Mesa Verde National Park

Today we hit up Mesa Verde National Park (only 1 hour from our house) in southwest Colorado.  Pete, Erin, Chris, Arnie, Aspen, and us all went up for the day to explore a little.  The pictures below are from the Mesa Verde Spruce Tree House.

Did you know that there are over 600 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde NP?

 A view from the Mesa.

 Approaching the Spruce Tree House Ruins.

The Ruins.  The ladders lead down to the kivas.

Cheaha Mountain

Our second highpoint was a part of 3-highpoint trip.  We came across the adventure of highpointing when we were making plans to meet up with family in Florida in the summer of '04.  After hitting up Mississippi's highpoint first, we made our way to Alabama.  A little more exciting than MS as Alabama's highpoint is actually a state park (Cheaha State Park) and reaches an elevation of 2,407 feet.

The Drive: From Birmingham, take I-20 east to Exit 191 and turn south onto US 431.  Continue 3.5 miles before turning right onto a road with a sign pointing to SR 281.  Drive .6 mile and turn left onto SR 281.  Drive 12 miles on SR 281 to the park entrance on the right.  Take the one way road to the right and drive up to the parking area where you will see the sign pictured below.

The Hike:  The hike is more like a leisurely walk as you only need to walk a short distance from the parking area to the tower you see pictured below.

 Emily at the State Park sign and parking area.

Here we are at the tower/highpoint.

Our Highpoint Adventures

We are gonna start a series of posts about Highpointing Adventures.  If you don't know, Highpointing is trying to reach the highest point in a state.  We started our journey on June 20, 2004 and have reached 41 Highpoints in the U.S. so far and have a few more coming up soon.

Let's begin with our first:  Mississippi (6/20/04) - We'll have to admit, not an exciting first highpoint but we had to start somewhere.

The Drive There:  In the northeast corner of the state you will find Woodall Mountain by taking US 72 east into Iuka, MS.  In Iuka turn right onto SR 25 (south) and then a quick right onto Fairground Road (CO 187).  Follow Fairground Road for 1.1 miles to CO 176 and turn right onto CO 176.  You will see the sign pictured below at this turn.  Continue .7 mile to another sign on the right and turn right onto the gravel road.  Follow the road for about 1 mile before reaching the highpoint.

The Hike: No hiking required.  Take a look around. Pretty boring.  Our next posts will be a bit more exciting.

 First sign pointing towards highpoint.

The highpoint survey marker.

Angel Peak

Today we visited the Angel Peak Scenic Area just outside of Bloomfield, NM.  A part of the San Juan Basin Badlands, Angel Peak is almost 7,000 feet above sea level.  A lot people think it isn't as "cool" as the Bisti Wilderness Area because it doesn't have as many hoodoos, we would disagree.  The landscape was very similar to South Dakota Badlands which we loved.

From Farmington, we drove 27 miles to the turn-off.  We turned east onto the signed "Angel Peak Scenic Area" road and drove to the campground.  From the campground we took off hiking and made our way all the way to the bottom floor of the Badlands.  Check out some pics:

 Angel Peak

 Hiking down  the ridge.

Making our way to the valley floor.

Book Number 2 Due Out in February

Get 'em while they're HOT!

Our second book revision is due to hit shelves in February 2010.  Emily's second cover photo graces the front and the VERY photogenic JD is in the shot again.  Hmmm... the first cover photo was of his back and you can barely see him in the second cover photo.  It doesn't get anymore photogenic than that.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Hiking-Grand-Staircase-Escalante-the-Glen-Canyon-Region-2nd/Ron-Adkison/e/9780762760619/?itm=1&USRI=hiking+grand+staircase