black friday // ADVENTR.co

Thanksgiving Under the Bears Ears

Thanksgiving Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, November 22-25, 2018

This year Diane and I kept our annual tradition of spending the long Thanksgiving weekend searching for ruins and rock art on Cedar Mesa alive. (Not counting that one year we went to New Mexico instead, of course.) Although the mountains of Colorado got a lot of much-needed snow over the holiday weekend, the precipitation mostly missed the Four Corners region and we had very pleasant hiking weather just about every day. The higher elevations of Cedar Mesa and Elk Ridge did receive a little snow on Thursday evening, but it had pretty much all melted off by Friday afternoon. As usual, we found some new sites and revisited some of our favorites, too. It wasn’t planned, but we ended up visiting three different kivas that were all pretty well-preserved and had a great weekend exploring one of my favorite areas in the southwest! Check out all the photos from our Thanksgiving adventure below!

Thanksgiving In The Bears Ears

Thanksgiving Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, November 23-26, 2017

Except for last year, it has been kind of a tradition for Diane and I to spend the long Thanksgiving Weekend exploring southern Utah around Cedar Mesa, Comb Ridge and Montezuma Canyon. This year was our first Thanksgiving in the area since it was officially designated as Bears Ears National Monument late last year. Of course, at this point it’s not certain how much longer this Monument will be around in its current form…

3 Comments

Black Friday in Chaco Canyon

Black Friday | Friday, November 25, 2016

After a great day exploring the Bisti Badlands, Diane and I would be spending Black Friday checking out the massive ruins at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It’s been over 5 years since my last visit to Chaco Canyon and I was looking forward to returning. Diane had never been here before and she had a great time seeing all of the impressive ruins for the very first time. Besides visiting all of the easy-to-access ruins along the loop road, we would also hike the Pueblo Alto Trail which is one of the few trails I had not hiked in the park yet. We spent all day in the park and had a really great time!

Thanksgiving Weekend with The Ancients

Friday – Sunday, November 27-29, 2015

This year Diane and I spent Black Friday and rest of the Thanksgiving Weekend hiking and searching for ancient ruins and rock art in southeast Utah. Instead of camping at Natural Bridges National Monument like we did last year, this time we based out of a hotel in Blanding. I think it was a good decision since temperatures were a bit colder than I would have preferred, although we were lucky enough not to get any snow over the weekend like they did back home in Grand Junction. We ended up spending time in Montezuma Canyon, Cedar Mesa and along Comb Ridge throughout the weekend. We got to explore new areas and find a few new sites, plus we also revisited some old ones. It was a nice holiday weekend.

5 Comments

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!