After returning home from Bryce Canyon National Park earlier in the afternoon I went outside to warm up and relax in our hot tub after dark when I looked up and noticed that the sky was looking a bit reddish with a little green coloring just above the horizon. I remembered reading something online earlier in the day about there being a chance to see the Northern Lights in Colorado this evening, but we are bombarded by so many of those stories these days that turn out to be false, I thought nothing of it. However, now that I could actually see the colors from my backyard with my naked eyes I knew that they would probably look pretty good with a camera, so I cut my soak short, got dressed, grabbed my camera and headed up into the Colorado National Monument. It turned out to be a great decision because the colors of the Aurora Borealis were spectacularly visible from the Heart of the World this evening! I initially stopped at the Independence Monument Viewpoint, but didn’t really like the angle from there, so I continued on to Grand View and had the place to myself for a while as I tried different settings and compositions.
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Heart of the World | Sunday, October 26, 2025
After spending Saturday morning hiking a big loop in the Colorado National Monument that combined Ute Canyon and Monument Mesa, I returned again early on Sunday morning to hike a shorter loop near Gold Star Canyon from the White Rocks Trailhead. This time I would combine the Mushroom Rock Trail, Gold Star Canyon Trail, Bench Trail and Fenceline Trail to create a nice little 6-7 mile loop and end up back at the White Rocks. I started hiking up onto the Precambrian Bench at dawn and was able to make it to an overlook of Monument Canyon below Mushroom Rock just in time to watch the sunrise.
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Heart of the World | Saturday, October 25, 2025
Even though I had to skip my annual Southern Utah Wanderings with Jared for the first time in about fourteen years, I am hoping to get back to my regular schedule of weekend adventures in the near future, but before I do I need to make sure that Diane is back to 100%, so in the meantime I will try to get out on some local hikes when I can. This weekend I had some time on Saturday to go on a local hike and decided to continue working on my Heart of the World project within the Colorado National Monument by putting together a loop consisting of the Ute Canyon Trail and Liberty Cap Trail that I had never hiked together before. I was a little worried about hiking over 13 miles after not hiking at all for the past month, but figured I would just jump right back in and hope for the best!
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Colorado National Monument | Sunday, September 14, 2025
This weekend Diane wanted to hike the Wedding Canyon Loop in the Colorado National Monument with me on Sunday morning since we might not be able to hike together again for a little while, so I planned to stay close to home so we could do that. Although I was originally planning to spend Saturday morning hiking in the mountains near Ouray, the weather forecast wasn’t looking good and I changed my mind after work on Friday and decided to just stay home and work on my 4Runner instead. This was probably the right call since there was a lot of rain, flash-flooding and even a few rare tornadoes in the Four Corners region and Western Colorado on Saturday! On Sunday morning we got up early, left home at dawn and started hiking from the Lower Monument Canyon Trailhead just before sunrise. To our surprise, as we crossed over the low divide between Monument Canyon and Wedding Canyon we found that the valley on the other side was filled with fog which made for some amazing and beautiful conditions as we hiked into Wedding Canyon.
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Heart of the World | Sunday, July 6, 2025
Since I ended up cancelling my planned backpacking trip this weekend and headed home early, I spent Saturday working on the new 4Runner and then decided to continue my Heart of the World project in the Colorado National Monument early on Sunday morning with a hike into upper Monument Canyon. Although I have hiked into and through Monument Canyon many times over the years, I don’t recall ever hiking up the upper portion of the trail before so I thought it would be fun to hike down the upper trail to Independence Monument and then return the same way, especially since I’ve already hiked the lower trail earlier this year. So after getting up early on Sunday morning I drove up to the Upper Monument Canyon Trailhead and started hiking down the trail shortly before sunrise.
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