Circling the Southwest

Occidental

Occidental

Trail Master
Joined
Oct 8, 2015
Messages
396
Location
Clearwater Watershed, Idaho
Back in 2019 we started making plans to head down the length of Baja Mexico fishing and camping our way to the tip and back during the month of November. Well, that didn't quite work out, it looked uncertain we could get out of the country and maybe more uncertain we could get back in, so with the time off planned we pivoted to a trip to the Southwest. As time grew closer a lot of spots we planned to visit were struck from the list, closed or too risky. Instead we only went inside to grocery shop, no other tourist stuff in towns or cities, which was fine by me. Camping and hiking for 23 days treated us well, with a big loop starting in Nevada, then on to Arizona, southern Utah, southwest Colorado, a tiny slice of New Mexico, then back through Arizona with Thanksgiving at Lake Mead. We had great weather overall, if a bit chilly at night. It has taken a while to sort through the photos and get a start on the trip report.

Here is the link to our time in Nevada: https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-nevada/

And our trip across the Arizona strip and into Utah: https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-arizona-strip/

Utah is up next, maybe tonight, or maybe tomorrow....I'll add the links as I finish the rest of the trip.

It was a nice getaway, and the last trip of the year for us, unless we somehow have great weather and can get out for New Year's somewhere.

Edit:
The next installment is now up. We entered Utah on the last trip, and skirt back in to Utah in the next one, but this covers most of our time there, which was spent south of the Bears Ears and north of the San Juan River:
https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-utah/

Next up we moved on to Colorado for a couple days:
https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-colorado/

On to New Mexico:
https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-new-mexico/

And finally, Arizona:
https://www.occidentalist.org/southwest-2020-arizona/
 
Wonderful trip report! VOF is one of my favorite places for campground type camping. There is so much to see there! When you went in to Mouse’s Tank, did you find the secret mysterious Bat Woman glyph? It’s a hidden gem.
 
We do love the AZ strip and SE Utah! Thanks for taking us along. We are looking forward to your next installment! And our next trip!
 
Thanks for sharing your trip.
Beautiful photos.
If you or anyone else wants more info about the condors
go to the Big Sur Condor Sanctuary .You can look up the
numbers of the birds and their history.They also have along
with the number a radio transmitter to help locate/track them.
Fantastic birds.
Frank
 
Wandering Sagebrush said:
Wonderful trip report! VOF is one of my favorite places for campground type camping. There is so much to see there! When you went in to Mouse’s Tank, did you find the secret mysterious Bat Woman glyph? It’s a hidden gem.
Click to expand...
I agree - I noted several longer trails that we didn't plan for and thus didn't have time for on this stop. There were several new to us stops so I sort of looked at this as an exploratory trip, the sort that 'the list' continues to build. I did not find the bat woman glyph, or if we saw it we didn't know what we were looking for. We had a few of those moments, where upon our return, or in one case upon the finishing of the hike (kinda embarrassed to admit exactly where) we didn't actually see what we thought we were there for. I guess it just gives us reason to return?? Or at least that is what I'm going with. Enjoyable all the same.

Casa Escarlata Robles Too said:
Thanks for sharing your trip.
Beautiful photos.
If you or anyone else wants more info about the condors
go to the Big Sur Condor Sanctuary .You can look up the
numbers of the birds and their history.They also have along
with the number a radio transmitter to help locate/track them.
Fantastic birds.
Frank
Click to expand...
Thanks Frank for pointing me towards the Big Sur Condor Sanctuary. I didn't actually see the birds I photographed there, but I did link to the release status in the post, which provides a bit of information. I have learned about these birds in textbooks since 2002, it was neat to finally see one.

Thanks everyone for your comments. It looks like it may be a couple more days to move on to the next post, holidays and an extra family emergency are calling. I'll be sure to add the links when the are updated.
 
Thx for the very informative TR ! and your pics are a big bonus. do you happen to use any special mapping app to figure your way around, or just the google variety ?
thx !!
 
Thanks goinoregon. As far as the electronic maps, I actually use a variety. I usually mark up google maps with all the potential places to go and then save a large area where I'll be travelling for offline use. In addition to the obvious navigation and such, offline google maps have come in handy a few times this year when we had just enough service for a phone call but couldn't look anything up. We were able to search in maps and find phone numbers to gas stations for example, when looking to see who had propane. When I get closer to where I am going I usually use avenza with maps I have already saved for the area. All the benchmarks are available in avenza on a state by state basis, so that is really handy, as they have a lot of detail. I also download the national forest and national park maps if I am going to be spending any time there. Most national parks have their map in avenza for free. On this trip I found several BLM maps available for the Bears Ears areas. More recently I have started using basecamp as well. Basecamp has really accurate ownership layers and a ton of other data, and you can save for offline use as well.
 
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