Day 3 - Tuesday, September 28 - Monument Creek Camp - 9:12pm

We have been referring up 8pm as "hiker midnight" as it is very dark by then and not much to do but crawl into the bag and go to sleep.

We had some more rain on and off during the night but it had stopped by morning. The tarp under the tent is too small and some water managed to get in under Michael's sleeping bag. Luckily it is just a little damp and not soaked.

I made myself a freeze-dried breakfast scramble meal and used up my last two tortillas to make a couple of small breakfast burritos. They were actually quite good. After we had finished breakfast we were invited to partake of the river party breakfast as well, so, of course, we did. There was bacon, which I did not eat, but also French toast with syrup, which I did. Gotta love second breakfasts!

We waited for the river party to break camp and then waited below the rapid to get some photos and videos of them running it.

After they finished their run and disappeared down river we started the hike up to this campsite at upper Monument Creek. We started up around 900 and it took less than 1.5 hours, about 1:20, a nice easy day. It was a lot warmer up here than it was down at the river and the campsite we have does not have much in the way of shade.

We filtered all the water we could hold and hopefully have enough for dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow and the hike out. We just ate some snacky stuff for lunch.

After lunch Michael and I went to explore the upper section of the granite narrows of Monument Creek. We went as far as we could without getting to the point where we might get stuck and have to go all the way down.

It was still somewhat sunny and warm at camp but I managed to find a nice shady spot for us to sit for the afternoon and wait for the campsite to get into shade.

I had my three-cheese mac and cheese meal for dinner tonight and that tasted pretty good, much better than Sunday night's meal. It's one of my favorites and maybe I should just bring along for every meal from now on.

The sky was clear after the sun set and I could see the Milky Way above our camp so I took some more photos before calling it a night.