HIking in Tye Dye

Cottonwood Canyon Road is a scenic, unpaved 46 mile road that travels through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It connects the town of Cannonville with Highway 89, just west of Big Water. Our plan one evening was to hike an easy 3 mile round trip hike called Cottonwood Wash Narrows off of Cottonwood Canyon Road.

It was our first experience driving this road and we did not realize how long it would take us to get to the trail head . We left a little too late in the evening and started losing our daylight 15 miles into the canyon.

 We found an area to pull off and saw a random trail. Since we knew at that point making it to the narrows was not going to happen we let the girls get out and stretch their legs.

 

 It was short hike, only about 3/4 of a mile round trip.

Jocelyn enjoyed running the trail with her Daddy.

Once we hiked down into the wash there were quite a few gnats flying around. The gnats kept flying around Bridget's head and she started swatting all around her yelling out, "Bugs, face." In the end the bugs were just too much and she couldn't finish the hike. Instead, she spent the remainder of the time riding in the ergo where she could hide her face in my back to avoid the bugs.

At the end of the hike is a hill covered in big boulders. When it rains it probably is a pretty neat little waterfall. Which unfortunately we will never be able to see because Cottonwood Canyon Road is impassable if it rains.

Jocelyn loved climbing up all the boulders.

We snapped a quick family photo with all of us wearing our tie dye at the end of the wash before we started heading back. Our evening did not turn out how we had planned however, it still ended up being a fun evening that ended with raspberry filled powdered donuts on our way home. Here's to another trip in the future so we can drive the entire Cottonwood Canyon Road.