We’ve got a new bobcat neighbor who’s been hunting in the front yard lately:
Mama Bear Visits
My brother didn’t fully secure the bear-proof trash bin cabinet while staying at the Tahoe house recently and a mama bear and her cubs managed to get into it. That wasn’t caught on video since their truck was blocking the camera, but you can see mama try the door to the truck before moving on. She was back again a couple of days later to see if anything more was to be found. Secure your trash!
Capitol Reef National Park
Nearing the end of our southern Utah road trip, we swung south and around from the eastern side of Canyonlands National Park, crossing the Colorado River on the northern reach of Glen Canyon to eventually make our way to Capitol Reef National Park. We had only one day to spend hiking among fantastic towering rock walls on some trails accessible from the main highway before boondocking overnight just outside the park and then having to head home. I’m sure there’s plenty more to see in Capitol Reef and of course there’s still so much more to explore across all of southern Utah in future trips!
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Canyonlands National Park
Continuing our road trip through southern Utah, Darlene and I moved on to Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands is actually divided into three separate districts which can only be accessed separately. We spent four days exploring the Islands in the Sky district, repeatedly blown away by the incredible vistas revealed in every direction. Most of our time was spent hiking various trails on the mesa top but we also spent one day biking down from the mesa on the White Rim Road. Would be great to come back sometime and fully explore that 100-mile rough dirt road.
We lost a half day here and there arranging to get the van’s badly-wearing tires replaced but I got a taste of some of great mountain biking trails outside the park while we were hanging out in the area. After getting the new tires installed, we headed south from Moab in the midst of snow flurries to spend a couple of days in the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park, including a long day of hiking and scrambling through the Chesler Park area.
We didn’t try to reach the western, third district of Canyonlands, The Maze. It’s much more remote and much less accessible.
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Arches National Park
Following our week of skiing in Colorado, we continued our road trip in the campervan by moving on to southern Utah, starting with several days of hiking among the rock formations and arches throughout Arches National Park. Darlene was also able to snag a permit for us to spend a day scrambling over and squeezing between rocks in the Fiery Furnace.
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Colorado Ski Week
Darlene and I joined Jon, Jim, Bill, Stan and Lewis for our annual week of skiing and board gaming, this time in Colorado in early March. We got a decent amount of fresh snow over the week as we skied at Breckenridge, Keystone and Copper Mountain.
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Foxes Meet Skunk
Another Season of Gaming
This is a gallery of photos from another season of gaming – July 2024 through March 2025 – including a playthrough of the Gilligan’s Island scenario of the co-op game of Robinson Crusoe (“oh, those poor people…”):
Some of the other games we played were Inventions: Evolution of Ideas, Cascadero, Thunder Road: Vendetta, Hegemony, The Search for Lost Species, Dominant Species, Daybreak, Dune Imperium: Uprising, The Night Cage, Coffee Traders, Barrage, Versailles 1919, Glass Road, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Pampero, Legacies, Deckchairs on the Titanic, Boon Lake, The Game of 49, Boon Lake, On the Underground: London / Berlin, Andromeda’s Edge, Primordial Soup, Small World, Revive, Bunny Kingdom, 7 Wonders, Duck & Cover, Decrypto, Last Light, Age of Rail: South Africa, Lords of Vegas, Tungaru, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Treasure Island, MagnetX, Heat, SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Gentes, Cloud Age, Arcs, and Hollywood 1947.
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