One family tradition we embrace is the Sunday Drive. We’ll go and explore the beauty of the region we are blessed with. Most of the time we have a few favorite road trips, but today we felt like trying something new. We have friends who post on Facebook now and then about their various road trips, and one that appealed to us was Diamond Fork. Just 6 miles East of the wind towers from Spanish Fork, Utah along US Hwy 6, you turn to the Northeast on Diamond Fork Road. There are a few undeveloped hot springs along the creek a short hike from the road (and I guess there are some hidden ice climbing routes too that I’ll have to look for next winter). We weren’t planning on hiking to a hot springs today, but just driving and exploring a few of the parking areas.
We stopped at the furthest reaches of the Diamond Fork Campground (near the walk-in sites) and the kids wanted to touch the creek, so we hiked down below the bridge, then I impulsively climbed the bridge retainer wall, and the kids followed. Tan needed a little boost. Then they wanted to run up and down a steep sand and dirt hill that I compared to one from a story from my childhood, when we had family reunions at a state park that had a steep sand and dirt and gravel and rock hill on which we played something between capture the flag and king of the hill.
We drove on to the Red Ledges day use area and did a little scrambling and a hike along the red sandstone cliff faces. All the kids had a ton of fun there. We’ll definitely have to bring climbing shoes and do a little friction work on the red slabs next time. We drove on to the fork at the end of the road, but the gate was closed to Hobble Creek returning back to Spanish Fork, so we headed back along Ray’s Canyon to Hwy 6. This was a beautiful road, very high, with aspen and snow patches along the high ridgelines. We saw a lot of hawks, but surprisingly no deer or elk. We eventually descended down to Hwy 6 near the gas station about 15 miles from the wind towers.
It was a really fun day, and now we know a little more about the trails and fun areas, and the hot springs too. We’re totally going to go back and do some camping.
KPICASA_GALLERY(DiamondForkAdventure)
