In Wrightwood for Father’s Day weekend, we were looking for a decently-long hike with which to stretch our legs, settling on one which had been on the radar for some time. The Exploration Trail is a 4.5-mile route in the San Bernardino mountains near Big Bear – the western TH starts at 6,000′ just…
Heading home after Chris’ work activities in Colorado and Utah, we decided to make a quick trip to Zion NP to break up the drive. We traveled across northern Arizona through Page, crossed the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam, and ended our long day well after dark in Springdale, our hotel located just…
Chris started working on a new project last fall, which required him to make a trip to the field location in southeastern Utah near Four Corners. Jane tagged along, and we hoped to get some time to see sights in the area. After spending the night in Kingman AZ, we got an early start…
After the previous day’s adventures on Mt. Evans, we made the 90-minute drive westward to Breckenridge, CO, where we planned to stay for a couple of nights before our next scheduled stop in Durango. After Chris caught up on work during the first half of the day, we decided to spend the balance of…
Since we’d first decided to make the detour through Colorado, we’d been looking for a way to hike a 14er, that being the enormously popular thing to do here. Somewhat surprisingly, all our hikes in CA have been below the 12,500′ level, and Jane’s personal elevation record (for hiking) was just under 11,000′. Over…
We had several options to choose from for our final day in the Rocky Mountain NP area – complicating matters was the timed entry permit requirement. We knew that the Longs Peak trailhead did not have a gatehouse where entry permits would be checked, but we’d also heard that the parking area fills up…
Having driven through the town of Estes Park the day before, we today decided to return and explore the community itself – as one might imagine, timed entry tickets for Rocky Mountain NP were impossible to come by on Labor Day weekend, but there were numerous hiking options outside the park boundary we expected…
How we came to find ourselves in Colorado bears an explanation. Chris had spoken at a conference in San Antonio the previous week, and we had made the drive from California to Texas in advance of that event. Hoping to garner some consulting work following the conference, we wound up embarking on a road…
Day 3 of my Bear Creek trip saw me rise at first light, followed by a leisurely morning consisting of several cups of coffee and a light breakfast as I watched the creek tumble over Twin Falls. There was literally no sign of the previous night’s rain – everything I could see looked completely…
Day 2 of my solo trip up Bear Creek saw me up and about before sunrise, enjoying my morning coffee while the first rays of sunlight hit the ridges around me and gradually illuminated my campsite. By 8am, I was ready to head out upstream and explore my little valley – indeed, I believe…