for an old lady, am I Ollie? "Not bad at all for a really old lady, Mom." "Even more impressive that I'm an old, fat lady who's out of shape, right Ollie?" "Not bad for a really, really old lady, Mom".

"Why are people so obsessed with squirrels?" "Because there aren't any other living beings in this part that we can see". "Maybe they have a big fence around the areas with people to keep all the wildlife away from them and now and the rangers dispatch the squirrels. To keep the humans happy. And to keep the animals away from these dumbasses."

"You know you can pass that truck, Mom." "Yeah but I have to stay in this lane for the exit.". "The exit isn't for another mile and it's really embarrassing that you are going slower than this semi."

"Someone really smells like butt. They should get a pilot's license because they are really good at crop dusting".

"If you slip, just pancake yourself down like a starfish so you have less of a chance of rolling down the hill".

"OMG -- that's some tumbleweed there! Whoops...I ran it over."

"Tom Cruise has one of his front teeth directly centered in the middle of his face. His ears also are surprisingly higher than they should be. It works, tho for him. He's a specimen, but kind of a odd ball. Personality's not everything".

"I've learned something in my old age, Oliver. I've learned that sometimes it's not a great idea to try to do something that really could have a bad outcome." "Yeah, Mom. I'm sure you would have been ok but I really didn't want to see you dead." "I guess if it's 50-50 between doing it and dying, it's best I don't do it."

SO here's that story....

Oliver and I had been hiking Zion all day. We started at hiking to the "Middle Emerald Pool" which was a brilliant idea of Oliver's because the entire tram of tourists all headed in the direction of the "Lower Emerald Pool (Beginner rating--family friendly)" and "Upper Emerald Pool (Advance rating- for those who want to show off to their friends that they are hiking beasts)". Only a few of us took the path to the Middle Emerald Pool (Moderate Rating - you'll huff and puff but you'll get there).

We had the path mostly to ourselves which was really nice, considering we were hiking up the side where there was just a total drop off. Like shear cliff drop-off to the valley below. "It's kind of unsettling" we muttered periodically, in between singing the earworm Sea Shanty song. For those in my generation, go on TikTok. Really. It's fun.

I huffed and puffed. Oliver didn't. But OMG -- I made it without too much trouble at all. Pretty proud considering the beginning portion of the trail was a pretty steep path. Turns out we climbed the equivalent of 25 flights of stairs.

We got to the Emerald Pool finally and it was -- NOT emerald. Kind of more of a sludgy green-grey with lots of skater bugs and some tadpoles. But it was an accomplishment getting there and I'm so glad we went.

There were signs along the way reminding you of:

Impending death:

How not to kill others (tho the grammar on this sign is questionable."

We followed the trail along to descend to the "Lower Emerald Pool". UGH. This is where the crowds were heavy. Solid line of people walking the path, with some groups doing that super annoying thing where they just suddenly stop with no warning, causing a total domino effect. So glad we went the way we did and avoided all this ruckus.

Jumping back on the Zion Shuttle, we drove past scenes of rock slides. Our driver, Ranger Maureen, has obviously been doing her job too long and was so tired of tourists asking her dumb questions. She told us this "Yeah, the rocks keep moving. Rocks fall down a lot. We dig a ditch to try to slow them down but it doesn't work. No, they are not going to re-open that trail. A few years back, there was a rock slide of 30,000 tons. A hiker caught it on video and now it is on The You Tube. That's a lot of rock to move out of the way. We are not going to do that. Watch the video. It's really good." (Second spoiler alert: Oliver and I watched the rock slide on "The You Tube" and while it must have been amazing in real life, it certainly was not on The You Tube.

The Narrows is a hiking trail where you walk along a paved, then dirt path for a mile or so and then the path ends up funneling the hikers into a river to continue the trail in ankle - and sometimes chest - deep water.

Oliver and I and about 10,000 of our closest friends all decided to take this on.

The hiking trail was full of the best and worst of humanity, and lots of really chunky squirrels that would not move out of the traffic of the path. Which backed up the hikers on the path even more because humans apparently cannot get enough of taking photos of these guys.

We finally got to the merging of the trail and the river and were disheartened to see so, so, so many people in the water headed upstream.

I glanced downstream and noticing that there were only a couple people there, I casually said to Ollie, "Hey...wouldn't it be interesting if we hiked all the way here and ended up going in the complete opposite direction of everyone by going back the way we came?"

And Oliver said, "Mama, I was thinking the exact same thing".

So we did! It was so much fun wading in ankle deep water, balancing on slipperly river rocks to cross to the other side.

Following the river downstream, we came to tricky place where there were some submerged rocks, chest deep water, and a racing river current. There was a family trying to navigate it so we watched them for a bit to see their strategy.

The mom, standing in chest deep water had put herself in between two big bolders where the water was funneling through with a fast current. She was trying to encourage her kids to follow her there when she slipped, fell into the current and slid down into the pool below while banging her head on a bolder. The kids, not terribly concerned about her, shrugged, climbed out of the water, and scurried over the bolders lining the river bank. Oliver and I, however, were concerned, not seeing the mom pop out the other side, and were getting ready to do a rescue mission when we noticed her climbing up the other side of the river bank. She didn't seem to:

1. Have any apparent injury like gushing blood. Maybe a gnarly concussion but no broken bones.

and 2. Care where her kids were. Her kids had disappeared. She disappeared. We continued on with our day.

Seeing that put a healthy fear of the river into us, and we definitely took more care with our footing than what we probably would have done before seeing her accident.

The river was deceptively deep in places and without warning. And because of the bolders funneling the water in places, the current was fast and strong. It was strenuous hiking thorugh the river and fun strategizing our path.

However, at one point, we got to a place where you had to cross over on a small log with a pretty big drop off on one side and slippery rocks to land on after crossing the log.

Ollie went first and did it beautifully.

I stood there for a while weighing my options. There were no good ones, really. Oliver was reassuring telling me where I could step for the best odds of a successful crossover, but I could see hesitation in his eyes.

I looked upstream and decided that I had better odds of scaling up a slippery boulder surrounded by slippery river rocks and chest deep water a little more upstream.

So I gingerly took my time, didn't fall in, and eventually got myself to Oliver waiting on the other bank. As we discussed earlier, "I've learned something in my old age, Oliver. I've learned that sometimes it's not a great idea to try to do something that really could have a bad outcome." "Yeah, Mom. I'm sure you would have been ok but I really didn't want to see you dead." "I guess if it's 50-50 between doing it and dying, it's best I don't do it.".

Mini stories:

Yes, I got coffee and was waiting in line in the coffee shop for it to open at 6am. (Remember, time zones and my always early waking cycle). I ordered their local specialty: Lavender Mocha. Surprisingly good. I recommend.

Waiting for Oliver to land, I picked up our Jeep-for-the-week, headed to Walmart and stocked up, then hit a local Utah fast food joint for a salad and a big old caffeine. Y'all, I had been up since 2am.

Going to a sports bar called the Wingz Hut to watch the Stanley Cup game, only to find out that there was a time difference between Nevada and Utah and we were there an hour early. So we ate our chicken wings and hog wings and headed to our hotel to catch the game there.

Saturday was a hazy day full of dust and wind so we didn't get the full vision of how pretty this place is until Sunday when the sun came out. Here are some pictures from our hotel.