Colorado Travel

Here are some highlights of my travels to Colorado:

Road Trips (PDFs)

To Iowa and Back (including Yellowstone) Road Trip 2024

I made my annual trip to the Midwest to see family, with stops at Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and in St. Louis as I headed east. Heading back west, I visited the Badlands and Black Hills in South Dakota, and I finally had a nice visit to Yellowstone National Park after other attempts in recent years were thwarted by early winter storms.

Wyoming and Northeast Utah Road Trip 2023

I made a return trip to Wyoming to explore more of the state. On the way home, I stopped in Vernal, Utah for a couple days so that I could visit nearby Dinosaur National Monument and check out several rock art sites near Rangely, Colorado.

Hiking Utah Road Trip 2023

I made my annual spring trip to Utah, this one focused on hiking, something I haven't done much of since being diagnosed with Charcot Foot. I wanted to put myself to a bit of a test. I also hit some sites in western Colorado that I had planned to visit last fall when returning from seeing my Midwest relatives only to have a winter storm hit the region.

Cross Country Relatives Road Trip 2022

I headed out to the Midwest to visit family. Along the way, I checked out a wide variety of sites, from dinosaur bulges to Frank Lloyd Wright, Pullman cars to French colonial settlements, Buffalo Bill to Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Garden of Eden to Popeye.

Wyoming and Southeast Montana Road Trip 2022

Plans to visit Yellowstone National Park once again went awry due to weather - flooding, this time - but I still headed for Wyoming and southeastern Montana to see a number of other sites on my list, most related to archaeology, dinosaurs and the western emigrant trails that passed through Wyoming.

Return to Southeast Utah Road Trip 2022

After more than 30 years, I finally explored Shafer Canyon at Canyonlands National Park. And for the first time since the COVID pandemic began, I returned to Blanding, Utah and Page, Arizona to explore more sites in those areas.

Southern Utah and Western Colorado Road Trip 2019

It was time for my annual Four Corners spring trip. I came up with a number of mostly new-to-me hikes and destinations around Page, Arizona, Blanding, Utah, Grand Junction, Colorado and Green River, Utah.

Cross Country Relatives Road Trip 2018

In October 2018 I took a road trip from Las Vegas to the Midwest to visit relatives, making a handful of deliberate and ad hoc sightseeing stops along the way. On the way back home I spent a few days in the Moab/Green River area of Utah to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Unfortunately, rain, local flooding and snow limited some of my sightseeing.

Four Corners Rock Art, Ruins and Hiking 2018

In April 2018 I took a 17-day road trip around the Four Corners region to see a number of ruins, petroglyph, pictograph and geological sites - most of which I hadn't been to before even though I've been in the region a number of times. This included 34 hikes on the first 16 days of the trip. It was a great trip - and it was pretty obvious that when hiking through Four Corners canyon country it pays to keep your eyes open.

New Mexico Ruins and Rock Art 2017

In July 2017 I spent two weeks exploring northwest New Mexico and northeast Arizona; during this trip I visited or saw about three dozen Ancestral Puebloan ruins sites, many associated with Chaco or Mesa Verde cultures; I also took in a number of geological sites and some museums, and I took about two dozen shorter to mid-length hikes.

Cross Country Relatives Road Trip 2016

Here is a summary/photo set from the October 2016 cross-country road trip I took to visit relatives in Texas and the Midwest.

Destination Overviews (PDFs)

Slide Shows (YouTube)

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