Coyote Canyon

It has been getting colder so we have stopped camping in the Uintas and have begun camping in the desert. We have gone to Coyote Canyon in the west desert a couple of times now. On our first visit we stopped by the Dugway geode beds to hunt geodes. Sam has been selling them successfully on ebay. After Dugway, we traveled to Coyote Canyon and set up camp. There was a beautiful full moon that looked swollen as it rose above the mountains. It was so bright that we had serious shadows--the kids loved it.

The second time we visited Coyote Canyon there was no moon and the stars were amazingly bright seeming to surround us. We could see the Milky Way clearly above us. The kids have learned to identify the Big and Little Dippers, Casseopia, and the North Star.

Digging geodes

Antelope on the way to Coyote Canyon

Moon rise and set

Jacob with the first fire he started on his own.

As part of their school the kids set up scientific experiments related to our camping. On our most recent trip, Eve tested her hypothesis regarding the distribution of cacti. Sam and Jacob tested their hypothesis regarding the feeding patterns of coyotes. The kids have also been identifying wild life, their tracks, and scat (Leah insisted I not post any pictures of the scat--they are actually very interesting), edible and poisonous plants, and trees found in Utah. We gathered joint pine on our last trip and made Mormon or Brigham tea with it--not a hit with the kids.

We actually see more wild life in the desert than we did in the Uintas. We have seen a baby rattle snake, lots of ants and beetles, rabbits, a coyote, all kinds of birds, spiders, and rodents.

Beetles

Sam and Jacob setting up their experiment. They found a former coyote bedding area and tested to see if the coyote would come back for fish. They used clay to record foot prints.

Eve and I counting the cactus in two separate desert ecosystems to test her hypothesis.

We found a large cave above our campsite and after making sure there wasn't a mountain lion or a Sasquatch inside I explored it. There was coyote scat and lots of bones. Also it looked like it had been used as a hawk roost at one point with a good amount of hawk feathers and droppings. There were also bats coming out of the back of the cave (Jacob is convinced they were vampires). The strangest/scariest part was a five foot tall mound of scat, bat guano, and bedding material blocking the back of the cave that was filled with fresh juniper branches.

One of the vicious vampire bats in the cave.

View looking out of the cave.

This giant heap of all kinds of good stuff is literally five feet tall! The picture below is what was behind it--five feet down on the ground. The cave continued to go back a good distance, but I didn't continue in.

We also visited a bird preserve and the kids had a ball fighting with cattails and looking at birds.