The third day of our Thanksgiving trip was spent in the southern end of Mojave National Preserve, exploring some fun rock formations and old mining sights. The Sheep Corral is…
I'm going to use the theme of "Throwback Thursday" to start revisiting some trips I never got around to writing about. First up is an exploration of the Surprise Tank Petroglyphs…
Carrizo Plain is a wilderness area in the middle of nowhere between Kern county oilfields and Paso Robles. At first glance one wonders why this is a special place, but it…
If you've ever driven along highway 5 between the Bay Area and Southern California, you know there isn't much in the way of landmarks. It's a long and boring drive…
We kicked off Thanksgiving week with a tour of an area northwest of Barstow known as the Black Mountain Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). This is a fascinating BLM…
This year, we took a more laid back approach to our annual Memorial Day Trip in the Eastern Sierra. In past years we’ve bagged peaks and escaped snow storms, but this year we decided to take it easy. Why? Well, first of all, David was recovering from minor surgery and couldn’t lift or do any strenuous activity. But also? It was Mighty Thor‘s first camping trip! We didn’t want to overwhelm the guy, so we just tooled around the Eastern Sierra and let him have a lot of new experiences.
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The bright sunny Sunday morning that we were hoping for didn’t materialize exactly as planned, but the clouds had cleared enough for us to get a peek at our objective for the day, Kingston Peak, and we didn’t like what we saw. Behind the ridges the higher rocky peaks were coated in a fair amount of snow. The last part of the route up Kingston is scrambling around rock, and none of us were eager to do that in icy or potentially deep snow conditions. Luckily we had come prepared with a nearby alternate: the high point of the Mesquite Mountain range.
By Friday morning we knew we had to start working our way back home. But we didn’t want to leave Zion without at least one more hike! We chose Observation Point since it was one of the few canyon hikes that we hadn’t yet done.
The Observation Point trail starts at the Canyon bottom at the Weeping Rock trailhead. It climbs 2500 ft in a little under 4 miles to an outcropping on the rim of the canyon. A handful of switchbacks climb to the junction with the Hidden Canyon trail before continuing up to Echo Canyon. We had hiked this trail in the past, so everything beyond the junction would be new to us.
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After our fantastic visit to the Great Gallery, we drove over to Capitol Reef and snagged a campsite in their campground. Considering that October is the busy season for the Southern Utah parks, I was pleasantly surprised by the peaceful and quiet nature of the half-occupied campground. Everyone wants to hit the ‘big boys’ like Zion and Bryce, and Capitol Reef is often overlooked.
The campground is in an area known as “Fruita”, an old mormon settlement that still has old buildings standing between the red rock walls, including the school and the blacksmith shop. There is even an old home where they bake and sell pies. Several orchards still grow among the buildings. A large herd of deer wandered through camp and we watched some males fight at sunset. Hello ladies.
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