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Christmas in Arches 2014

Christmas Day | Thursday, December 25, 2014

If you’ve been following my blog for more than a year, you might already know that I have an annual tradition where I spend Christmas Day in Arches National Park every year. This year would be the first time Diane would be joining me on this annual trip. There was a snowstorm in the forecast for Christmas Day in Grand Junction and Moab, so I made sure that we left very early in the morning so that we could beat the storm and would hopefully only have to drive through it once. The plan worked out pretty well and we only encountered some snow around Crescent Junction that slowed us down for a few miles. The snow didn’t start to fall in Arches until we were in the park, so our timing was perfect! Since it was snowing pretty hard when we reached Balanced Rock, I decided to head for The Windows section first so I could try and take some photos in the snow.

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Cedar Mesa for Thanksgiving

Thursday – Sunday, November 27-30, 2014

For Thanksgiving this year, Diane and I decided to spend a nice relaxing weekend on Cedar Mesa and we really lucked out with nice weather all weekend. The high temperatures were in the upper 50’s during the day and low temperatures only dropped into the mid-30’s at night. We had camped in colder temperatures in the mountains during the summer! The campground at Natural Bridges National Monument made a perfect base-camp for us, which also happened to be free during the winter months and was a nice surprise. Diane had prepared a nice Thanksgiving dinner that we ate next to the campfire on Thursday night. The rest of the weekend we hiked in search of ruins and rock art. We ended up visiting many ruins that I had been to a long time ago and that Diane had never been to before, which allowed me to try and get some better photos of them. We explored a few new areas, too. Enjoy the photos from our weekend!

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Sieber Canyon

Saturday, November 22, 2014

I’ve known about petroglyphs hidden in Sieber Canyon for quite a few years now, but have always seemed to put off a trip in search of them, instead choosing to travel elsewhere throughout the Southwest each weekend. That seems to be the way it works with me- always wanting to travel somewhere new away from home! A few years back I even found the route down into the canyon but I didn’t have enough time go down that day. Earlier this year I tried to hike into the canyon on Easter, but I was turned around by a closed road and had to cancel those plans. Diane and I were finally able to hike into Sieber Canyon this morning and found the petroglyphs we were looking for. It was a beautiful day for hiking and we managed to get back out of the canyon before a winter storm moved through the area in the afternoon. There were some nice clouds in the sky during the morning hours and it didn’t get completely overcast until after we found the main petroglyph panel. The main panel was very cool and contains some of the best petroglyphs I have visited this close to home. Unfortunately, some of the best figures in this panel have been shot up with bullet holes.

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The Subway and Left Fork of North Creek

Fall Colors 2014
Sunday, November 9, 2014

On Sunday morning we were up well before sunrise and on our way up onto the Lower Kolob Plateau to the trailhead for the Left Fork of North Creek. A hike to The Subway is a popular destination in Zion National Park, especially during the fall, and even though I knew there would probably be a lot of people in the canyon (they allow 60 permits per day), I decided that I wanted to check out this iconic location on this trip. We started our hike towards the rim of the canyon just as the sun was coming up for the day. There were only a few other vehicles in the parking lot when we left, but we would come across a lot of people in the canyon throughout the day, which seemed to be a common theme during our hikes in Zion this weekend.

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Return to Zion National Park

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Even though I haven’t spent very much time in Zion National Park, I have always wanted to visit the park during the fall season at the beginning of November. Earlier this year I decided to finally make that trip happen. Diane and I took the Monday before Veteran’s Day off from work so we could make it a nice long 4-day weekend and we booked a hotel room in Springdale so we wouldn’t be camping this time.