what kind of an idiot goes hiking in the desert in August? Oh, right. That would be ME.

Thursday night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, so Britt and I had plans to drive out to Cedar Mesa in Utah, figuring it would be warm enough there to sleep out and look at the sky, as well as clear (rain was predicted for Durango) and dark (the nearest town being Mexican Hat, population 88). And it didn't really make sense to drive out around 3 hours just to spend one night and drive back in the morning, so at the last minute we decided to bring our gear and go backpacking on the Fish Creek/Owl Creek loop, a highly-rated hike that goes through scenic canyons with arches and ruins, with quite a bit of rock scrambling and route-finding required. Most people, of course, do this in the spring or fall, when it's not brain-scorchingly HOT. On the other hand, it had rained across the entire region the previous week, so the intermittent streams would be running and the pools would be full, and with predicted temperatures in the upper 80s to lower 90s it was still on the cool side. (For the desert. In August.) Best of all, we would have it to ourselves - because nobody else would be nuts enough to be there.

( Rambling report and a bunch of photos )

All 26 photos (these plus more) as a Flickr set