Bears Ears National Monument, Utah - January 28th to 30th, 2026
Our friends, Dave and Sandy, invited us to join them on a two week camping trip down to Arizona at the end of January and beginning of February. We accepted. The first stop on our trip was in Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to check out some petroglyphs and cliff dwellings.
Tuesday, we finished packing for our trip. Prepping and packing for a short trip is almost as much work as for a whole six month season. Similar to our trip to Iowa in November, we decided not to dewinterize the RV. The Arizona trip is only for two weeks and it was freezing temperatures at home and probably will be still freezing temperatures when we return. We would rather deal with bags of water for two weeks than draining and filling tanks in freezing weather.
We waited to pack anything liquid into Red Tail until Wednesday morning. We didn’t want anything freezing overnight and we didn’t want to turn on Red Tail’s heat. Red Tail doesn’t fit in our driveway, nor along the curb in the street in our cut-de-sac, so we have to park it in the street around the corner. We don’t feel comfortable turning on the heat when we can’t keep an eye on the rig.
We met Sandy and Dave at 10 am on Wednesday and hit the road. They were driving Red Tail Lodge One, a VanDoIt camper van, which they had bought from us a few years ago. We were in Red Tail Lodge Two, our Winnebago EKKO.
As we were filling up gas in Broomfield, Keith noticed a crack in the dinette window. It was just a small crack near the upper corner of the window. Hopefully it won’t get any bigger during our trip. We’ll add that to our list of things to fix before we hit the road again in June.
We headed west on I-70 through the Rocky Mountains. Even though it was January, the roads were clear and dry. Colorado has been having a very warm and dry winter so far, but we were still surprised at how little snow there was in the mountains. At Vail, the majority of the ground was bare, free from snow. If things don’t turn around soon, Colorado will be hurting this summer for water, as we depend on the mountain snow pack for our water supply.
For lunch, we stopped at Loaded Joe’s in Avon, Colorado. It is our usual stopping place when we head west from home, as it is about a two hour drive from our house. That is just about the time for a bathroom break and lunch.
From there, it was another two hours to the James Robb State Park Fruita Section campground, our stop for the night. We arrived around 4 pm and didn’t waste any time getting out for a walk, as the sun was due to set at 5:30 pm. That is the disadvantage of traveling in the winter. The days are short and you run out of daylight for outdoor activities. There was no snow on the ground and temperatures were in the 40’s, but dropping fast with the sun.
There is a nice paved path that starts out following the Colorado River, then turns towards downtown Fruita. We turned around before reaching downtown, but not before passing through some underpasses with lovely murals to admire. We walked for about an hour before returning to our rigs to warm back up and fix dinner.
Since our EKKO has comfortable seating for four people, Dave and Sandy brought their dinner over to our rig and we enjoyed our evening meal together. We were sharing a camp site. The sites are large pull-throughs with electricity, but neither one of us needed to plug in. We both have plenty of battery power, especially after a long drive to top off the charge. After deciding on a plan for the following day, we all turned in for the night.
Being the off season, most of the water, restrooms, and showers in the campground were closed. However, they left one, unisex, single stall bathroom open. We were expecting it to be a vault toilet, but we were pleasantly surprised that it was a flush toilet, with a sink (with freezing cold water), and a hand dryer, all in a heated room. Yay! Believe it or not, one toilet for the whole campground was plenty, as there was only about one or two other camp sites occupied that night. And luckily, our camp site was near the open toilet.
Thursday, we got an early start to try to take advantage of as much daylight as we could. When we woke up, there was frost on the inside covering the whole windshield. Oh yeah, we forgot that we should have cranked open the ceiling fan overnight to let some of the moisture escape. We guess we’re out of practice. Some lessons you just have to keep relearning.
We were pulling out of the campground in Fruita by 8 am. We were heading for Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. To help break up the drive, we stopped in Thompson Springs to check out the Sego Canyon Petroglyphs. The petroglyphs and pictographs are a short drive north off from the Thompson Springs exit along I-70, just before turning south on US 161 at Crescent Junction. It was a nice break to use the bathroom, stretch our legs, and view some rock art.
We drove straight through Moab and stopped in Blanding, at the Canyon Country Bowling Center, which is also a gas station and an A&W Restaurant. We’ve stopped there a couple of times before (Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah - May 3rd to 6th, 2024). We needed gas and Keith wanted a root beer float. It was an another nice break where we sat enjoying our root beer treats while watching some people bowl.
From Blanding, we turned onto Utah State Route 95, heading west to the Butler Wash Interpretative Trail inside Bears Ears National Monument. A half mile trail across slick rock took us to a viewpoint overlooking some Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling ruins. We spent about an hour enjoying the hike and the views.
From there, we continued along highway 95 to the House on Fire Trailhead in Mule Canyon. The hike to the House on Fire cliff dwellings was a little longer than the first hike. The mile long trail followed along a dry wash at the bottom of a canyon before reaching the ruins, perched a short distance up the canyon wall. By this time, it was getting late in the day and the setting sun gave the dwelling remains a wonderful glow.
