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Moab’s Old Mail Trail: Mill Creek to South Mesa

Moab Meanderings | Saturday & Sunday, February 24-25, 2024

After spending a couple of days searching for rock art along the Pahranagat Trail in Nevada last week, I decided to stay a little closer to home this weekend to spend some time near Moab before it really starts getting too busy around there. Earlier this month after Diane and I had hiked a short section of Moab’s Old Mail Trail along the rim of Mill Creek, I became very interested in learning more about this route and started doing some research into it. Although I wasn’t able to find very much information about it, I think I was able to find enough to try my hand at tracing this historic route from Mill Creek to South Mesa. I really didn’t have much information to go on besides some broad locations, vague newspaper articles, the segment of the existing trail and some educated guesses on my part, so I may not have gotten it all correct. But even if I am completely wrong with my guesses, this turned out to be a very nice hike and a great way to spend the day in the backcountry. That said, if anyone out there has more information about the route of the Old Mail Trail, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

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Moab Meanderings: Moab Area Rock Art XLI

Saturday & Sunday, February 10-11, 2024

On Saturday morning Diane and I left home early and headed over to Moab so we could spend our weekend hiking in canyons and searching for rock art together. Although I have hiked through these same canyons before and visited most of the petroglyphs and pictographs we saw many years ago, it’s an area I’ve wanted to return to for a while and since Diane had never been here before it was fun to show her around for the first time. On Saturday the weather was a bit interesting with fast-moving clouds after a clearing storm, but later in the afternoon as we were hiking back to the trailhead we got caught in a graupel storm that turned into a snowstorm. Up until that point it had been one of those days where the temperature felt nice when the sun was out, but it felt cold and chilly when the sun disappeared behind the clouds. Here are some photos from the weekend.

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Christmas in Arches 2023

Moab Winter Weekend | Saturday – Monday, December 23-25, 2023

After spending last weekend exploring the sandstone fins on the east side of the Colorado River in the Sand Flats Recreation Area, it was time for me to head over to Arches National Park for the extended Christmas weekend. While I usually only spend Christmas Day in Arches and then bounce around the desert canyons surrounding Moab for the rest of the holiday weekend, this year I wanted to spend the entire three days within the park. Unfortunately, Diane would not be joining me this year since she was scheduled to work all weekend and on the holiday, so I would be on my own. I left home early on Saturday morning and drove straight to Arches National Park through a consistent rain the entire way with some fog in the lower lying areas.

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Moab Meanderings: Sand Flats Recreation Area

Saturday & Sunday, December 16-17, 2023

Since the winter season has arrived in Moab, I decided to return to the Sand Flats Recreation Area this weekend so I could finish hiking the popular Slickrock Bike Trail just outside of town. After watching one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve seen from the Needles Overlook in early 2020, I had hiked about half of the Slickrock Trail’s eastern side but I wasn’t able to complete the full loop that day because there was just too much snow on the steep slopes of the undulating trail that made it dangerous and hard to follow. I figured this would also be a good opportunity to just spend the entire weekend within Sand Flats so I could continue hiking some of the trails in the area that I had not been on before and spend the night in one of the camp loops. It sounded like a good enough plan to me, so I left home early on Saturday morning and made my way over to Moab.

The Rim Trails at Dead Horse Point State Park

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Although I originally had a different and more local trip planned for this weekend, which I’ll hopefully be able to get back to in early December, the weather forecast made me reconsider those plans on Friday since it was predicted to start raining on Saturday afternoon and continue all through Sunday. With a partly cloudy sky in the forecast for Saturday morning I decided to get up early and head on over to Dead Horse Point State Park where I would hopefully be able to catch a nice sunrise from the main overlook and then could spend the rest of the morning hiking the remainder of the trails in the park that I had not been on before, which consisted of a loop of the East Rim Trail and the West Rim Trail along with a couple of shorter spur trails leading to overlooks along the way. A few years back Diane and I had spent a nice weekend mountain biking all of the Intrepid Trails in the park and I’ve been meaning to get back to finish up the hiking trails, so I’ve been looking forward to a return visit.