Sleeping in a Walmart parking lot was interesting, but not bad. I certainly did not feel like I had wasted money using campsites throughout my trip rather than Walmart parking lots, there is no healing or soul searching to be done in a place full of floodlights with so many people around on their way to buy items that support bad things. Walking through the parking lot I was shocked at how black the sky looked, there were almost no stars visible with all the lights in the area, it was a weird sight, particularly after being in places where there is so little light pollution that I can see an incredible number of stars. There were a large number of people staying there overnight, mostly in RVs; a young couple pulled out their lawn chairs and had supper with their tupperware bin as a table, looking like proper campers.
I was disappointed last night when I realized that it would not be Monday the following day, that it was, in fact, still Saturday. I have been paying little attention to dates, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that I had convinced myself it was a day later than it was. My plan had been to go get a permit to hike Waterholes Canyon the following day, but seeing as it was still the weekend, I would have to wait another day, ah well, nothing to complain about with having to spend another day in this beautiful place, what I did have to decide was what to do with this whole day! My first stop was the Toadstools, an area in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that was still fairly close to Page. It was a lovely, short 1.6 mile walk and although it is a popular area, I was able to let Luna off-leash for most of it, just putting her back on leash whenever I saw people. Lots of people there seemed to be dog lovers and several stopped to greet Luna. The first couple that we came across had stopped to admire Luna and she was being silly, leaping slightly in to them and mouthing us a little bit, she’s done that once before at the Grand Canyon when we were just starting our walk, so although I disliked her doing that behaviour towards strangers, I knew it was excitement and that she was bursting with energy. I let her off-leash as soon as we’d left the people and she bolted straight in to doing her zoomies, I looked back and saw the couple watching her, smiling. It was a very fun and beautiful little hike, although I expected to see a lot more toadstools than I did. My favourite part of it was watching Luna, who was running and playing almost the entire time as we’ve been taking things easy so much with the sanctuary tours and short hikes we’ve been doing most of the past week. We played fetch for a little while and I took in the views, then we headed back. I was shocked to find it was already 1:00 pm, but then realized that we had gained an hour coming in to Utah, as Arizona mostly does not observe daylight savings time. We then headed back to Page and went just past it to where I thought I’d seen a turn-off for a hike the day before, I was wrong, the marker had just been pointing on towards Horseshoe Bend, so I turned back and headed to a McDonalds parking lot to use wifi while I decided where to go next. I was having much luck with the internet, so after some debating with myself, I decided to head to the Motel 6 again. Some of the hikes I am planning to do over the next couple days are hikes that I really have been looking forward to, so being clean and not itchy and gross feeling from not showering for awhile is definitely something that should add to the joy of the hikes! Plus, I was having trouble finding hikes nearby that we hadn't done and had many hours of heat left that I couldn’t spend in the car, so a motel it was!
So many of Luna running today, I could have limited it to the best ones, but instead I just limited it to a bunch of my favourites as I took so few photos today in comparison to some of the days and I want all these ones saved!
Luna practicing her levitation skills.
More levitating.
At the end/start of the trail.
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