After several days spent near the Bears Ears area of southern Utah we were moving further west and by mid morning we found ourselves in Colorado. The title of this post may be somewhat misleading, as we did cross back into Utah for one more stop, but those lines on the map are pretty arbitrary anyway. Our one more stop was Hovenweep but we entered through Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, at the Lowry Pueblo.
After our night in Comb Wash it was time to start looking around this piece of southern Utah I haven’t really spent any time in. When we started thinking about our time in the Southwest our list for New Mexico was long and the list for Utah was pretty short. A combination of lots of closures throughout New Mexico and Utah having a lot of backcountry opportunities that kept us away from crowds resulted in us spending more time in Utah than anywhere else. We started the day backtracking to see the formation Mexican Hat was named for.
We left Valley of Fire and Nevada behind, headed for the narrow strip of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon. Even though the North Rim was essentially closed for the season, according to our research it was as open as we needed it to be, meaning it was open to drive into and have a hike around to the viewpoints. We didn’t need to pick up anything at the gift shop. But, as we were getting closer to Jacob Lake the snow started to get pretty deep and our stop at the North Rim started to look questionable. Sure enough, the sign at the Jacob Lake junction advised that the road was closed due to snow, and not to travel toward the park, as if the freshly fallen two feet of white stuff wasn’t enough of a clue. Well, there goes that plan. I guess the North Rim goes on the list for next time we happen to be in the neighborhood. With 12 cookies from the Jacob Lake Inn as our consolation we headed east toward the Vermillion Cliffs.
