Little Grand Canyon

Last weekend we decided to take a day trip to southeast Utah to check out the Grand Rafael Swell, or Little Grand Canyon. I actually had no idea this place even existed until my sister and her family visited a few weeks prior. These little day trips have been really great for exploring parts of Utah we have never seen and a nice change of scenery from being home so much because of Covid-19. Typically in the spring we are crazy busy with all of the kids' sports schedules and spend our Saturdays at baseball/soccer/lacrosse games. The Little Grand Canyon is about 2 hrs 15 mins from our house. We left a little after 10am and made it home in time for dinner, around 6:30 without feeling rushed at all. We had such an awesome day! 

Shortly after our family hit the freeway, we saw my sister and her family heading south also! They were heading to visit Corona Arch, which is where we went a few weeks ago, and we caravanned all the way to Price together. We were laughing about how it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to us to drive more than two hours away for a day trip after growing up with our dad! 

After we left Price, we went through a pretty dark rainstorm so I was a bit worried about how our weather would be, but luckily we passed the storm and had great weather the rest of the day. As we were getting closer to the lookout, the landscape was pretty unassuming. All of the sudden, this came into view and we were all stunned! It was unbelievable!!

There is a big rock formation down from this point that Sean and I took turns hiking to with Bode and Jackson. We had Davis and Molly wait this part out. 

View from the top of the rock. It's one of those places you have to see in real life to grasp the enormity of it. The canyon was so deep and expansive and impossible to capture in a photo.

After the overlook, we hiked around the rim on the trail for a few miles. It was so beautiful! 

The kids (especially Davis) loved throwing rocks into the canyon. We also had fun shouting and listening to our echos.

After hiking, we headed to go check out some nearby pictographs. We stopped at a cave/tunnel we passed on our way there. Apparently it was created in the 1940s by the government for some unknown reason. We made our way in but everyone was too nervous to make it very far! Well, everyone but Charlie. Charlie took off running down the dark tunnel and came bounding back as we were walking out!

The petroglyph and pictographs we saw were really awesome. They estimate the petroglyph (the first picture) is about 1,000 years old, while the pictographs are around 2,000 years old. I am amazed at how well these are preserved for being so old!

  

The scenery on the road to get to the pictographs was really beautiful. We followed it a bit longer before turning around and heading for home. I'm so glad we made this little trip!

The longer I've lived in Utah, the more I have really come to appreciate how amazing and diverse it's landscape is. I love the mountains and their beauty, as well as the red rocks of Southern Utah and everything in between. I was surprised when Sean and I were in Europe last fall how many people we met from all across the globe had visited Utah and talked about the skiing and national parks here. We are lucky to live in such a cool place!