We counted the combination of the two hikes as our first hike for our 52 Hike Challenge of 2026. The total was 3.4 miles with a total elevation gain of 210 feet, which we completed in a total of just under two and a half hours.
After our hikes, we headed back east on highway 95 to the Comb Wash Campground. The campground was a dispersed area, located a short distance down a dirt road just south of the highway. We reached the campground just as the sun set. The setting was gorgeous, with the setting sun lighting up the surrounding rocky ridge lines. There were two vault toilets in the campground. We had the whole place to ourselves. Our guess is that the campground is much busier during a warmer time of year. It was a little chilly to be sitting outside, but we stayed cozy inside our rigs.
This time we remembered to open the ceiling fan overnight. There was still a little frost on the windshield Friday morning, but just a short strip along the bottom, not nearly as much as the morning before.
We started our day about an hour later than the day before. It was only about an hour’s drive to our main hike for the day. On the way, we stopped in Bluff for gas and a bathroom.
Our hike started near the Bluff airport. The trail was called San Juan River and Butler Panels in AllTrails. A four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle was needed to get to the trailhead, but there was a parking area just off Bluff Airport road that was accessible for 2WD vehicles. We walked the dirt road from there to the trailhead, which was about 1.3 miles each way. So our total hike was 5.7 miles.
The trail was rather interesting, even the road walk portion of it. The road walk was across some slick rock, with wide-open views across the surrounding landscape. At the trailhead, the trail starts off along an old wagon road that gradually leads down into a canyon. The canyon still had water at the bottom, with lots of cottonwood trees and birds. We were surprised to see bright green grass growing alongside the trail. The tunnel through the vegetation was quite a contrast to the wide open expanses along the dirt road.
The trail crossed the creek several times. As we approached the San Juan River, there was a side-loop trail that led over to a panel of rock art. But the main attraction was the large panel of rock art along the San Juan River at the end of the trail. Some of the art was fainter than some of the others, with the desert varnish trying to reclaim the rock. We’re not sure how old the petroglyphs are, but we stared at them for quite a while. The longer you looked at the panel, the more drawings you can see.
We found a few flat rocks near the panel to sit down and enjoy our packed lunch. The view of the San Juan River below us was just as scenic as the rock art panel. We soaked it all in.
On the hike back out, we checked out the loop trail to see a few more pieces of rock art, although they were not as impressive as the Butler Panels. Along the way, we also spotted a cliff dwelling ruin up in an alcove in the canyon wall.
As we climbed out of the canyon on the old wagon road, a set of animal tracks set into the stone of the trail caught our eyes. We’re not sure what type of animal it was from, how old the tracks were, or how they became fossilized into the rock. Perhaps they were fossilized tracks of a saber-tooth tiger?
Right near the tracks was a large petroglyph of a dog on the rocky trail surface, instead of on a wall. We’re guessing that the petroglyph was rather new, but we could be wrong.
We returned to our vehicles after about four and a half hours, with a total elevation gain of 550 feet over the 5.7 miles. It was a very enjoyable hike.
From there, we drove straight north, across the highway and onto Butler Wash Road. The road was a little rough, but it wasn’t far to the Wolfman Panel trailhead, our desired destination. There was one little sketchy dip where our tailpipe only cleared by about two inches. Red Tail Lodge One cleared by about the same distance to the bottom of the hitch rack carrying Dave and Sandy’s bikes. But we just took it slowly and everyone made it to the trailhead without any damage.
The trail to the Wolfman Panel was only about a mile round trip. However, there was a short section of scrambling. It was a little difficult for Sandy, who has issues with her knees, but we all made it safely to the panels and back.
The rock art at Wolfman Panel was the best we have ever seen. The panel was not as extensive as the Butler Panels, but the figures were well-defined and beautiful. Similar to the earlier hike, we spotted some cliff dwellings on the opposite side of the canyon, just as we dipped below the rim of the canyon part way through the hike.
We counted the combination of the two hikes as hike number 2 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2026. Our total mileage for the day was 6.7 miles with an elevation gain of 650 feet, which took us five hours and 45 minutes to complete.
By this time, it was getting late in the day, so we had a beautiful drive over to Goosenecks State Park, our camping spot for the night. It was getting dark by the time we arrived at the campground, so our views out over the San Juan River were starting to fade, but we’ll get a chance to check them out in the morning.
Ann noticed that the freezer door didn’t seem to be closing all the way. Our ice cream was still frozen, but not as hard as it normally is. Upon further inspection, Keith noticed that the freezer door hinges were cracked. He placed an order on Amazon for a replacement door (paid link) as he couldn’t find just the hinges. For a temporary solution, he rolled up a rag and taped it to the outside of the freezer door. So when the outer refrigerator door closed, it would push up against the freezer door, keeping it closed. That seemed to work pretty well.
The first three days of our trip were under our belts. We managed to fit in quite a bit in a short amount of time. It was a much faster pace than we normally travel, but this was a much shorter trip than usual, so we didn’t mind.
Check out our related video: Bears Ears National Monument, Utah
(Ann)