Fall 2024 Back to the Southwest, 10.19.24 - 11.13.24, Part 1, Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT

Most of these trips that Bridgit and I undertake are often planned around one particular destination. Many times they also coincide with a particular date. The Fall 2024 Southwest trip fell into that category. We had been to Zion National Park back in October of 2022. It was out first visit to this wonderful park and those four days only whetted our appetite for more. I was extremely interested in being there during the peak of the fall colors to see the contrast of the reds and golds mixed in with the palette of colors the rock of Zion provides. I used a nifty little website that predicts on any given date the level of color anywhere in the U.S. By using a slider you can see when a specific area is predicted to be at its peak colors. For the Zion area, this isn’t cut and dry. There are substantial variances in the altitude in the Zion area. The northern sector around the Kolob Canyons is much higher in elevation than the main Virgin River canyon down near Springdale. The east side of the Mt Carmel tunnel has its own character as well. According to the predictor, my best chance of seeing the colors at their peak would be the first week of November for the main canyon and the east side. With that information, the planning was underway! I picked a number of other places we wanted to visit and mapped out a twenty-six day trip that would loop us through Utah, Arizona and Nevada with more places to see than we could possibly fit into our itinerary.

We set sail in the Navibahn with our awesome Jeep towed behind on October 19th. We had never been out on a trip later than October 16th so this was another grand experiment in what traveling well into November would be like. I’m happy to report that at least on this trip, it was fantastic!

It takes us two and a half days to get to Utah so our first stop was a free campsite along the Snake River in eastern Oregon. We’ve stayed here several times. It is quiet and beautiful and a perfect distance from home. That night we were treated to a gorgeous sunset and it felt like an omen of how the trip would unfold.

**Late afternoon at our free campsite on the Snake River**

**Amazing sunset for our first night out**

**Coffee just tastes better in a Canyonlands mug!**

Day two was another long day of driving, taking I-84 through Idaho and then heading south on Hwy 93 through eastern Nevada. This is all very familiar territory to us. We love 93. It is long and straight, very little traffic, mountains rising on both sides of a broad valley that was once an inland sea. It is remote and vast and much more enjoyable driving than the jostling leap-frogging with semi tractor trailers on the interstates.

Almost halfway down through Nevada we stopped for the night at the Schellbourne Rest Area. This is another place we have stayed before. It’s a huge parking lot with covered picnic tables and bathrooms and doesn’t seem to get very crowded overnight. We shared the entire lot with two semis and one RV and by parking out by the fence we were far from the others.

I was hoping to shoot photos of the comet since there is absolutely no light pollution there but I scanned the skies from well before the sun went down until maybe an hour after sunset and never saw a thing. I have no idea why but I never did see the comet on three different nights of looking.

The next morning it was only a four hour drive to Cedar City, Utah. We stayed at a Best Western Plus, where they had a small RV park behind the hotel. It was convenient but nothing to write home about. We were excited to be in Cedar City. This marked the end of the approach and the start of the adventures.

The next day we took the Jeep up to Cedar Breaks National Monument. It had snowed seven inches there just two days prior to our visit so we weren’t sure what conditions we might find. We did start seeing snow as we gained elevation up Cedar Canyon but the roads were dry.

Cedar Breaks is similar to Bryce Canyon in that it has amphitheaters filled with brilliant orange rock hoodoos, towers and pinnacles. There is a seven mile road that hugs the rim of these amphitheaters. Several overlooks provide different views of the hoodoos. There are only a few trails in the park and to the best of my knowledge, they are all on the rim. I don’t think there are any trails that take you down into the hoodoos.

Our plan was to drive the road to the end and then slowly check out all the points on the way back. This would give me an idea of where I might want to be for sunset photography later in the day. As we drove the rim road we were going to go as far as the Brian Head Ski Resort but beyond the last overlook we saw a dirt road climbing up towards another overlook so we had to turn off and see what that was all about. As we climbed higher the road began to get more snow covered. Four wheel drive was needed but we had no problem plowing through about four inches of snow on the road staying in the Jeep ruts from previous vehicles. The road ended at the top of 11,312’ Brian Head Peak. We were the only ones up there so we parked and trudged over to an old structure at the overlook. It was pretty chilly up that high and the winds had created hoarfrost on the walls of the stone structure. We had good views of three different states, Utah, Arizona and Nevada.

**The old structure atop Brian Head Peak. Severe winds had blown the roof off in 2022.**

**Windblown hoarfrost on the summit structure**

After checking out Brian Head Peak we drove back down and stopped at all the overlooks. The views were great and quite different from each other. When we got to the Chessmen Ridge Overlook there was a trailhead there for the Alpine Pond Loop. This is a 2.2 mile loop trail with an option in the middle to take a connector trail to make it shorter. We started hiking from the southern end of the loop. The entire trail was snow-covered but other tracks made it easy to follow. I thought the trail was a bit underwhelming. I expected lots of hiking along the rim with great views but it was pretty much just a hike through the forest. When we got to the halfway point at the pond we turned around and came back out the way we had hiked in. We could have taken the connector trail and come out on the upper trail but we had been told that several downed trees had to be negotiated so we opted for the easier path.

After that hike we worked our way back to the new visitor center. It had just been built and had a grand opening but now it was closed for the winter season. Behind the visitor center is another overlook called Point Supreme and it was by far the best overlook we had seen. I was pretty sure that was where I wanted to be for the sunset.

With several more hours to wait, we had planned to hike out the South Rim Trail to Spectra Point and beyond to Ramparts Point. I was really looking forward to this hike which is a four mile out and back. From the front of the visitor center we began our hike by climbing a short hill to the rim. Due to the earlier snowfall, the trail was a muddy quagmire. We made it to the rim and we could now see the route from there as it climbed a hill to some water towers before descending along the south rim to the two points. We began our climb to the water towers but after a mere fifty yards or so I threw in the towel. It was extremely slippery and the mud was three to four inches deep and stuck to our hiking shoes like cement. Bridgit hadn’t complained and was bravely following me but I’m sure when I called the hike I could hear a tiny voice inside her head singing “hallelujah”! Back at the Jeep it was sunny and warm so we took off our hiking shoes to dry in the sun and took a break. I was able to clean them up quite nicely with the point of my trekking pole.

I finally got too antsy sitting around so about four-thirty I walked back out to Point Supreme. It turned out to be great timing. The light was fantastic and since the amphitheater was so deep, shadows were already beginning to form on some of the hoodoos. I had a good shooting session for the next hour or so. The recent snow had been a real bonus as the white snow contrasted well with the bright orange rock. Bridgit came out and joined me and once the shadows covered the hoodoos we drove back down to Cedar City for the night.

We really enjoyed Cedar Breaks. It is not as big or as spectacular as Bryce Canyon, but it has its own distinctive magnificence and only a fraction of the visitors that Bryce gets. Our first adventure of the 2024 Fall Trip was a big success and now it was time to move on to the next chapter!

Fall 2024 Back to the Southwest, 10.19.24 - 11.13.24, Part 1, Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT

Fall 2024 Back to the Southwest, 10.19.24 - 11.13.24, Part 2, Resurrection Canyon, UT