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Tag: granary

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 14

Friday – Sunday, February 21-23, 2025

After returning home from northeastern Arizona on Monday, I decided to take it easier this weekend and return to the canyons of Cedar Mesa to walk a few sections of the canyons. While I was hoping to find a few new ruins and rock art sites along the way, I also took the time to return to a canyon I have hiked many times before so I could revisit some sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade and wanted to see again. The weather was very nice all weekend, perfect for hiking and camping, and I had a nice time walking in the canyons. These are some photos from my weekend on Cedar Mesa.

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Rock Art of Nine Mile Canyon 2025

Saturday & Sunday, February 8-9, 2025

Although we were hoping to make it back into Nine Mile Canyon late last year, that never ended up happening so I figured it would be nice to get back into the canyon early this year and made plans for a weekend visit just a couple of days before my birthday. At least we didn’t wait another five years to return like the last time! Even though the week leading up to this trip had been unseasonably warm across the Colorado Plateau, a cold front had finally passed through the region on Friday night and dropped temperatures back to normal for this time of the year, and we saw early morning temperatures get down into the teens and single digits, but daytime temperatures were comfortable in the 40’s. Diane and I left home early on Saturday morning and then we spent most of the weekend searching for new petroglyphs in Nine Mile Canyon while also stopping to revisit sites we’ve been to before along the way. Here are some photos from our weekend exploring the world’s longest art gallery.

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Poking Around the Pockets of Horse Canyon

Canyonlands National Park | Saturday & Sunday, February 1-2, 2025

With warmer than seasonal temperatures and overall nice weather expected across the Colorado Plateau this weekend, I thought this would be a great time to get back into the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park for the first time this year. Since we’ve had a pretty dry winter so far this season and the road into Horse Canyon was actually open, I also thought this would be a great opportunity to get back into that elusive canyon. I met up with a friend on Saturday morning and we spent the entire weekend poking around the pockets of Horse Canyon to see what we would find along the way…

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Below the Bears Ears: Thanksgiving Weekend 2024

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 13 | Thursday – Sunday, November 28 – December 1, 2024

This year for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend Diane and I returned to the landscape surrounding the Bears Ears and spent all four days wandering a selection of canyons and rims carved into Cedar Mesa and beyond. Our time was split between searching for new sites and revisiting sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade but were mostly new to Diane. We saw quite a bit more rock art this time around with only a few ruins scattered throughout our hikes. In the end we had another great weekend exploring one of our favorite places together and look forward to returning again and again. These are some photos of what we saw.

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The Kaibab Plateau: Cape Final to Point Sublime

Fall Colors along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon
Saturday – Monday, September 28-30, 2024

After spending the preceding week on an amazing rafting trip through the Canyon of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument, our group got off the river in the early afternoon on Friday and I made it home a few hours after that. Then I spent the rest of the evening unloading all my river gear and packing up my car-camping gear into the Jeep so I could leave on Saturday morning to spend a full week along the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon with my friend Jared. Although we typically spend this first week in October wandering around Southern Utah, every so often we like to change it up and venture a little further south into Arizona. Thankfully we decided to begin our trip with a couple days on the Kaibab Plateau because it happened to be very warm all over the southwest this week and at least it was a little bit cooler up at these higher elevations. Plus, we got really lucky with the timing of our trip and managed to see the peak of the fall colors on display while we were up on the Kaibab Plateau, too!

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