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Snow Day at The Monument

Sunday, January 6, 2019

This weekend Diane and I stayed home and took it easy, but we did take some time on Sunday afternoon to visit the west side of the Colorado National Monument for a couple of hours during a snowstorm. We drove a snow-packed Rim Rock Drive to its closure gate at the Independence Monument Viewpoint and stopped to take a few photos along the way. We only saw a handful of other vehicles up there braving the winter road conditions. I was hoping to hike a few of the shorter trails along the rim of Wedding Canyon near the Visitor Center in the snow, but once we got up into the Monument we found that the clouds were low and there was no view into the canyons. I didn’t want to hike those trails with no views, so we decided to skip them and only hiked the Alcove Nature Trail this time. I think the last time I hiked this short trail was almost ten years ago, so it was nice to finally revisit it.

Christmas In Arches 2018

Christmas Day | Tuesday, December 25, 2018

On Christmas morning Diane and I woke up early and drove over to Arches National Park so we could continue our annual tradition of hiking to Landscape Arch and making sure that it is still standing for another year! If you are interested in checking out our previous Christmas trips, you can find those here: [2017] [2016] [2015] [2014]. We arrived at the park just as the sun was coming up for the day so I stopped a few times to take photos as we drove to the trailhead in the Devils Garden.

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Christmas Moab Weekend

Moab Area Rock Art XXXII | Saturday & Sunday, December 23-24, 2017

Since we were planning on spending our Christmas in Arches National Park like we do every year, we headed over to Moab on Saturday morning so we could spend the entire holiday weekend in the area. Earlier in the week when I was finalizing our rough plans for the trip I was expecting that there would still be none to minimal snow on the ground for our trip because even though there was a winter storm predicted toward the end of the week, I really didn’t think it would affect the area too much. Boy, was I wrong! Well, actually I was right about the Grand Junction area since we didn’t get any snow that stuck around, however, the storm seemed to be centered right over the area surrounding Moab and dumped about 6-10 inches there! We tried to continue on with our original plans at first, but we ended up having to cancel or change some of the hikes since they would have been too dangerous with all the snow and ice on the ground, even with our microspikes. In the end I acted as a tour guide for Diane as we revisited many easily accessible rock art sites that I hadn’t been to in a while.

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Christmas in Arches 2016

Christmas Day | Sunday, December 25, 2016

Since it’s become our annual tradition, Diane and I would again spend Christmas Day hiking in Arches National Park. (Previous trip reports from 2015 and 2014.) Overnight it had rained pretty hard in Moab and the forecast was also calling for snow. When we left the hotel before sunrise there was still no snow and the ground. However, as we drove into the park it did start to snow pretty hard and would continue to do so until we reached Landscape Arch in Devil’s Garden. It was very windy and cold out during this hike, and even though the sun would come out later in the morning and the temperature would rise a little, the wind kept blowing making it feel much colder out than it really was.

Return to the Colorado National Monument

Monday, May 9, 2016

It’s been a while since the last time I took a drive through the Colorado National Monument and it’s also been a while since I’ve gone out specifically to take photos around sunrise or sunset. After all the rain we’ve been having in the Grand Valley lately, it looked like the storms were finally clearing out this evening so I decided to take a drive on Rim Rock Drive in the west section of the park this evening and stopped at a few of the viewpoints along the way to take a couple of photos.

Tag: balanced rock

Snow Day at The Monument

Christmas In Arches 2018

Christmas Moab Weekend

Christmas in Arches 2016

Return to the Colorado National Monument