From Mesa Verde, we headed north arriving in Moab four hours later. We knew we didn’t have time to do Arches National Park justice, but we did need to stretch our legs, so we turned into the crowded park for my first experience with the natural formations found within. With only time for one hike, […]
A beautiful day on Gooseberry Mesa awaited us, and though we had planned to drive out to some easier trails, the prospect of a long drive on rough dirt roads wasn’t that appealing, so we decided to stick close to the yurt. Gooseberry Mesa is famous for its network of mountain biking trails, so we […]
At the end of Ben’s final semester of grad school, we’d planned to head to Boulder for his graduation. Ben has never been much of one for pomp and circumstance though so when one of my own grad school friends invited us to Gooseberry Mesa to spend the weekend in a yurt, we jumped at […]
A half hour drive landed us in the free Stateline campground, which straddles the Utah Arizona border. We unrolled our tent and sleeping bags and were home for the already chilly night. My impulse was to crawl straight in the tent, burrow into the blankets, and call it a night, but the stars had summoned […]
Arriving back at the car after four hours in Buckskin Gulch, we were tired and we spent quite a while rallying ourselves to get moving again. Sitting in the car for the rest of the evening was tempting, but we had permits for South Coyotte Buttes good for that day only, and so we drove our […]
Though the label “spontaneous” is starting to be an umbrella term for just being terrible at planning, we randomly decided to head south last weekend, hoping to commune with the dirt and the sky before I headed in for a minor surgery later this week. We had high hopes that we might obtain a coveted […]
The night had been frigid, and we spent it wearing every piece of clothing we had and tucked deep into our sleeping bags. Even so, we still felt the penetrating chill inhabiting our tents. When dawn finally broke, we were like cold blooded reptiles, slow to get moving in the absence of the warming sun. […]
Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m really not that into birthdays, especially mine. I don’t care for being the center of attention, I’m not much of one for accumulating a lot of things, and am always ok to pass on cake. About the only thing about a traditional birthday celebration I am interested in […]
A couple of months ago we took a drive up toward Francis Peak. The weather was a bit cloudy, and as we ascended the curvy dirt road we soon found ourselves in passing clouds dumping massive amounts of rain. The lighting was absolutely spectacular and the flowers were in full bloom. We scored […]
One of the things we were most excited about in Olympic National Park was the opportunity to visit the Hoh Rainforest, one of the wettest places in the continental United States. For a couple of desert dwellers where almost every day is sunny, visiting somewhere so green and lush in the middle of July was […]
It was a very long night back at camp with wind rusting our rain fly and my terrible cough that I’ve been fighting for weeks. I felt like I hadn’t slept a wink when we heard Ben’s parents break camp at 6 AM and head home. Left on our own, Ben and I debated quite […]
Back at camp, we got the tents set up and after a fair bit of discussion, mustered up some pretty basic dinner before we got right back on the shuttle. We’d been told that the canyon had some of the best stars anywhere since there is no light pollution. We were the only people on the […]