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Below the Bears Ears: Thanksgiving Weekend 2024

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 13 | Thursday – Sunday, November 28 – December 1, 2024

This year for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend Diane and I returned to the landscape surrounding the Bears Ears and spent all four days wandering a selection of canyons and rims carved into Cedar Mesa and beyond. Our time was split between searching for new sites and revisiting sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade but were mostly new to Diane. We saw quite a bit more rock art this time around with only a few ruins scattered throughout our hikes. In the end we had another great weekend exploring one of our favorite places together and look forward to returning again and again. These are some photos of what we saw.

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Written In Stone at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

Lost in the Land of Enchantment | Friday, November 15, 2024

After our brief detour into Texas to explore Hueco Tanks State Park, we returned to the Land of Enchantment on Thursday evening and spent the night in Alamogordo, which is a favorite stopping place for us whenever we are in the area. Then we were up early on Friday morning so we could spend the majority of our day wandering through the boulders found on top of the ridge at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. This would be our third visit to this amazing ancient site and it seems that we find quite a few new petroglyphs every time we are here! Although we couldn’t stay all day this time because we were going to be meeting up with the family of one of Diane’s friends who live in nearby Carrizozo, I think we might have finally begun to scratch the surface of what can be found here and we are already looking forward to our next visit, whenever that might be. Below are just a small selection of all the interesting and unusual petroglyphs we saw on this visit to Three Rivers.

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Carlsbad Caverns National Park and the Guadalupes

Lost in the Land of Enchantment | Monday – Wednesday, November 11-13, 2024

After spending a cold and snowy weekend at Bandelier National Monument and elsewhere around the Pajarito Plateau we headed further south into New Mexico until we reached Carlsbad, which is located in the Permian Basin just east of the Guadalupe Mountains. It was quite a bit warmer here which was a pleasant change from the previous couple of days further north. After checking in to our hotel we still had plenty of daylight left, so we drove over to Carlsbad Caverns National Park so we could start getting acquainted with the park and maybe even find a place to catch the sunset. This turned out to be an excellent idea because as we entered the park we noticed a sign that said there was a Bat Flight program this evening at the Bat Flight Amphitheater. According to the park’s website the Bat Flight Program only takes places from Memorial Day weekend through October, so I didn’t think we would be able to go to one on this trip, but since it was still happening we were excited to check it out!

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Mystery Valley at the Monument Valley Tribal Park

Sunday, October 20, 2024

After spending Saturday at Wupatki and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monuments, we stayed at a hotel in Kayenta for the night and then got up early on Sunday so we could spend the morning going on a private tour of Mystery Valley near Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation, which I had arranged a few weeks prior with Navajo Spirit Tours. It’s been over a decade since I last visited Monument Valley (aside from just driving through on the highway) and I’ve long wanted to see the ruins and rock art of Mystery Valley, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to finally go on a tour while we were in the area. We arrived at the Navajo Welcome Center shortly before 8:00am to meet up with our guide and then we hopped into his vehicle and took off to spend a few hours learning about the secrets of Mystery Valley!

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The Kaibab Plateau: Cape Final to Point Sublime

Fall Colors along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon
Saturday – Monday, September 28-30, 2024

After spending the preceding week on an amazing rafting trip through the Canyon of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument, our group got off the river in the early afternoon on Friday and I made it home a few hours after that. Then I spent the rest of the evening unloading all my river gear and packing up my car-camping gear into the Jeep so I could leave on Saturday morning to spend a full week along the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon with my friend Jared. Although we typically spend this first week in October wandering around Southern Utah, every so often we like to change it up and venture a little further south into Arizona. Thankfully we decided to begin our trip with a couple days on the Kaibab Plateau because it happened to be very warm all over the southwest this week and at least it was a little bit cooler up at these higher elevations. Plus, we got really lucky with the timing of our trip and managed to see the peak of the fall colors on display while we were up on the Kaibab Plateau, too!