yet another rim trail

The Moab area, with all its canyons and mesas, has a lot of rim trails: Moab Rim, White Rim road, Porcupine Rim trail, Hellroaring Rim trail, Hunter Rim trail, etc.  When we drove down early Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, we got to town early enough to get out for a hike by 11:15 a.m. and decided to try to find a new (to us) rim trail: up above Millcreek Canyon.  On one of Milton's and my Millcreek hikes this past summer, I'd seen a couple of folks and their dogs up on the rim, and then making their way down into the canyon in the vicinity of the cowboy hottubs, and that's what we were looking for.

Yet another dirt road

There's a sign just as you start indicating that you go straight ahead to the falls (where most people go) or turn off to the right to get up to the rim.  The trail fades out quickly, however, as you get up into the wash - we managed to find our way up there to reconnect with the trail but it certainly could benefit from a couple of cairns or a blaze or two.  Once up, we walked along an old road with Millcreek Canyon to our left and a neighborhood of newer houses to our right, nestled into the foothills.  There were a couple of flap poles here and there, including one that was marked "Yet Another Rim Trail" so we figured we were in the right place.  We kept going and when a foot trail turned off to the left, we left the jeep road and descended into the canyon.

Up on the road in the sun was pleasant but down in the shade it was chilly for sure: temperatures all long weekend would be in the mid- to low 50s and mostly sunny.  We followed the trail up looker's right side of the creek, having to pick our way through a couple of flooded spots.  This seemed a little strange until we came into a clearing and saw several big trees that had recently been felled by beavers.  We didn't actually see any of those critters but they are there and they are active.

Lots of work to fell these trees

The water is higher than it was in late summer/early fall.  This wouldn't be a problem except that it was chilly enough that we really didn't want to get our boots wet.  To head back out the canyon required five separate creek crossings of various difficulties.  Milton didn't care, splashing back and forth with glee - until he noticed H picking his way across carefully on stepping stones.  Then, very funnily, Milton would come back across the creek and then intentionally cross over stepping exactly on the stones H had just used.  He did this several times, watching H's crossing carefully so he would get it right.

Back in town, we went out for a beer.  Woody's was closed (staffing shortage: everyone had gone home early for the holiday) so we ended up at the Spitfire.  Somehow we only got charged for half our beers; we left a 100% tip so everyone came out happy about it.