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Category: Camping

President’s Day Weekend on Cedar Mesa

Saturday – Monday, February 14-16, 2015

Diane and I spent Valentine’s Day and the long President’s Day weekend on Cedar Mesa for our very first camping trip of the year. We setup our base-camp at the Natural Bridges National Monument campground and enjoyed the beautiful spring-like weather all weekend. The temperature never dropped below freezing at night and was a very comfortable mid-sixties during the day. It was nice hiking weather in the middle of February and a great time to get outside to explore the Colorado Plateau! We spent the weekend revisiting a few ruins and searching remote canyons for new ones. Here are plenty of photos from our weekend adventure!

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Cedar Mesa for Thanksgiving

Thursday – Sunday, November 27-30, 2014

For Thanksgiving this year, Diane and I decided to spend a nice relaxing weekend on Cedar Mesa and we really lucked out with nice weather all weekend. The high temperatures were in the upper 50’s during the day and low temperatures only dropped into the mid-30’s at night. We had camped in colder temperatures in the mountains during the summer! The campground at Natural Bridges National Monument made a perfect base-camp for us, which also happened to be free during the winter months and was a nice surprise. Diane had prepared a nice Thanksgiving dinner that we ate next to the campfire on Thursday night. The rest of the weekend we hiked in search of ruins and rock art. We ended up visiting many ruins that I had been to a long time ago and that Diane had never been to before, which allowed me to try and get some better photos of them. We explored a few new areas, too. Enjoy the photos from our weekend!

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Winter Camp Ridge

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Winter Camp Ridge is an obscure place located north of Arches National Park near The Highlands. Most people bypass this area as they are heading elsewhere in the region, but I always seem to be drawn back to this location every so often. My first time here was when I was out exploring the backroads of the Yellow Cat area and took the sandy two-track onto Winter Camp Ridge to see where it went. The road ended up bringing me to the Arches National Park boundary not too far from Delicate Arch. Since that first trip I have always wanted to try and hike to Delicate Arch from this road. That’s what Diane and I planned to attempt this weekend.

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A Needles Tour

Friday – Sunday, October 24-26, 2014

Since Diane and I had a great long weekend in The Maze over Memorial Day weekend I wanted to show her some of my favorite places in The Needles district this weekend so she could experience more of Canyonlands National Park. Plus, I’ve been having a great year in Canyonlands by finally completing the White Rim and backpacking Salt Creek Canyon, so I wanted to keep the momentum going!

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Red Breaks to the Escalante Volcano

Southern Utah Wanderings
Saturday, October 11, 2014

On Saturday morning we woke up before the sun came up and were able to watch the sunrise as we drove down the Old Sheffield Road to it’s end near the Red Breaks. Today we would be hiking to the unusual sandstone formation known as the Escalante Volcano. This interesting landform is known by many names including the Red Breaks Crater, Cosmic Ashtray, Cosmic Navel and Islomania Dome, but I’m just going to stick to simply calling it the Volcano.

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