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Rambling Around Robbers Roost

Maze Memorial Weekend IV | Memorial Day Weekend
Friday – Monday, May 26-29, 2017

After spending the last three Memorial Day Weekends in and around The Maze District of Canyonlands National Park, this year we decided to skip visiting The Maze proper and stayed on top of The Orange Cliffs in Robbers Roost country. As usual, we left home after work on Friday evening and headed west into Utah. We stopped for a quick dinner and to fuel up the Jeep in Green River and then made our way to the Hans Flat Ranger Station to pickup our permit for the weekend. The wind was pretty brutal this evening and it really took a toll on my fuel mileage during the drive. There was a lot of sand blowing across the road to Hans Flat in places, but the sky and light was pretty nice during the drive. It looked like there was a good chance for one nice sunset before the clouds disappeared for the remainder of the weekend.

Sulphur Creek & Pleasant Creek

Saturday & Sunday, May 13-14, 2017

Sulphur Creek is a canyon in Capitol Reef National Park that I have wanted to hike for way too long, and since I’m making an effort this year to go to places that have been on my to-do list for a long time it was finally time to give it a shot. Diane and I left home very early on Saturday morning and drove west through Green River and Hanksville on our way to Fruita in Capitol Reef. We made a brief stop at the Visitor Center to drop off my bike and then continued down the road a few more miles to the Chimney Rock Trailhead.

Birthday Weekend in Capitol Reef

President’s Day Weekend | Saturday – Monday, February 13-15, 2016

This year I decided to head down to Capitol Reef National Park for my birthday weekend. It’s always nice that my birthday is near President’s Day so I usually have a three day weekend to enjoy. While I’ve spent some time in Capitol Reef before, it’s typically been to the backcountry areas of the park. This trip I was planning on spending most of our time in the area surrounding Fruita and the Fremont River. This part of the park is usually the busiest, especially in the spring and fall, and I was hoping the crowds would still be small this time of the year, even on a fee-free holiday weekend.

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Little Wild Horse Canyon & Bell Canyon

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Years ago I tried hiking into Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon, which are slot canyons that cut through the San Rafael Reef near Goblin Valley State Park, but I was chased away by thunderstorms that day and have never returned to try again. Since that time the popularity of these slot canyons have exploded, which is part of the reason I had never bothered to return. I finally decided that it was time to head back this weekend to hike these San Rafael Swell classics. I was hoping that we wouldn’t run into the large crowds that these canyons attract since it’s the middle of winter, and we didn’t. We would only pass one single hiker during our entire hike and that happened on the old road used to connect the two canyons together to form a loop.

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Happy Canyon & Poison Springs

Friday – Sunday, April 5-7, 2013

After work on Friday I headed back into Utah to meet a few friends in Poison Springs Canyon so that we could hike to Happy Canyon on Saturday and then spend some time visiting a few rock art sites on Sunday. I quickly made it to Hanksville and then to the turn-off for Poison Springs Canyon where I met up with Lisa. Since she was the only one in our group without a high clearance vehicle, she loaded her camping gear into my Jeep and we found a place to leave her car for the weekend. It started to get dark as we drove into the canyon in search of the rest of our party. I was under the impression that they were planning on camping near the Black Jump, but they were nowhere to be found in that area. We took the side road towards the Happy Canyon trailhead and decided just to camp along that road since we couldn’t find anyone else and it was getting pretty dark out by this time. We would search for them in the morning. We quickly setup camp and were soon getting some sleep. I got up early enough on Saturday morning to catch the sunrise.