A couple of pieces of administrivia before I get into the aforementioned travelogue: 

• One of my original conceits was that each of the five categories my thoughts tended to go into would get a lead-in icon. Half of those images are on a web server that's down, and the system administrator who runs it (me) is a lazy sack. I may or may not pick that back up. I may or may not restart the swerver. This is the first time in three years I've missed it. 
• I probably won't write much about the January trip. It was a trip to visit family. I still felt reasonably familiar with Atlanta. I wound up renting a BMW 5-series for cheap. We got more snow there than Colorado did. Everything went pretty much to plan. That's pretty much it. So, skipping January, then. 

February!

As February began, I figured I'd push the February trip outside of February and double up some other month-- a lot of stuff was going on. Austin came into town, so one weekend we did the local science museum (the bears to the left were part of a special exhibit they had going on) and Casa Bonita. Another weekend I went to Genghis Con, the local game convention. The last weekend, I figured I couldn't avoid going out for my birthday. That left only one free weekend, and the laundry must be done. 

 Shows what I know. Somewhere in the middle of the month I grumbled about the birthday coming up, and Amy said she figured I was headed out of town, so there were no family plans. Hot dog! The weather looked fine for a road trip west. I started making my checklists. I started finding my tent and mattress and all the other things I use to pretend my Grand Cherokee is an RV. 

Then I realized: like I noted in the previous post, we currently have no pets. That was sort of intentional-- the plan, yes, the timing, well, we'd hoped it'd be a few more years. No animals makes travel easier for both of us, and it's not like Amy's gotta take time off of work or anything. And sure enough, it did turn out that she was interested in seeing Dinosaur National Monument and whatever else we found around there. 

So I stopped hunting for the tent, and figured we'd find hotels in the area. Should be fun! 

Then Amy screwed up her knee and told me to head out alone. I'd stopped preparing for Plan A, because Plan B. So, on to Plan C: Like Plan A, but with hotels rather than sleeping in the Jeep. I wasn't sure what I'd wind up inadvertently leaving behind if I tried to sort and load camping gear at the last minute. 

I still got a fairly late start, and between that and traffic, it was lunchtime when I got to Indian Springs. which was convenient: That's where Beau Jo's is. I demolished a whole small pie (which means only one pound of toppings). 

I got off the highway not long after that and took US-40 through ski country. It was beautiful and snowy-- though there was no snow actively falling, so the roads and skies were clear. This was a nice change, because down on the Front Range we kept forgetting to have winter this year. 

I enjoyed small-roads Colorado, and it was just as nice to get into Utah. By the time I got to the hotel in Vernal, though, I still wasn't done digesting a pound of meat pie. I picked up an apple and a large snack pack of pepperoni, cheese and crackers when I filled up at the local Maverik, picked at it a bit, but didn't really bother to have a real dinner. 

One problem with working an early schedule is that it means I have a hard time sleeping in, and the first night in a hotel bed means I probably wasn't sleeping anyhow. I gave up and got up around 0600 (which is kinda sleeping in by my standards!) and went down for hotel breakfast, figuring I'd take my time because there was no way the National Monument would open before 0900, which was right about when I pulled up to the front gate.

I was right about not opening before 0900. They didn't open 'til 1000. 

You could drive on in, though, if you got a day pass from recreation.gov. I had just enough signal there that the app mostly worked... until I tried to order a day pass. 

Eventually, I gave up. There was another facility about an hour back down the highway just over on the Colorado side of the border. I'd go check that out first, then come back here when they're open. The Canyon Visitor Center. Pictured to the right. 

Yeah. 

And that sign didn't even have hours. Just "CLOSED". 

So, back to the main visitor center! I stopped off at the scenic overlook on the way through this time. It's not a bad drive. Wasn't exactly my plan, though.

The National Monument is worth checking out if you're in the area. There's a spot where they've partially excavated a lot of fossils. They didn't all die there, a flooded river carried the bones down to a spot where they clogged up so there were a huge bunch of bones all in the same place from all over the watershed. The bad news is that means that there's not any decent way to be sure which bones went to which animal, and it's unlikely that there's a complete set of any given dinosaur, anyhow. Still, very cool. 

After the visitor center and the Wall O' Dinosaur, I continued into the park. History fast-forwarded a few million years after that. Sure, the geology was old as time, but the stuff on it was signficantly more recent-- but still prehistoric. A major theme of the next few days was going to be petroglyphs. Since no river picked them all up and deposited them in one place like it did with the dinosaur bones, they were scattered, but probably just as many of them in this area, if not more. 

Amy had sent a birthday present along with me (a widget to make carbonated water and a Flyin' Miata keychain) so I opened that while I sat along a river to eat lunch (which was the rest of that pack of pepperoni, cheese and crackers). 

The road turned to dirt, though nothing I really needed the Jeep for, and ended at an ancient cabin where a woman lived alone from 1913 to 1964. Progress marched on, but it was apparently not for her. 

After visiting the cabin, I got back on the road and followed more of the Dinosaur Diamond. The stretch out of Vernal, UT wasn't particularly scenic, not what one expects out of a Scenic Byway, but once US 191 splits off toward Price, it starts to get excellent. I had driven part of this stretch a few years ago in the old BMW, and had to turn back not far past Price as we climbed up into snowy mountains, the BMW was on summer tires and it got sketchy. That wasn't a problem this trip, as the weather was dry and it takes a lot more to be sketchy in the Jeep.

