After Work Adventures | Tuesday, September 29, 2026
This afternoon I left from work and headed up to Vega State Park for a second chance to to see if I could find some nice fall colors on the Grand Mesa this season. You know, it’s kind of funny that I’d never actually been to Vega State Park until I passed through while following the route of the Dominguez – Escalante Expedition earlier this month, and now I’ve been here twice in the last two weeks! I planned to hike the Aspen Nature Trail along the southern end of Vega Reservoir ...
After Work Adventures | Friday, September 25, 2026
I was originally planning to head on over to the Gunnison Gorge for a hike after work today, but shortly before leaving work I checked the weather and saw that there was a storm right over the area I wanted to hike in, and since the road to the trailhead goes through a lot of clay I thought it would be a good idea to skip that for today and stay a little closer to home. While I have hiked the lower Palisade Rim Trail a few times before, I have never ...
After Work Adventures | Wednesday, September 23, 2026
I headed up onto the Grand Mesa this afternoon to spend a few hours seeing how the fall colors were coming along like I try do each year around this time. As I was driving up the Grand Mesa Scenic Byway I found that there was still a lot of green lower down around the Mesa Creek area, but there were a few patches of nice colors here and there, including some oranges. Unfortunately, my favorite overlook at Skyway Point was already past it’s prime, so it was kind of a mixed ...
Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area | Wednesday, May 20, 2026
After spending Saturday hiking to the bottom of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, I decided to return again to the Gunnison Gorge this afternoon for only my second After Work Adventure of the year. This time I wanted to continue hiking trails within the National Conservation Area that I had not been on before and went for a 7.5 mile loop that combined the Red Rocks – Nighthorse Trail, Spikes Trail and Sidewinder Trail starting from the end of the Bobcat Road. Here are a few photos from ...
After Work Adventures | Tuesday, April 28, 2026
After leaving work this afternoon I stopped home to pick up Diane and then we headed over to Snooks Bottom along the Colorado River near Fruita so we could go on a short loop hike around the little lake found there and Opal Hill on trails that neither of us had ever been on before. It was quite a bit windier out than we were expecting it to be, but it turned out to be a nice little three mile loop. It’s kind of hard to believe, but this is actually ...
Heart of the World | Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Well, here it is! This is my last hike in the Colorado National Monument for my Heart of the World project and I managed to finish them all up before the end of the year! To be honest, I did have some time when I could have completed this final hike in November, but I purposely waited until December so I could get in a hike during each month of the year, which wasn’t a goal when I initially started this project back on New Years Day, but it just kind ...
Colorado National Monument | Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Last week when I was hiking up the Fruita Dugway in the Colorado National Monument, I noticed a bench just above Kodels Canyon and below Kodels Point that looked like it might be an interesting place to hike, and since I’m always looking for new places to explore close to home I decided to check it out after work today. I started out by hiking up the Fruita Dugway from the Historic Trails Viewpoint along Rim Rock Drive and then left the trail to make my way around the head of Kodels ...
Heart of the World | Wednesday, November 19, 2025
I was hoping to get out hiking at least once between storm systems this week and finally made a last minute decision to head out to hike up the Fruita Dugway right after work today. Although this may not be an ‘official’ trail within the Colorado National Monument, I still wanted to include it in my Heart of the World project because not only is it a historic route through the area, it’s also probably my favorite hike in all of the Monument. I started the hike from the Kodels Canyon ...
Heart of the World | Thursday, November 6, 2025
As it’s getting closer to the end of the year and I’m getting very close to completing all of the trails for my Heart of the World project in the Colorado National Monument, I thought today would be a good day to hike the Old Gordon Trail right after work. While this has never really been one of my favorite trails in the Monument, which is probably why I haven’t hiked the entire trail since 2011, that’s part of the reason I started this project and I was a little interested ...
Fruita Frontcountry | Wednesday, October 29, 2025
I was originally hoping to leave after work today and head over into the Canyons of the Escalante for four days to try and salvage part of my annual Southern Utah Wanderings trip that I missed earlier in the month, but Diane was still having some possible concerning issues with her recovery and I thought it would be best to stay close to home for now. Instead, I ended up going on a hike after work on a few different segments of trails surrounding Al Look Hill within the McInnis Canyons National Conservation ...
