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Floating the Moab Daily Section of the Colorado River

Professor Valley: Hittle Bottom to Take-Out Beach | Colorado Riverway Recreation Area
Saturday, June 27, 2020 | Average CFS: 5,920

After spending all of last weekend moving into a new house, it was time to get back outdoors and on the river again! A couple weekends ago Jackson, Chris and I were hoping to float the Moab Daily section of the Colorado River through Professor Valley, but the weather and wind prevented us from doing that, so we thought this would be a good weekend to try again since the weather was looking much better. Although I have floated the Moab Daily once before, that was over ten years ago on Labor Day and I was just along for the ride in a friend’s raft, so I was looking forward to doing it in my own inflatable kayak this time.

Otho Natural Bridge & Mill Creek Canyon

Moab Winter Weekend: Arch Hunting & Ancient Petroglyphs
Moab Area Rock Art XXXIV | Saturday & Sunday, December 21-22, 2019

This weekend Diane and I headed over to Moab to search for arches and rock art, like we usually do at this time of the year. The weather can be unpredictable at the end of December, but we lucked out this weekend with comfortable hiking temperatures during the day and no snow or ice on the ground yet. I’ve wanted to visit Otho Natural Bridge for many years so I made that a priority this trip and we headed there first thing on Saturday morning. I had originally planned to hike up the North Fork of Mill Creek from the bottom to reach the arch, but we were stopped by a deep water crossing near the confluence of the two forks of Mill Creek. I had hiked this canyon before from the bottom without getting wet before, but it appears there are new beaver dams along the creek which have made that impossible now. We weren’t prepared to get wet this time in these temperatures, so we turned around and drove up into the Sand Flats Recreation Area to find another way down into the canyon instead. I’d never been up this far into this canyon before and the views and scenery were beautiful as we searched for a route into the canyon. I think I ended up liking this route into the canyon more than the one I had originally planned!

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Behind The Rocks

Christmas Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, December 22-23, 2018

After going on a day hike into the backcountry of Arches National Park last Saturday by myself, Diane and I planned a last minute trip to spend this weekend together around Moab. We drove over to Moab on Saturday morning and then went out arch-hunting, hiking, four-wheeling and just generally exploring the Behind The Rocks area west of Spanish Valley for the entire weekend. On Saturday I wanted to revisit a few nice arches that I had not seen since I drove through Pritchett Canyon way back in 2006, plus I wanted to find a few new ones. On Sunday we hiked up Pritchett Canyon from the bottom so we could visit Halls Bridge Arch since we were not able to get down to it from above the day before. The weather on Saturday was very nice with clear blue skies, plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the lower 50’s, while Sunday morning was mostly overcast during most of our hike and a bit colder, too.

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Bartlett Flat to the Blue Hills

Moab Area Rock Art XXXIII | Return to the Yellow Comet Alcove
Saturday & Sunday, October 13-14, 2018

To be honest, I was planning on staying home this weekend after spending most of last week in Canyonlands National Park. However, Diane has been taking a pretty intensive online class for the last month and was finally caught up and wanted to get out hiking and camping this weekend, and since she hasn’t been out hiking since our backpacking trip to Kings Peak over Labor Day weekend, I couldn’t say no! We decided to stay closer to home and take a nice relaxing trip north of Moab. We did a little hiking, drove some bumpy roads, saw some ancient rock art, visited an arch, watched the sun set from the top of a mesa and walked in the footsteps of dinosaurs. It was a good time! Here are a few photos from the weekend…

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Christmas Moab Weekend

Moab Area Rock Art XXXII | Saturday & Sunday, December 23-24, 2017

Since we were planning on spending our Christmas in Arches National Park like we do every year, we headed over to Moab on Saturday morning so we could spend the entire holiday weekend in the area. Earlier in the week when I was finalizing our rough plans for the trip I was expecting that there would still be none to minimal snow on the ground for our trip because even though there was a winter storm predicted toward the end of the week, I really didn’t think it would affect the area too much. Boy, was I wrong! Well, actually I was right about the Grand Junction area since we didn’t get any snow that stuck around, however, the storm seemed to be centered right over the area surrounding Moab and dumped about 6-10 inches there! We tried to continue on with our original plans at first, but we ended up having to cancel or change some of the hikes since they would have been too dangerous with all the snow and ice on the ground, even with our microspikes. In the end I acted as a tour guide for Diane as we revisited many easily accessible rock art sites that I hadn’t been to in a while.