We spent the balance of July 5th after leaving Moab, in traversing through central Utah. We arrived early evening at Great Basin National Park, which is located just across the Nevada border. We spent the evening, camped in the park, then the next morning hiking up the valley toward Wheeler Peak. The temps were cool, in the 70's in the evening and next morning, and the overnight lows was in the 50's. Gorgeous weather in my book. But what was most interesting ...

Today seemed like a bit of a whirlwind, but somehow we managed to fit in Colorado National Monument and Arches NP. Colorado NM is best seen from the rim road, so a quick drive with a number of stops at overlooks, 2 short hikes (one was a little over a mile), and a quick perusal of the Visitor Center fit the bill. Around noon, we arrived at Arches, explored some of the more picturesque scenes such as Park Ave (because it looks like an avenue of high rise buildi...

July 4th. We got an early start with the Jeep, 4-wheeled up very rugged roads into Yankee Boy Basin, in Uncompahgre National Forest, under the shadow of Mt. Sneffels (14,150'). The jeep was only a means to an end, the main goal was to attain the Blue Lakes Pass on the edge of the Mt. Sneffels Wilderness Area. This wiill be no small task for the young-ins. The hike was almost 4 miles round trip, but the main challenge was the elevation starting at ~11,500 and to...

Day 2 (July 3) in the San Juan Mts in Colorado. We visited Telluride. A nice little ski town that has plenty going on during the summer as well. There is a gondola ride that is free public transportation, the only public transport of its type in the U.S. See the pic. Later in the day, we picked up our Jeep rental in Ouray. 24 hours to do some 4-wheeling in the San Juan Mts. Awesome. This evening we took the jeep up to the box canyon above Ouray, posted some vid...

Playing catch-up with the travel blog. Seems that we keep finding camp sites w/out any wireless data coverage. On July 2nd, we started from Durango and headed up to Silverton and Ouray. Silverton is set in this seemingly impossible setting. The descent from the pass from Durango is spectacular. Silverton is a charming old West mining town, not a tourist trap... for the most part. We were able to find a nice little cafe in town, and fried dough. We did the token ...