Calf Creek Camping Trip

Over the July 24th holiday, we went camping with Eric's brother Greg and his girlfriend Shasta. They love camping and go all the time...this time we went with them. They wanted to go to Calf Creek, which is about 4 hours away, by Boulder, Utah. They've been here a couple times before so they knew where to go. Since we weren't camping at a campsite, it was nice to be with people who knew their way around. I love camping, I went all the time with my family as a kid, but it was always car camping, this time we hiked in to our campsite and boy was it worth it.

At calf creek there are two waterfalls - upper and lower. We started our hike at upper and made it to lower the next day. The hike down to the waterfall at upper calf creek is only a mile...but it's a pretty steep hike. Going down wasn't too bad...but going back up the next day almost killed me. In fact, most people skip the upper waterfall and go to the lower waterfall (which is 3 miles south) to avoid the steep hike back up. If people go to both waterfalls, they usually drive the 3 mile difference instead of hiking through the trees and shallow stream.

After trekking through the dessert, we finally made it to upper calf creek falls. It was so hot and when we made it to the bottom, it was about a 20 degree difference. It felt so nice because we were all sweating like pigs...our packs didn't make it any easier. When we got to the waterfall we changed into our water shoes and headed down the stream to look for our campsite.

Here is Eric going down a mini waterfall...it wasn't too slippery because of the algae. Some parts of the hike were kinda tricky...since this place isn't commonly visited, we had to cut some branches or go under huge trees so we could get through. When the water was over grown with trees or too gnarly, we took a sometimes visible overgrown path following the river, but for the most part we were in the water. The deepest the water got was to our knees. The water was cold at first, but felt so refreshing. The scenery is so beautiful. It's so green down in the narrow valley of the stream.

Here we found a little "beach" on the side of the river. We were getting kinda tired that we debated camping here. We knew there was just too much to see that we kept on trekking. Greg knew the better "beach" area was not too far...it felt like hours later, but we finally found our campsite!!!! We were all so excited! It was better than I imagined...it was beautiful. I couldn't believe we were going to camp here. It was this little amphitheater under the rock that was probably made when the river was running like mad. As you can see below, the look on Shasta's face says it all, "we're here!" I was so excited to take my pack off!

This is the view from our little campsite...we checked it out for a while and relaxed. We put the tarps down and laid on our towels for a while - it was too hot to bust out our 30 degree sleeping bag (and I didn't want bugs to make a home out of it, at least until later). We were livin' it up because Greg brought a hammock too...ah the camping life. Once we got hungry, we built a fire and tossed in our foil dinners.

Greg and Shasta sure know how to camp...they made salmon and veggies for dinner! I've always had the hamburger with carrots and potatoes foil dinner. But from now on we're making salmon and veggie foil dinners. The trick is to separate the veggies from the meat, that way when cooked everything is perfect (not undercooked or overcooked)! You can see above that they are labeled...those kids are so smart. Doesn't it look delicious? Ok, it's not the prettiest looking dish but it was delicious. High class camping dinner for sure.

For dessert we had....SMORES! What I was looking forward to all day! I think they were the best I've had...a long day of hiking made them taste even better! Neither of us could stop at 1, so we each had 2 smores. They were well deserved because we burnt the calories before we ate them.

The sand was SO SO soft...but not when we slept on it. We didn't "sweep" before we laid everything down so it was kind of bumpy. Eric and I didn't sleep well at all. We didn't bring a tent because we wanted to sleep under the stars...and it was so hot we didn't need it to keep us warm. But after seeing a HUGE HUGE SPIDER with LONG LEGS (thinking about it again is giving me the chills) on my pack next to my sleeping bag, right before I was getting ready for bed kept me up for a part of the night. I told Eric to kill it when I first saw it, but instead of killing it he just flicked it off. I was worried that it was going to come back (of course I was looking for it with my flash light), and when I saw it on my pack again that was it, I was sleeping with my hoodie on, I didn't want any creepy crawlers crawling on my skin.

That's what also kept me awake at night, I was so hot but refused to take my hoodie off. I don't mind other bugs - but I'm sure for most girls, spiders freak me out. I still love camping, but the bugs will always BUG me (that's a pretty profound statement, I know). When we woke up in the morning I saw all these animal foot prints right along our tarp...that didn't bother me but it was fun to know something was lurking around us. I didn't hear anything and we all woke up in one peace...we just couldn't tell what they're from. We also woke up to a large black crow staring at us from the other side of the river. Shasta was freaking out and was yelling at it, it was hilarious to watch her fight with the crow.

The only people we ran into during our hike through the river was a family of SEVEN kids, they ranged from about 15 to just months old, talk about a hard core family!! They weren't too far from us camping in another amphitheater. We only knew they were there because Greg went venturing off into the wilderness.
After making pancakes for breakfast, we packed our day packs and hiked the rest of the river to the top of lower calf creek falls. It took us about 45 min to hike there...it was nice not the have our huge packs. We knew there was a little swimming hole area so we put on our suits...but the water was WAY too cold to enjoy it - for me any way. I dipped in because Shasta was making fun of me. We had to climb along a steep wall to get to the waterfall...it was kind of scary being at the top of the waterfall. We stood at the top looked down...pretty freaky because it's 135 feet and there was nothing stopping us from falling. We saw a lot of people down there because that's where the campsite is. We all yelled at the people down there but it was so loud we don't think anyone heard us... because no one looked up, we were sad!




We relaxed and laid our towels on this nice area with crazy holes in the rock. After hanging out, venturing off, eating peanut butter and jelly wraps, and swimming we headed back to our campsite to only pack everything up and hike the rest of the way back to our car. It felt a lot shorter than our way in...


We finally made it back to the top of the waterfall. Hiking through the water and "jungle" was the easy part, now was the hard part. Hiking up the mile long steep slick rock. Like I said, it almost killed me. I was sweating so bad and didn't think I could do it, Greg and Shasta were ahead of us. Eric was so sweet and told me to go at my own pace, he forced me take breaks when I needed to and didn't make me feel like a wimp. He of course, didn't really need to stop. That shows I need to work out more, I'm working on it! Eric even offered to carry my pack for me but I wouldn't let him do that, both our packs would have toppled him down the mountain. We made it up the mountain drenched in sweat. The last mile of the hike was quite the work out, Eric and I were immediately sore and the next day we could sure feel the pain - a good pain of course. I want to hike that last part again just for the workout, if I could do it without stopping I would be so proud of myself.

Down the road, we stopped to have dinner, the same place where we stopped to have lunch on the way in. We made some pretty tasty turkey sandwiches. Our trip didn't feel like a short 2 days, it felt like we were gone for a lot longer than that. It was nice to get away from civilization for a couple days and hang out with the fam...they are pretty cool kids and fun to hang out with. We will definitely do that trip again, in fact the 4 of us are going to make it a yearly trip together. Next year I'll be prepared for the last mile of the hike for sure.