Where’s Nico?

“Hands on the Wheel” is the penultimate track (side note: I have an unreasonable love of the word ‘penultimate’) on the classic country concept album from 1975, “Red Headed Stranger”. It’s a beautiful song – kind of the tale of redemption that the Red Headed Stranger finds in his final years. This blog title was actually a request – my uncle Bob didn’t think it’d be right for us to have a Willie Nelson themed trip and not use this song. And it just so happens to be an appropriate title for this blog post, because we are in the middle of a pretty strong wind storm in southeastern Utah, and when we’re driving, we most definitely need our hands on the wheel at the moment!

Don’t worry, Willie! I kept a firm grip on the wheel! It’s all good!

“Southeastern Utah? That could be so many different amazing places! We need to know… Where’s Nico???”

Well, actually it’s kind of hard to say where Nico is at the moment! We are camping on some open land owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – it’s not a National Park or National Forest, so it doesn’t have a specific name. As you can tell from the picture, we’ve got plenty of space to ourselves here.

If you were to look on a map (and as a reminder, you can follow Nico on the map here), we’re about ten miles west of Hanksville, Utah, kind of in between Capitol Reef to our west and Canyonlands to our east. We’re fairly close to Goblin Valley State Park, which we haven’t explored yet but hope to while we’re in the area.

We just arrived here three days ago, and on our first full day, we hiked the very impressive Leprechaun Canyon and the several slot canyons it contains. I included a bunch of photos below, because the views were amazing there! The WordPress site limits me on total space and on video clips, but I included several cool videos that we took on both my phone and on Kristen’s drone on Nico’s Facebook page at this link. Meanwhile, here are some pics:

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Last we chatted, we were enjoying Coconino National Forest. We did a little more adventuring in that area since then, and then we drove up to Valley of the Gods, near Mexican Hat, Utah for a day and a half, and then drove up here (by the way, the drive from Valley of the Gods to our current location is one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever seen!).

During the Coconino stay, we hiked the Transept Trail a second time, and took in the Woods Canyon and Boynton Canyon trails as well.

The Boynton Canyon trail also gave me the opportunity to reenact both the Karate Kid and the Lion King!

Mr. Miyagi approved!

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I mentioned the Valley of the Gods a little bit back in this post. It’s in the Bears Ears National Monument in very southern Utah. We only stayed there for one full day, and there wasn’t really much in the way of hiking in the area, but there’s a really neat 17 mile loop you can drive that was beautiful. There’s also a crazy drive up to the top of a mesa called the Moki Dugway – it was really cool! We tried to get some drone footage of the drive back down the Moki, but it sadly didn’t turn out. But we did get some cool drone footage of the Valley of the Gods area, and you can see them on Nico’s Facebook page here.

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One last thing I wanted to include in here before we get to ANA was to wish everyone a happy Fat Tuesday! Kristen grew up in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where Mardi Gras was a big deal. In recent years, as she told me more and more about the traditions, we’ve gotten to where we like to cook up some fine creole dinners (my personal favorite is red beans and rice), and often make up a king cake. We skipped the king cake this year, as our fridge space is pretty limited and Kristen had just made up a fantastic peach pie we’re working through, but we did up the red beans and rice, and put YouTube on the TV so we could stream some Mardi Gras parades. We actually have a favorite parade – the Mammoth Parade in Mobile, Alabama. I’ve never been to Mobile in my life, but the joy and enthusiasm pours through the video as we watch it. We go back to this particular video pretty much every year as part of our celebration. Anyhoo – happy Fat Tuesday everyone!

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ANA (Ask Nico Anything!)

Nico, what is the meaning of life?

Wow. Dis prety beeg questin. Ar you shure dat asking tree yere old chiwahwah is bes way to figger dis out? As far as Nico go, I tink dat I like wen peeples give me luv and I gives dem luv. Dat makes me hap. I like to take time to hike out to prity plases and see prity veews, espeshally wen I do hike wid mama and papa and peeples I luv. If I does a lot of dat, it sownz like gud life. I tink de beetle peeples were rite.

Are we alone, Nico?

Uh… “we” arnt togeder rite now as you ask dis kwestin. I can’t see you thru dis compooter skrene, so I dont not no if you alone or not. I no I’m not alone – I have de mama and papa wid me.

Papa jus tol me dat you may mene are hoomanz on earth alone in dis big uniferze. I don’t know de anser. But I like de ideaz of space bacon. So hopefolly dat out dere somewarez.

Nico, how do you get going in the morning? Doing those long hikes on those little chihuahua legs must be hard!

I have speshal treet for you. You may notis dat Nico has an “outtie” for his bely butt. Mama use dis to get Nico jooses go in morn. If you wants to see de processes, clik here.

– Ken, 2/18/2026