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Tag: full moon

The Search for the Sky Faces

Friday & Saturday, December 1-2, 2017

A few years back I came across an old photo of some pictographs I was unfamiliar with called the Sky Faces. Since I’ve enjoyed visiting many of the other ‘Faces Motif’ pictographs in the Canyonlands region (Four Faces, Five Faces, Thirteen Faces, etc.), I decided to try and track them down. It took me a few years, but I was finally able to figure out their location earlier this year and wanted to try and get to them before the year was over. Back in October Jared and I tried to hike to them, but we were unable to reach them via the route we took. With warmer weather sticking around this weekend I decided to head down to Canyonlands National Park after work on Friday and go on a long hike to reach the pictographs on Saturday. I ended up spending Friday night just outside the park in Bears Ears National Monument, which may have been the last time? Looking at the new maps of the Monument, I guess I would have been camped in what is now going to be the Indian Creek National Monument.

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Grand Mesa Colors

Fall Colors 2015
Color Sunday | Sunday, September 27, 2015

Since I had only spent the day in the San Juan Mountains on Saturday, Diane and I decided to drive up onto the Grand Mesa for a few hours to check out the fall colors up there on Sunday afternoon. We took the Grand Mesa Scenic Byway via Plateau Creek to the Land O Lakes Trail where we stopped and went on the short hike to the overlook.

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Mount Sopris: Northern Sentinel of the Elk Mountains

Saturday & Sunday, August 29-30, 2015

Even though it’s less than fifty feet shy of registering as one of Colorado’s 13,000 foot peaks, Mount Sopris (12,953) dominates the skyline over Carbondale and the lower Roaring Fork Valley and stands as the northern sentinel of the Elk Mountains. The surrounding Roaring Fork and Crystal River drainages give Mount Sopris vertical prominence that few other mountains in Colorado can match, rising over 6,000 feet in just a few miles. Mount Sopris is also notable for having two summits that are one-half mile apart and equal in elevation.

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Cedar Mesa & Beyond

Friday – Sunday, March 14-16, 2014

On Friday morning, Diane and I headed south towards Cedar Mesa in southern Utah to spend a long weekend hiking, camping and searching for some new rock art sites along the way. While the weather was nice during the days it was still a bit cold overnight and in the mornings, especially on Sunday morning when it dropped down to the low 20’s when we woke up around sunrise. Friday was a little breezy with nice clouds in the sky but Saturday was very windy. We got sand-blasted on Saturday pretty good while searching boulders for petroglyphs in the afternoon. When Sunday arrived the winds had finally calmed down and the skies had cleared. We had a great weekend and managed to find everything we were looking for.

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The Monument at Night

Friday, December 28, 2012

With the full moon out tonight, I thought it would be fun to head up to the Colorado National Monument again and try to get a few photos of the canyons and spires lit by the moonlight with the city lights of Grand Junction and Fruita in the background. Thanks to an inversion, the temperatures in the valley were pretty cold but, it was much nicer up on the Monument.

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