grinNberrett - San Rafeal is Swell

Johnny invited me to go on a search for gold this weekend. He has been wanting to backpack part of the the San Rafael Swell since the beginning of summer. He wanted to hike to an abandoned mine called the "Sorrel Mule Mine" and camp there. The hike to the mine is about 3 miles downstream from Fullers Bottom and the trail crosses the river 3 times. So fish, fish he got his wish.

We setup camp and discussed the plan for the next day. We decided not to backpack into the mine. We decided instead to do a day hike to the mine. The kids liked that idea better. Johnny dug a pit for the fire. Soon after T-y started digging a hole. I wasn't sure why until he started a fire in it. Brielle wasn't going to be shown up by T-y so she built one too. T-y has built a fire all by himself before, but Brielle hadn't. She was pretty proud of her accomplishment.

Our scouting report, Baylor, stated that the road seem to go on and on and was leading away from the the river. So we decided to blaze our own trail.

The land is open range, so there were a zillion dried cow pies. I happen to kick one over and found this hiding under it.

It's a good thing that Dr. Jones recently gave us some advice about scorpions.

When it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better. Small one bites ya, don't keep it to yourself.

Thanks to this advice, we left the scorpion alone.

We blazed our own trail for about a mile and took a rest. For the more part it was easy walking. Walking across the desert landscape is pretty easy. We just had to watch out for those prickly rocks.

We crossed the river, fought through the brush and stumbled upon the trail.

We traveled another mile and stopped for lunch. The mine wasn't marked on the map I brought, so we only had a general idea where the mine was located. Johnny left the map with the mine marked on it at home. We thought we were in the right location, so Johnny went off looking around for it. The kids went off and played in the river.

Johnny didn't find the mine, so we set off down the trail hoping to find it within the next 45 minutes. The stars were not aligned for us today. We were unable to find the mine. The kids complained that they hiked all that way for nothing. I asked them if they had fun and they said yes. So we hiked for fun.

We were able to follow the trail all the way back to the the jeep road. The current was really slow, so Reese, T-y , and Baylor walked up the river. They had to eventually get out of the river, as it became deeper T-y's head. It turned out that the trail head was just off the jeep road. It was about a 1/2 mile up the road from where we decided to blaze our own trail. It took us about 3.5 hours to hike in and 2.5 hours to hike out. It was a fun trip and the kids really enjoyed walking in the river and building their own fires. It is definitely worth a return trip.

:: Posted by brb
:: Filed under /daily_journal

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