Renae and I decided to go backpacking this weekend and decided to head to the Grand Mesa because we knew there would be water in Kannah Creek. We left the house around 3pm on Saturday after having laid some kitchen tile and doing chores around the house. We got to the trail head around 4pm (7 miles after you turn onto Kannah Creek Road). We then put the dog packs on the dogs and put our packs on. Now the first 1/2 mile or so sucks because it is exposed desert and seems like it is climbing a 14'er but you really only gain 6oo feet of elevation in the first mile. Well about 1 mile in the trail splits a second time and this is where we temporarily lost Bandit, cuz him and Kyrie were out running around and he didn't follow Kryie back. Well Renae yelled and yelled for him and finally he came running. We then came to our first creek crossing and accessible water, luckily there was a bridge to get over the creek because the water was moving pretty fast. This is were we took our first break and watched Bandit play rock in the creek (see picture). He typically finds the biggest rock to chase in the water. We headed off again and soon found ourselves hiking along side a drainage ditch that was running full of water. Then we came to our second creek crossing again with a bridge. Then we came to a creek crossing with no bridge so we all just trudged right across. The cold water feet good on weary feet. At this point we were at 1.6 miles or so. I had told Renae earlier in the day that I wanted to make 3 miles with packs, well at this point 3 miles would be pushing it and even though right past this creek crossing there were some pretty awesome camp sites we decided to push on. Shortly after starting back on the trail we met 4 horse riders and horses. The first two riders were leading the horses because one of the horses had hurt his leg which was bleeding. They told us there was a small stream not to far off and we decided to head to this spot to camp. Luckily this stream was only about 1/4 of a mile because my feet were ready to fall off. We found the most awesomest camp area that appeared that horse riders used to camp at. This area was 2.64 miles in on the trail at this point we gained nearly 1200 feet in elevation. We pitched the tent and cooked supper. We headed to bed around 9pm listening to the birds chirp and the stream flowing. Well I dreamt not of sugar plums dancing in my head but axe murders and killer Kodak bears for the first hour and a half. After convincing myself that there was no axe murderer outside the tent waiting to chop us into bits I fell back asleep and slept until about 0430 when the dogs started barking and Renae had to go pee. Bandit then came into the tent because he was outside shivering and we all went back to sleep. We finally all got up around 7am and I started water boiling for breakfast and coffee. We just relaxed for a while listening to the sounds of nature, then we washed our dishes and started packing up. Well sometime during the night bandit hurt his paw and Renae bandaged it up however it didn't take long before he had it off his paw. We put our packs back on which seemed to have gained some weight over night and hit the trail back to the car. It always seems faster that the hike out doesn't take nearly as long as the hike in, maybe that is because there is Starv'n Arvin's waiting after we get out, not sure. Well the hike back out was pretty uneventful other than meeting 6 more horses and riders. So needless to say we had to side step a lot of horse poop.
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