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Ancient Architects of Arizona

Wednesday – Saturday, April 24-27, 2019

Earlier this year two of my favorite bands, Architects and While She Sleeps, announced a tour that started in late April and went through May. These two bands don’t tour in the US very much so I knew that I really needed to go to this one! I’m just glad the tour dates closest to home didn’t coincide with a weekend that I had already made plans for! We were unable to go to the Denver date, which was the closest one to us, so we decided to go to the Phoenix date instead and would plan a short easy trip around it. I had never been anywhere between Flagstaff and Phoenix before, so I thought it would be a good idea to play tourist for a change and visit all of the popular National Monuments as an introduction to the area. I also figured that since we were going to be seeing the Architects in concert on Saturday night, that it would be nice to visit the ruins left behind by the ancient architects of Arizona on our way there!

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Ruins Around the Bears Ears

Friday – Sunday, April 19-21, 2019

I can’t believe that it’s almost the end of April already and this is only my first trip of the year to the canyons surrounding the Bears Ears! At the very least I typically spend Presidents Day weekend exploring this area, but this year we had planned a trip around a concert in Las Vegas over that holiday weekend instead. Then I ended up concentrating on exploring more of The Needles during a few of my other weekends this year and have neglected getting down to the Bears Ears. I finally wanted to change that this weekend, so a few weeks ago I contacted my friend Jerry to see if he was interested in joining me this weekend, and he was, so we met up Friday evening near Blanding to hike a couple of canyons together around the Bears Ears over the weekend. The weather was great and we visited a few nice sites. Enjoy these photos from our weekend!

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Heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District

Five Years Later | Return to Salt Creek Canyon
Wednesday – Sunday, April 10-14, 2019

After spending the past couple of years searching for rock art and ancient ruins in Grand Gulch during our annual spring backpacking trip together, this year Dave, Jared and I were really looking forward to getting back into upper Salt Creek Canyon in Canyonlands National Park to see what we had missed on our first visit almost five years ago. I made sure to secure our camping permits earlier this year so we could spend four days exploring the heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District.

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Triangle Canyon: Cactus Park to the Gunnison River

Dominguez Canyon Wilderness | Ten Year Anniversary
Saturday, March 30, 2019

I spent the last two weekends hiking in the Needles District of Canyonlands and will be going back again in another week and a half, plus we had a concert to go to on Sunday evening, so this weekend we planned to stay close to home and take a little bit of a break from driving. Saturday was also the ten year anniversary of the designation of the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area through the passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, so we decided to celebrate the occasion by hiking down an unnamed canyon within the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness to a petroglyph panel that I first visited on a river trip back in 2012. This canyon, located just north of the more popular Dominguez Canyon, has no official name on any map that I’ve seen, so I’m simply going to refer to it as Triangle Canyon since it sits just below Triangle Mesa.

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Secrets of Canyonlands

Friday – Sunday, March 22-24, 2019

This past week was an unusual one for me since I spent most of it in Rifle, Colorado attending a training class so I could get a Remote Pilot Certification (FAA Small UAS Rule, Part 107) for work. The funny thing is that I have never touched a drone in my life, and as of Friday morning I am now an FAA certified Drone Pilot! After taking the required test at the Grand Junction Airport on Friday morning and then having lunch with Diane afterwards, I drove into Utah through scattered storms to Moab before continuing on to The Needles for the second weekend in a row. On Sunday morning I was going to be meeting up with my friend Clyde so we could go on a hike together, but until then I was going to be spending Friday evening and all day Saturday revisiting a few rock art sites and searching for new ruins and rock art panels on my own. I would find a couple of secrets along the way…

Tag: petroglyphs

Ancient Architects of Arizona

Ruins Around the Bears Ears

Heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District

Triangle Canyon: Cactus Park to the Gunnison River

Secrets of Canyonlands