We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Makoshika (muh-KOH’-shih-kuh) State Park! What we thought would be an hour activity ended up being an entire day of hiking, gumbo, and other worldly rock formations!
It had rained in the area the entire day before we went to Makoshika. We knew we were in for some mud…but we didn’t expect the gumbo. What is gumbo? It’s not what you think. There’s no shrimp or sausage or okra in it…you don’t eat this gumbo. This particular type of gumbo is a fine silty soil that forms an extremely sticky mud when it gets wet. It sticks to everything and makes perfectly good hiking boots completely useless. See that dark blackish brown stuff they’re all standing on in the above photo? Yup, that’s gumbo. We slipped and slid up and down the Cap Rock Trail on this stuff for a good hour that morning and ended up having to turn back because we felt it was too dangerous to go on. The rock formations were really other worldly. It felt like we’d been transported to the moon!
The fact that we were the only ones on the trail added to the other worldly feeling. I think we would have spent another hour or so just on this trail if the gumbo hadn’t slipped us up so much. And honestly, if we’d known it was a loop trail we would have probably pushed on through, but the thought of having to climb back up some parts of the trail we had slipped down made us turn back. We want to go back when it’s dryer so we can finish the trail without worrying about slipping down the slopes and never getting back out.
Once we slowly made our way back to the trail head we had to spend some time cleaning all of that gumbo out of our hiking boots. It was quite the task.
We took the scenic drive to check out more of the park…and hopefully avoid any more gumbo. It was full of wonderful views, some wildlife and more mud than we want to remember. We’re still cleaning it off our 4Runner! We were so glad to have a 4 wheel drive on this scenic drive…there were many parts we would have missed otherwise. Plus, Jerl had fun getting to actually use the 4 wheel drive function in all the mud and on all the hills!
After the drive and some lunch we headed out for another hike. This hike was supposed to be easy peasy and it was…until we lost the trail. It was after we had scrambled up a hill to get the view above that we realized the trail was gone. We could have just turned around and gone back the way we came, but where’s the fun in that?
Thankfully, by that time of the day, the gumbo and dried and hardened and what would have been thick, slippery, sticky mud was now hard with what seemed like loose gravel on top…so it was still kind of slippery, but at least it wasn’t sticking to everything. After we slid down the picture above we spent some time trying to find the trail again.
We never found the trail and we couldn’t be talked into climbing back up the hill we’d just uncontrollably slid down… so we blazed our own trail! We eventually found a way across a wet, sandy stream and through the field above to the park road…after we ran from a big ol’ danger noodle (snake). I’m not sure who was more surprised. Us or the snake… It was us. We were more surprised and I’ll be honest…I think I ran on top of the grass to get away from it. It’s a good thing Jerl led the boys out of the tall grass back to the road because I don’t do nope ropes. No thank you.
We never found out what kind of danger noodle we saw. We all have different ideas of what it looked like.
We left Makoshika State park very muddy, very tired, with some very cool memories of working together to find our way! We also learned that some of us can run on top of the grass like the elves in Lord of the Rings.
See y’all down the road!
