I love hiking. It’s great to get out and stretch your legs, and it’s so rewarding to see a beautiful vista or interesting sight at the end of the trail. However, there are times when it’s nice not to hike, as well. To be able to just walk on the trail or off the trail [...]
In Southern Utah there is a fin—or a butte—or a mesa—whatever you want to call it—that sticks up almost out of nowhere just north of the Lake Powell Dam. We visited the fin while searching for Skylight Arch, which I had read about on internet sites. We never did hike to the arch (my directions [...]
In a previous post, I talked about Bisti National Wilderness, where you can wander for miles without any trails to keep you from experiencing the formations. However, after my most recent jaunt across the Wilderness, I realized that there is far more to Bisti than I thought when I wrote that post. So, in this [...]
I’ve hiked in Bryce Canyon several times, but on our last visit, it had been several years since we’d visited. I’m not sure if it was because we thought we’d done everything Bryce has to offer (far from it—there are still things we’re looking forward to doing for the first time), or if it was [...]
The Den trail is an adventure without being impossible for the average hiker. It is also a way to experience the Chihuahuan Desert, and to get an idea of the real personality of the desert part of Big Bend National Park. The Den itself is an interesting geological phenomenon; really, just a canyon between [...]
In Big Bend National Park is a valley that seems full of rocks. Unlike the Chisos Basin, this part of the park is defiantly desert, but with rocks and boulders strewn everywhere, up the hillsides, in the valley, and my favorite, across each other to create a unique balancing rock arch. This is the Grapevine [...]
Great Basin National Park in itself is a less-visited park than many in the national park system. Add to this fact that most of the people who do visit go to see Lehman Caves, climb Mt. Wheeler, and/or see the bristlecone pine forest, and the rest of the park is nearly deserted. Lexington Arch, a [...]
One evening in May, we decided to drive to the end of Rt 270 from Moab, Utah, to find a place to camp. After the Potash plant, the road becomes dirt, but it’s a fairly good road as dirt roads go out there, so we didn’t have much trouble driving up to a place where [...]
Recently, a friend saw a picture of an awesomely desolate (and pretty) desert up on my computer screen. She was wondering where it was taken, and we told her that it was a Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California. Her reply was, “That’s a state park?!?” I guess us Easterners figure that national parks get [...]
Bisti National Wilderness is exactly what the name implies: wilderness. That means that this area doesn’t have the services offered at other parks. In fact, I think that the only service offered is a parking area at the trailhead. There is no visitor center, no restrooms, no water, no designated camping areas, and no paved [...]
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