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Nine Mile Canyon 2018

Diane’s Birthday Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, October 20-21, 2018

Since it was Diane’s birthday was on Saturday and she wanted to spend the weekend in Nine Mile Canyon, that’s what we did! It actually worked out great since neither of us had been there yet this year and I like to try to get there at least once each year. We left home early on Saturday morning, stopped at the gas station in Wellington and then headed right into the canyon to see what we could find. There was nothing in particular that I was looking for on this trip, so we just drove slowly through the canyon and kept an eye out to see what we could find. It’s really amazing that no matter how many times I have driven through this canyon we were still able to find quite a few new petroglyphs and pictographs, and even a couple ruins. We spent all day in the canyon and then returned to Wellington where we took a little break from camping and spent the night in a hotel. Then on Sunday morning we were back in the canyon for a few more hours before heading back home. It was a great time! Here are plenty of photos from the weekend.

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Petroglyphs of the Waterpocket Fold

Southern Utah Wanderings | Backcountry Petroglyphs of Capitol Reef
Monday – Tuesday, October 1-2, 2018

After spending Sunday evening and Monday morning in Salt Lake City it was finally time to start my annual October trip to southern Utah. I planned on starting off the week by searching for some remote and little-known petroglyphs hidden in the backcountry of Capitol Reef National Park with my friend Jared. On our drive back from Salt Lake City, Diane and I stopped at Dennis‘ house in Price to pick up my Jeep. I had left my Jeep there on Saturday morning so we wouldn’t have to drive both of our vehicles all the way to Salt Lake City and I wouldn’t have to go all the way back home to Grand Junction to get it afterwards. From Price Diane headed back home and I made my way over to Torrey where I would be meeting up with Jared who had already been hiking in Capitol Reef all weekend. One nice thing about driving from Price to Torrey was that it finally gave me an opportunity to drive Highway 72 from I-70 to Loa through the eastern edge of Fishlake National Forest.

Dinosaur Memorial Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend | Thursday – Monday, May 24-28, 2018

After four years of going on our annual Maze Memorial Weekend trip we decided it was time to move that trip up into early April for cooler temperatures and less bugs, which meant that we needed to find somewhere else to explore over the Memorial Day weekend this year. After some thought we settled on visiting Dinosaur National Monument because we hoped it would be a little cooler at this time of the year and I felt it was time to finally start getting to know this area of Utah and Colorado a little more intimately. Plus, there are a lot of places around Dinosaur that I’ve wanted to revisit and I was pretty sure that the park wouldn’t be too busy away from the main Dinosaur Bone Quarry. Little did we know that this weekend was going to be pretty warm all over the Colorado Plateau!

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Muddy Creek Country

The Grand Gorge of Muddy Creek & Skyline Rim
Friday – Sunday, May 11-13, 2018

This weekend I left after work on Friday and headed down into Muddy Creek Country at the southern end of the San Rafael Swell. I have wanted to hike into the Grand Gorge of Muddy Creek for many years now and decided it was finally time to go do it! As I was driving west into Utah there was a pretty strong headwind which killed my fuel mileage, but since the weather forecast was predicting strong winds all weekend, I was expecting it. I just hoped that the wind gusts wouldn’t interfere with my plans too much. It’s just the typical spring weather on the Colorado Plateau! I made a quick stop in Green River to fill up my tank and then continued up onto the Swell where I planned to spend the night near the old Hidden Splendor Mine.

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From the Colorado River to the Henry Mountains

Friday – Sunday, May 4-6, 2018

This weekend Diane and I headed back to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area so we could hike to a few rock art sites that we didn’t have time to look for during our trip into The Maze last month. Then we spent the rest of the weekend exploring parts of North Wash and Cedar Point as we headed back toward the edge of the Henry Mountains south of Hanksville. We left after I got out of work on Friday afternoon and drove west into Utah, like we’ve done many times this year already. We stopped in Green River for dinner and fuel, which thankfully was not nearly as busy as the last time we tried to stop here! Then we continued south through Hanksville and followed North Wash into the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area near Hite. I made a left turn onto the road that leads to the Flint Trail and followed it around Rock Canyon to Andy Miller Flats where we found a nice campsite for the night. It had been dark for a while by the time we found a spot to setup our camp, so we had to put up our tent with some help from the headlights on my Jeep. Once the tent was setup we crawled inside and went right to bed, and Diane tells me that I fell asleep very quickly this night.