I was two days late - at least according to Ben @m3bassman - when I rolled into the camp site they'd found just outside Capitol Reef National Park. As usual, the first order of business was a round of hellos with Mike @Digiratus and Zane @Speedytech7, followed by some good-natured ribbing. It was Zane, as I recall, that predicted my arrival time most correctly - at least according to The Price is Right rules that we all seemed to disagree on - and it was Mike who grinned a big I told you so, when I moved my truck into…
8 CommentsCategory: Epic
Everything on AdventureTaco is Epic, but only posts in this category will be sent via email to those who have subscribed to be notified of new content. A post with this category should always be included in at least one other category as well.
There are always places that get missed or left behind. Sometimes it's due to a lack of time; sometimes because of a lack of knowledge. Whatever the reason, and despite the fact that it's both normal and unavoidable, I almost always feel like I've failed in some way. Of course, it's not a failure at all; there is so much more than we can ever see. Sometimes - the best times - there's so much in a given area that it's easy to plan an entire trip. Other times, there's not quite enough. In those cases, it's always nice when…
15 CommentsOur first backpack - a somewhat crazy introduction to physically carrying all of our gear - through the Grand Gulch from Government Trail to Kane Gulch could have gone horribly wrong, but it didn't! I generally recommend getting started with whatever you already own and then buying what you discover you need when you're out on trips. But boy, if we don't look like a walking REI ad the first time out. In fact, I'd say that overall, it was a smashing success. At the very least, it was a success, and there was some smashing. Luckily, that smashing was…
12 CommentsIt's no surprise that - compared to the average human - I have a lot of camping gear. While I'm not one of those folks who always has to have the latest and greatest - in fact, I'll generally go for the simple, tried-and-true option - I have found that having the right gear can make camp life much more pleasant. A fridge, a nice Exped air mattress in the tent, and a down puffy have been just a few of the bits of gear that I've really come to enjoy over the years. But one thing's for sure -…
15 CommentsTL;DR - I upgraded my Canon R6 to an R5 in order to double the number of megapixels that I can claim as my own. So far, I love it.
The camera I always wanted.
After hiking 24 miles through Shangri-la Canyon - a few more miles of Grand Gulch than a sane person should in a day - cool temperatures made for one of the best night's sleep we've had in a long time. And, even waking up an hour before sunrise to "do it all over again, only in Water Canyon," we were well-rested, having fallen asleep just after 8:00pm, and only a few minutes after climbing up our ladder. All ready to go, no shadows yet playing across the land. From the little I'd been able to find about Water Canyon, it…
11 CommentsComb Ridge. There, somewhere, is a ruin that I've been searching for over the course of several years. While not unknown, this ruin - with walls supported by a Juniper Tree trunk - is infrequently visited and photographed, and the location is kept well under wraps by those who have been lucky enough to visit. And I'm fine with that. I appreciate it and understand why. Still, even as I've failed to find it on several previous occasions, I knew I'd have to keep searching until I found it. This would be our third full day with feet on the…
11 CommentsJust out of the park. Setup on an old mining road just east of Furnace Creek, our flight home was a little later than usual, so we planned to get a hike in before heading back to Las Vegas. This meant a third morning in a row of awake-before-sunrise, but with early sunsets and bedtimes around 7:30pm, we were still getting more sleep we generally get at home! It'd been a windy night, but our spot - between a hillside and a road berm - had been chosen carefully to reduce wind noise on the tent, and as we shoveled…
21 CommentsHaving discovered the existence of a few rock art sites in the Greenwater Valley area, I put on my best Sherlock Holmes hat (note: it is strikingly similar to the Cal Poly baseball cap I always wear) to scour the interwebs for clues. Of the three sites, I was able to pinpoint one reasonably quickly, and reached out to a few fellow rock art enthusiasts for hints on another. The third - somewhere on the hike up Funeral Peak - was out of the question on this particular trip, though I'll surely return to find those in the future. Mostly,…
12 CommentsAt first glance, Greenwater Valley seems - especially compared to the other valleys of Death Valley National Park - downright boring. In fact, it is. Even its most-visited attraction - Dante's View - is what I would describe as "just OK," if someone asked my opinion, before volunteering several alternative views in the park that I feel are significantly more amazing. Thankfully, few people ask - and even fewer care - for my opinion, and the world continues to spin. Still, it was with great excitement that we entered the southern end of Greenwater Valley on the first evening of…
36 CommentsEvery time I visit Death Valley, I cover some amount of ground. I know this because I fill every daylight hour with hiking, driving, climbing, and poking my head into places that a younger, smarter me would certainly avoid. Somehow, though, at the end of each trip, I realize that my list of places to explore has inexplicably gotten longer. It happens without fail. Every. Single. Time. In 2018 - when @mrs.turbodb and I were exploring the Ibex Dunes and the talc mines near Saratoga and Ibex Spring - I noticed a little valley on the eastern flank of the…
20 CommentsOver the last three months of winter - which I suppose we're still sort of in, but we're soon to come out the other side - the Tacoma has been doing great. This time of year, it lives down in Las Vegas, so there's relatively little I can do from a maintenance perspective. As such, this Rig Review focuses on things that are working (or not), but doesn't really address any of them with fixes. In that time, we squeezed in four adventures (and a couple other family vacations to more... civilized accommodations). While that might be fewer trips than…
11 CommentsBack at the Tacoma, and after consuming breakfast a smidge late, I packed up the tent and hit the road immediately. I'd hoped to tackle a top-secret hike - to some allegedly amazing rock art - for much of the afternoon, but my late arrival back at camp left no time for such activities. Instead, I needed to turn on the afterburners to reach my next camp site; even then, I'd was almost certain I'd be arriving in the dark. Rolling out of Snake Gulch. Amazing how places can look so different from the air. It took a couple hours…
9 CommentsThere's almost nowhere I like to camp more than on the edge of a cliff or on the top of a mountain. The expansive views and feeling of being on the edge - literally, I suppose - are the reason I love to explore. So, it was with a good dose of hesitation that I made the decision to leave my campsite on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon less than two hours before sunset, opting instead to camp at a trailhead parking area. At least it would allow me to get an early start on the following day's…
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