Trip to Maple Canyon

We took our mule and joined our friends, Tweet and Wayne Lee and went 4-wheeling in Maple Canyon, a beautiful canyon just out of Freedom, Utah.  For those of you who don't know where Freedom is, it is just 4 miles north of Wales, Utah.  Okay, they are both southwest of Mt.Pleasant in Sanpete County.

This canyon got it's name because it is full of groves of maple trees.  Most canyons in Utah are shrub oak and aspen with evergreens but this canyon is full of maples.  It is also famous because it has extremely high vertical conglomerate cliffs.  These sedimentary rocks vary from finger sized rocks to some the size of a small car.

Climbers from all over the world come to climb this unique challenge.

We didn't see any climbers but we knew that they were there because we saw many empty camp sites.  We felt like we were mountain climbers going up the roads, however, they had deep gouges and huge rocks and most of the first half of the drive was slow and in 4-wheel drive.

We were up so high that we could see great distances.  I think this one is interesting how you can see more and more mountain ranges.  We're not sure why the sky was smoky but we passed some people who said that it was even worse as they drove down from Sandy.  Hopefully these isn't another fire.  We couldn't smell one.

Here's another shot I took from the top of the ridge.

We stopped to have a sandwich and cookie and Wayne's back was hurting so he wanted to go back the way we had come.  We had seen a sign that said, "7 miles to Wales Canyon" and the road seemed to be improving at that point so we decided to part and we kept going on that road and they turned around and returned to the rock climbing.  This is some of the scenery we saw as we headed toward Wales.  The trail was not marked and it seemed that we drove and drove to cover those seven miles.  The road was smooth most of the way and there was no "rock climbing" so we made very good time.  We just kept wondering where we would end up and if we would really end up in Wales.

This was really the first time we saw big patches of color all day.  I think it could have been more impressive had there not been the pollution in the air.

We were both quite relieved when we saw this sight and knew that we were dropping into Wales.  We went one block in the town and then turned north to Freedom and our truck.  When we were less than a mile from the truck we met the Lee's leaving the canyon.  Because of the rough terrain it had taken them almost as long to return the probably 3 miles as it did for us to get to Wales and back to the truck.  We loved the second half of the drive and would love to take people to the mouth of Maple Canyon and then up the other way through Wales to the top of the mountain.  That area would be easy to travel with any 4-wheel vehicle where we would recommend an ATV for the Maple Canyon part.
It was nice to go riding somewhere except from the shop to the garden in the mule.  ^0^