moab meanderings // ADVENTR.co

Moab Meanderings: Grandstaff Canyon & Sand Flats

Sand Flats Recreation Area II | Saturday & Sunday, December 27-28, 2025

Well, this is it- my final Trip Report of 2025! For this final weekend of the year I returned to the landscape surrounding Moab so I could spend my time hiking and exploring Grandstaff Canyon. While I vaguely recall hiking the popular trail from the mouth of Grandstaff Canyon to Morning Glory Bridge way back in 2010 with my friend Jackson when the canyon was known by a more racially insensitive name, for some reason I do not have any photos or even a Trip Report from that day, which is very unusual for me, so I planned to re-hike that trail early on Sunday morning to refresh my memory and take a few photos along the way. Since I would be doing that on Sunday I figured that it would be interesting to spend Saturday exploring other parts of Grandstaff Canyon so I could get a better overview of the area, and that’s what I set out to do when I left home bright and early on Saturday morning and made my way over to the Sand Flats Recreation Area.

Moab Winter Solstice Weekend 2025

Moab Area Rock Art XLVIII | Saturday & Sunday, December 20-21, 2025

It’s that time of the year again when the massive crowds are mostly gone and I can start returning to the slickrock landscape surrounding Moab on the weekends for a few short months during the winter. Throughout the busier times of the year my list of hikes and areas to explore around Moab has steadily been growing and I’ve been looking forward to getting back. This weekend I decided to spend this Winter Solstice searching for a couple of new rock art sites while also revisiting some sites that I haven’t been back to in about a decade. Of course, this weekend didn’t really feel anything like winter since the weather was very mild with high temperatures that were almost into the 60’s. These are some pictures of what I saw this weekend on the shortest days of the year.

3 Comments

Moab Meanderings: Moab Area Rock Art XLVII

Saturday – Sunday, December 28-29, 2024

For the final weekend of 2024 I returned to the sandstone landscape surrounding Moab and met up with a friend so we could spend another weekend exploring, hiking, camping and searching for some petroglyphs that I have been trying to find for a while, and we ended up having a lot of luck this time! We were also treated to the sight of fog filling up some of the valleys on both mornings which made for some photogenic conditions, even if it did slow down my drive to Moab quite significantly on Saturday morning. I’ll start off this Trip Report with a few photos from the sunrise I watched at Arches National Park on Sunday morning since it was a great way to close out the year. I hope you all have a great 2025!

Moab Winter Solstice Weekend 2024

Moab Area Rock Art XLV | Saturday – Sunday, December 21-22, 2024

On this weekend before Christmas, Diane and I headed down to Moab so we could spend the Winter Solstice together revisiting a couple of rock art sites that I haven’t been back to in quite some time and so we could also check out a couple of new places and canyons along the way. We left home early on Saturday morning and made our way down along the Colorado River to the Poison Spider Trailhead, which apparently was paved in the last few months, so we could revisit the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks above the river and then hike over to Longbow Arch from here.

1 Comment

Moab Meanderings: Moab Area Rock Art XLIV

Saturday & Sunday, December 14-15, 2024

Well, it’s that time of the year when the crowds have finally started to thin and I am ready to begin spending more time exploring the lands surrounding Moab until they start to return again later in February. This weekend I headed over toward Moab early on Saturday morning so I could hike with a friend and visit a bunch of rock art sites that were all new to me before returning home on Sunday afternoon. These are some photos of what we saw.