Making our way back-and-forth from Las Vegas to the Arizona Backcountry Discovery Route (AZBDR) was a whole lot better than a round-trip from Washington. Still, we had a 10-hour drive to the Mexico border before starting the BDR, and a full day between when we crossed the Arizona-Utah border and…
Leave a CommentTrip State: Utah
Moab, Natural Bridges, Red Rock, Alstrom Point, Capitol Reef, ...
As always, we wanted to run a BDR this summer, and I'd had my eye on Colorado or Utah as both are always beautiful states through which to travel. With record snowfall across the west, we realized a few weeks before our departure date that Colorado was completely out of the…
Leave a CommentI've been itching to get out of California for a while now. Over the last 16 months, a full 15 of my 24 trips have been to the Golden State, and I'm starting to miss the variety offered by places like Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Of course, the high elevations…
2 CommentsIt was with the best of intentions that I planned a trip to explore the Pahranagat Trail in southeast Nevada. The very first trip where I'd be flying - rather than driving - to make the trek south, I'd work my way north from Las Vegas to explore three wilderness'…
2 CommentsI didn't discover Nine Mile Canyon in my own research. Rather, after posting a story of one of my trips to some fantastic place in the western United States, a reader - Tim - reached out to me to suggest a few places he'd discovered over his years of exploration.…
Leave a CommentI can't really believe that I've been exploring the western United States for nearly five years now and have yet to spend any time in the San Rafael Swell. That's not entirely true - technically. I did camp one night on - what I now know to be - the extreme…
Leave a CommentAfter doing the same thing annually - for five years running - it's probably safe to call it a tradition. Backcountry Discover Routes (BDRs) have become that for us. Oregon got us hooked, and after adding Washington, Idaho, and Nevada over the last several summers, this year we decided that…
5 CommentsI was naive. I thought that returning to Cedar Mesa in search of more Native American Ruins (see Utah, Re-Ruined) would get me to the point where I'd have seen most of what we'd missed on our first trip to the area some two years earlier (see Ruining Around Utah).…
Leave a CommentWe had unfinished business in Utah, after our Ruining Around Utah trip back in spring of 2019. An unseasonably wet winter meant that the higher elevation roads were still impassable due to snow, so one of our primary goals - the Lewis Lodge ruins - remained just out of reach.…
Leave a CommentWhen my buddy Ben asked if I wanted to go to the Island District of Canyonlands National Park in order to run the White Rim Trail, I was pretty pumped. While I've been to the other districts - The Maze and The Needles - I've never been to The Island…
Leave a CommentSmack in the middle of winter, we found ourselves with a little extra time and nothing planned to fill the days. That, in addition to the fact that it was going to be cold and snowy in nearly all of Washington state, signaled to us that an escape down south…
Leave a CommentLeaving home for adventure was a little different this time. Looking back now, as we headed south out of the Seattle area, we were leaving behind what would turn out to be one of the early epicenters of the Covid-19 outbreak, just before more info on the severity would come…
Leave a CommentI've been to Canyonlands National Park before, but only to The Maze District. This, my first trip to The Needles District would be an experience I won't soon forget. We'd spend a week roaming around Utah, running the Elephant Hill trail and making our way into Beef Basin. We'd hike…
2 CommentsOur plan was simple, if long. Start in St. George, Utah, and work our way east - first along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then through Glen Canyon National Monument (Lake Powell), and then through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to Bears Ears National Monument and Natural Bridges National…
Leave a CommentThis was our first trip to Canyonlands, and as such, our first to The Maze District as well. With three days to explore, we made the most of our time - entering the park from Poison Springs Canyon Road, and making our way out to the Doll House. A night…
Leave a CommentBilled as an epic journey through some of Monte @Blackdawg's favorite places in Montana and Wyoming over the course of two weeks in fall of 2017, The De-Tour quickly became a trip for the ages - and not because of the epic views or grand overlooks. Rather, it was the…
Leave a Comment