Bell Canyon

Not too long ago I went on a hike with a friend of mine who volunteers at the state park where I work. We had been trying to arrange our schedules for the past two years to try and go on this hike together. She had been several times, and was sure I would love it. So finally we found a day, and set it aside.

Its about a 7-hour, hard, up hill hike. We left early, around 7:30 am. We had two main goals. The first was to climb to a beautiful water fall. From the water fall, we would continue on to what she called "the meadow".
The hike was beautiful. We passed ripening thimbleberries, wild geranium, wild mint. We passed in and out of sun shine, and watched the valley below us getting further and further away. After about 2 hours of hiking we made it to the falls. Even though it was late summer, there was still so much water pouring over the cliff. Mist was rising, water was crashing. Everything was green, and cool.As we continued on up after about a 30 minute break at the falls, we fought our way through shoulder height ferns, mint and other plants. We lost the trail for a while, but thanks to a couple of other hikers, made our way back to the right path. Once we reached the meadow after a couple more hours of hiking, we sat on a granite boulder overlooking the river. I took off my shoes and dipped them in the cold stream.


It was wonderful and so refreshing. We stayed there for about an hour, eating, enjoying the quite, cool atmosphere. I kept looking around for a black bear, becasue it seemed like perfect black bear habitat. But, much to my dismay, we didn't see one.

One of the flowers we saw while on the hike was Utah's state flower, the Sego Lily. It's not that often that you see one, so it was fun to see the few along the trail that we did.


Even though I work in a place where I have the opportunity to hike, almost on a daily basis, usually when I am hiking it is for work, and my mind is on making sure the participants are safe, and enjoy their time. Or looking out for different flowers that I can identify for an upcoming program. So this hike was just really nice. I didn't have to think about anything except enjoying what was around me. Enjoying the flowers and the birds just because they were there.