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Tag: old spanish trail

The Enepitsi Trail in Santa Clara Canyon

Thursday, April 30, 2026

I’m going to be spending all of next week in Kanab at a conference for work, so late last week I made kind of a last-minute decision to drive down to Las Vegas a few days before so I could see Architects in concert at the House of Blues on Thursday evening. Then I would be able to spend Friday and the rest of the weekend along the Arizona Strip before driving into Kanab late on Sunday afternoon. Surprisingly, this would be the very first concert in 2026 that I would be attending, although I did have tickets to a local show in February that was cancelled. I left home bright and early on Thursday morning and made my way Southwest across Utah and the Colorado Plateau before dropping down into the Mojave Desert. After grabbing an early lunch in St. George I had some extra time and thought it would be nice to stretch my legs and go for a short hike on the Enepitsi Trail (Ghost Trail) along the Santa Clara River. I’ve already hiked to the nice petroglyphs above on Anasazi Ridge before and was interested in seeing what could be found down below in the Santa Clara Canyon.

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The High Plateaus of Utah: Proper Edge of the Sky

The Plateau Provence: Peaks & Plateaus of the Colorado Plateau
Wednesday – Friday, August 30 – September 1, 2023

The High Plateaus of Utah are a group of elevated tablelands that form the boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin in Central Utah and are what Wallace Stegner once described as “those remarkable mountains that are not mountains at all but greatly elevated rolling plains.” Although I have driven around and between the High Plateaus many times over the years, I have not spent very much time up on top of any of them and I wanted to change that this summer so I could see what they were all about. And what better way is there to get to know a new place than by driving the backroads and visiting the highpoints along the way! I figured that I would start at the northern end of the Wasatch Plateau and then work my way south, looping back around to finish up on Thousand Lake Mountain, where I could hop back on I-70 and head back home after a nice introduction to the area. That was the plan, and I thought it was a pretty good one, but as you will see, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

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Stinking Desert National Monument

After Work Adventures | Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Even though it was a little bit warmer out today than yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to head out after work so I could drive and hike to the top of a couple easy highpoints and overlooks located in the desert between Grand Junction, Delta, the Grand Mesa and the Gunnison River, and maybe even catch the sunset before heading home. This is an area that longtime locals affectionately (or maybe it’s not so affectionate) call the Stinking Desert. I’ve heard stories from long before my time living in Grand Junction about how an official-looking sign for the Stinking Desert National Monument would show up along the highway during holiday weekends, and I’ve always thought that would have been funny to see, so I’m going to honor that unofficial National Monument with this little Trip Report. Welcome to the Stinking Desert!

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Exploring Desert Stone: East Canyon to Harts Draw

Tracing the Historic Route of the 1859 Macomb Expedition, Part I
Friday – Sunday, November 4-6, 2022

After being sick and stuck at home over the past two weekends I was really ready to get back outdoors again this weekend! Since I haven’t done much hiking in a couple of weeks I wanted to take it easy this weekend and thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finally start on a project that I have been thinking about doing for over a decade. That project would be to follow part of the historic route of the 1859 Macomb Expedition into the Canyonlands region. Members of a small detachment from this expedition were quite possibly the first non-native Americans to view and describe what is now Canyonlands National Park and leave written and graphic records of what they saw.

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The Gunnison River: Whitewater to Redlands Dam

Saturday, June 11, 2022 | Average CFS: 2,040

After spending much of the last two weeks out and about, it was time for me to stay closer to home for a weekend before heading up into the mountains to begin the summer season. I thought another local river trip was in order, so Jackson and I planned to float a new section of the Gunnison River from Whitewater to the Redlands Dam in Grand Junction. There’s not too much information out there about this stretch of the river, so we were looking forward to checking it out!

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