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Tag: great sage plain

Hovenweep’s Centennial and the Great Sage PlainHovenweep's Centennial and the Great Sage Plain

Hovenweep’s Centennial and the Great Sage Plain

Hovenweep National Monument & Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
Saturday – Monday, October 21-23, 2023

It feels like it’s been quite a while since the last time I visited and spent some quality time in Hovenweep National Monument and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and I’ve been really meaning to get back down to that area for the past couple of years, but it just hadn’t seemed to happen yet as I keep putting it off for other trips. However, this year I made it a priority to get back with Diane so we could celebrate Hovenweep’s Centennial year since it was proclaimed a unit of the National Park System on March 2, 1923 by President Warren G. Harding. I also figured that this would be a great opportunity for Diane to visit the units of the park she had not been to before and I would be able to hike the few remaining trails in Hovenweep that I had not been on before and could finally cross this park off my ‘completed trails’ list. So early on Saturday morning Diane and I loaded up the Jeep and headed south along the Colorado – Utah state line to spend an extended three-day weekend exploring Hovenweep and other canyons of the Great Sage Plain!

CONTINUE READINGHovenweep’s Centennial and the Great Sage Plain
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Chapin Mesa at Mesa Verde National ParkChapin Mesa at Mesa Verde National Park

Chapin Mesa at Mesa Verde National Park

Thursday & Friday, October 12-13, 2023

For the past year or so, Diane and I have been planning to spend an extended three-day weekend in southern Utah so we could watch the Annular Solar Eclipse that would be occurring on Saturday morning. A month or so back we found out that she would also have Thursday off from work, so I went ahead and grabbed two permits for the Square Tower House Tour at Mesa Verde National Park because it’s the only tour offered in the park this year that we had not been on before. Since we had such a great time exploring Wetherill Mesa last summer I thought it would be a great idea copy that trip and spend the entire day visiting sites and overlooks on Chapin Mesa this time, especially the ones I hadn’t been to before or just don’t remember all too well. In the end we would spend sunup to sunset on Chapin Mesa and have a pretty great day, even if it was a bit windy and chilly out!

CONTINUE READINGChapin Mesa at Mesa Verde National Park
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Into the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores RiverInto the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River

Into the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River

Dolores Canyon: Bradfield Bridge to Mountain Sheep Point
Friday & Saturday, May 26-27, 2023 | Average CFS: 2,400

After spending the last couple of weekends on the river, Jackson and I wanted to keep the streak going with three different day trips planned over this extended Memorial Day weekend. For our first destination on Saturday we were going to float a section of the Dolores River below the McPhee Reservoir from Bradfield Bridge to Mountain Sheep Point that is known as the Ponderosa Gorge. This nineteen-mile section of the Dolores River is known for it’s quick pace, spectacular campsites, soaring cliffs of red sandstone and of course the tall stands of ponderosa pines. Diane and I had visited the Dolores Canyon Overlook on our way to Mesa Verde last year which looks down into this portion of the Dolores Canyon, so I was really looking forward to seeing the canyon from the river this time!

CONTINUE READINGInto the Ponderosa Gorge of the Dolores River
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Exploring Desert Stone: East Canyon to Harts DrawExploring Desert Stone: East Canyon to Harts Draw

Exploring Desert Stone: East Canyon to Harts Draw

Tracing the Historic Route of the 1859 Macomb Expedition, Part I
Friday – Sunday, November 4-6, 2022

After being sick and stuck at home over the past two weekends I was really ready to get back outdoors again this weekend! Since I haven’t done much hiking in a couple of weeks I wanted to take it easy this weekend and thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finally start on a project that I have been thinking about doing for over a decade. That project would be to follow part of the historic route of the 1859 Macomb Expedition into the Canyonlands region. Members of a small detachment from this expedition were quite possibly the first non-native Americans to view and describe what is now Canyonlands National Park and leave written and graphic records of what they saw.

CONTINUE READINGExploring Desert Stone: East Canyon to Harts Draw
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The Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo MountainsThe Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo Mountains

The Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo Mountains

Three Directions in the Blue Mountains | Friday – Sunday, August 5-7, 2022

This past week I had been struggling to decide where I wanted to go this weekend as I continually watched the weather forecasts for the mountains since all of them were calling for a large monsoonal surge to enter Colorado which was supposed to create a lot of rain and thunderstorms throughout the high country of the state. On Thursday I decided to look outside of Colorado to the Abajo Mountains, locally known as the Blue Mountains, which had a much milder weather outlook for the weekend, so that’s where I decided to go. As luck would have it, on Friday all the weather forecasters changed their tune about the stormy weather in Colorado for the weekend, but by then I had already set my mind on heading up into the Abajos, plus it has been a while since I did any hiking in this small laccolithic range, so now I was looking forward to getting back!

CONTINUE READINGThe Summertime Blues: Hiking the Abajo Mountains
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