I ended the day at a stop that was another echo of road trips past. In 2015, after I'd picked up the blue Miata from Flyin' Miata for its elective surgery (turbocharger), I continued on west, eventually getting to California before turning east. That night I stopped at a campground in Green River, UT, and the next morning, I found joined called La Pasadita, which was a food trailer that was parked at a disused service station. It had a few old cafeteria booths set up under the awning, and sold a spectacular breakfast burrito. 

Eleven years later on this trip, I also overnighted in Green River (this time at the Holiday Inn Express rather than the KOA) and I saw they were still open so I stopped off for dinner. I am pleased to report that their chile relleno burrito is just as good. They've also cleaned up the interior of the gas station and have set up some more seating inside. 

The hazard to this sort of road trip is you wind up finding stuff that looks interesting to explore, but it's inconvenient to do it then, but there's not necessarily anywhere to stop for the night nearby, either. The next morning, I backtracked about an hour to get to a turnoff to go explore a forty-mile-long canyon named Nine Mile Canyon. (It was nine miles from something in a survey.) 

I did find some remnants of some more recent civilization, similar to the cabin in the National Monument, but the best bits were once again prehistoric-- more petroglyphs! Sometimes they were a little difficult to find-- I walked 3/4 mile or so back into a box canyon and didn't find the "owl panel" I was looking for, but on the way back out I found a bit of signpost sticking up that I couldn't see from the other direction, which pointed me a few dozen yards off to the right. One of my favorites is one that more modern folks have called "Coyote Placing the Stars". I'd have never found those, either, without viewing tubes to point out where to look. Of course, if Coyote is placing stars, he's going to be way up at the top of the hill. I should have guessed. 

The road turned to dirt a good ways before the end, but still, nothing I needed a 4x4 for. Eventually I got to the other end of the canyon, which was up near where I'd been the previous day, not far from Vernal. 

Dinosaur Diamond makes something of a diamond shape. The northern apex is in Vernal, and I'd driven the northwest and southwest edges of the diamond to get down to Green River-- so this worked reasonably well. I wasn't far from taking the northeast and southeast edges down though Colorado back to I-70.  I haven't done the whole thing-- there's a loop that heads south from I-70 down to Moab, which I have not done yet. I expect to visit Arches and Moab in the not too distant future, so that won't be any trouble.

As I crossed into Colorado, I entered Rio Blanco county. Soon, I crossed the White River. I thought, "I suppose some things didn't get translated."

I was wrong. Later I found a plaque about the Escalante expedition, who discovered the White River, but they called it the San Clemente. So who knows how the county got named...

The Colorado sections of the Dinosaur Diamond are just as good as the stretch of of US 191 in Utah. Lots of good scenery, a few good spots to pull off for (once again!) petroglyphs and other ancient native sites. This time I intentionally got off the road on a BLM trail through what claimed to be Cow Canyon. Now, I get I'm a city boy, but I'm pretty sure them ain't cows. 

When the track started getting a bit muddy, I figured I'd turn around and head back. I don't need to tear up a muddy trail and have to dig myself out. I had a shovel and traction boards with me, but I'd just as soon not use them. 

From there, it was mostly just getting home. I took I-70 home, which one might think wouldn't be as good as US-40 on the way out, but I-70's an exception. I-70 through Glenwood Canyon is excellent. Heck, from Cove Fort all the way to Morrison, it's good stuff. Five stars, would drive again. 

Twelve years, huh?

I started ignoring  this thing after migrating over to 'social media'. The media quit being social, and after a while, the inertia there became less "keep using it" and more "keep forgetting it exists, too." I wanted a place to keep track of what had been going on in my life, though. 

Right. I have a blog. Had a blog? Nope. Turns out I can still log in. I have a blog. How early-2000s. 

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So... what am I trying to keep track of? Travel. (Oh, right. The conceit of this blog calls those 'expeditions'. What was I thinking?)  There is one thing that has not changed in twelve years: I am long-winded. So, some setup of how I got here. 

Back in the summer of '24, my job switched to supporting a different customer. This shop has a 4x10 schedule, and I figured that's a lot of three-day weekends. I was gonna get out and do things more. 

To be fair, I did get out occasionally. It just wasn't much more than I had before. That was also the year that Amy retired, so she was out doing things a lot more often-- big hike on the Arizona trail, a month on the Appalachian trail. I wound up holding down the fort, keeping up with the animals. 

October of last year (2025) sucked. We lost both Dulce and Dozer, leaving us with no animals at the house. Somewhere in my funk, I decided I was damned well going to find a silver lining: I don't need to tag off with Amy any more for travel.  I set myself a goal: I was going to do some kind of travel once a month in 2026. 

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So far so good.  In January, Amy and I went out to visit her family in Marietta, GA:

In February, I took the ZJ out to explore the 'Dinosaur Diamond' scenic highway (this is not said highway):

And last week, I met up with Austin, Mark, Curtis, and Angelo in Vegas for Austin's birthday festivities: 

The intent here is I'll write up some more about each of these, and maybe keep this place up to date so I can remind myself what I've been up to. 

Assuming I don't forget this thing exists again...