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The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition: 250 Years Later

Pageant in the Wilderness: Following in the Footsteps of Friars Dominguez & Escalante
Saturday – Monday, September 19-21, 2026 (August 27 – September 17, 1776)

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition through the southwest and I wanted to do a little something special to celebrate the semiquincentennial of this monumental undertaking in my own little way. Although I would have liked to have been able to follow in the footsteps of Dominguez & Escalante (D&E) for the entirety of their route through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona, I just don’t have that kind of free time available to me right now and decided it would be nice to just concentrate on the section of their route that is closest to my home. I planned to pick up their route at the Uncompahgre River in Montrose and then follow in their footsteps as closely as I could over the Grand Mesa and Roan Plateau to the White River, and then finally to the Green River in the Uinta Basin in Utah. I figured that I should be able to cover this part of their route in a weekend, but still, even with this shorter route a weekend would probably be too short for me to see it all and I would be limited on the amount of hiking I would be able to do along the way, sticking mostly to roads that roughly follow their original route.

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The Colorado River: Parachute to Beavertail Mountain

Saturday & Sunday, June 29 & 30, 2024

This weekend Jackson and I set out to continue what we had started two weeks ago by floating two more sections of the Colorado River close to home as day trips. Last time we had started near New Castle and left off at Parachute, so this weekend we planned to float two more sections from Parachute down to Beavertail Mountain in De Beque Canyon, which is a section of just over 28 miles. Although there was a lot of storm activity in the area this weekend, we made sure to to get started early and off the river before noon so we had no issues with weather or wind and the mornings were actually perfect for floating the Colorado River!

Riding Along the Rim of the Grand Mesa

Flowing Park to Point Peninsula
Sunday, August 4, 2019

After spending Saturday morning hiking to the summit of Red Mountain #2 and then going to a concert in the evening, we slept in a little later on Sunday morning before heading out for the day. It has been a while since we have gone on a mountain bike ride, so we decided to head up onto the Grand Mesa for a few hours with our bikes. After looking at a map we decided to give the Flowing Park Trail a try since it looked like there wouldn’t be too much elevation gain and that it would follow along the rim of the Grand Mesa for a while offering us distant views of the surrounding landscape. While I had hoped to ride the full loop when we started, we ended up turning around when we reached Point Peninsula and returning the way we had come. Even though we didn’t ride the entire loop, I do believe this was still our longest mountain bike ride ever, so there’s that. During the last few miles of the ride back to the trailhead we got caught in a storm and were soaked by the time we arrived back at my Jeep. It was a good time!

Tag: alkali creek

The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition: 250 Years Later

The Colorado River: Parachute to Beavertail Mountain

Riding Along the Rim of the Grand Mesa