Camping – The Industrious Squirrel

Trips to Silver City and the Wheeler Geologic area

I took a vacation and met Kira in Silver City NM on her bike tour. We spent several days in town while I worked and then went camping in the Gila forest. We hiked in and camped one night near the Jordan Hot Springs. The town of Silver City was fun and we saw lots of galleries and a local museum. The hike was nice with lots of river crossings. The hot springs was almost exactly body temperature and was very clear. We saw lots of tadpole and young frogs and all the stages in between. Photos.

In July we went to the Wheeler Geologic area near Creede CO. Again we just stayed one night in the area and camped a second night at the trail headed before I headed home. Kira continued on hiking and camping in the La Garita area. The geologic area was very impressive. It is made up of Hoodoos formed by soft volcanic ash underneath hard volcanic rock. The hard rock protects the soft rock from erosion causing pillars and other interesting rock formations. The trail takes you all the way around the geologic area. We also scrambled up a little canyon in the interior of the formation. Overall I was very impressed with the hoodoos and would definitely recommend the hike. Doing it in one day is possible, but would be a bit rushed. Photos.

Trip to Grand Canyon

We went to the Grand Canyon for a hiking and camping trip. This trip was delayed by COVID and had originally been planned for early April 2020. We almost made it in 2020, but they closed the Grand Canyon a few days before we were supposed to arrive.

We hiked down the Tanner Trail and camped for three nights at the river. The second day we hiked west along the Beamer trail and the third day we hiked east along the Escalante trail. The Tanner trail is about nine miles and the elevation change is almost one mile. It is steep at the beginning and at the end. On the way down my legs got really tired and I was glad to have hiking poles to keep myself upright. The way back out was more of a workout, but much easier on the legs. Hiking up and down both took about 9 hours.

The weather was nice while we were there, though it was pretty hot down in the canyon. I usually think of climbing up and it getting colder, but dropping a mile into the canyon meant that it was 17 degrees warmer at the river than the rim.

Here are a couple of the best photos. The rest are available here.

Wind River Range

We went to Wind River range for a hiking and camping trip right before Labor Day. The weather was great and we even had mostly smoke-free skies.

We spent the first two nights in the car at the trailhead. The first night was planned, the second night was because it took a full day to fix the two flat tires we got on the drive up. Then we spent five days and four nights hiking and camping around the Cirque of Towers area.

The plan was to hike this route: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/us/wyoming/cirque-of-towers-big-sandy

I’ve also posted a gallery of photos.

Utah Trip

We had made reservations to camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in early April. As COVID became more serious and stay-at-home orders started coming out, we decided to leave Denver before it’s stay-at-home took effect.

It was still a couple weeks before our reservation at the Grand Canyon, so we started by going to Grand Junction and doing some hikes in Monument Canyon and a bike ride near Gateway.

After that hiked some of the Paradox trail.

At the end of March, Colorado issued a state wide stay-at-home and so we moved on to Utah. In Utah we did some biking and hiking near Blanding and Lake Powell.

Eventually the area of Utah we were in closed to out of county visitors and we moved over to Capitol Reef National Park.

Finally, we found out that the Grand Canyon was closed and we wouldn’t be able to do our planned hike. We headed back to Colorado, did one more hike in Monument Canyon and returned back to Denver to join the quarantine.

We’d horded enough food prior to the trip that we didn’t have to stop at an grocery stores on the way and we slept in the car or a tent. Our only contact with the world during the trip was at gas stations. Even there we only had to go inside a few times to restock water.