4 Corners 2025

TL;Dr: SW Utah is awesome, as always. Petroglyphs & Pictographs. Puebloan architecture. Amazing geography and great friends.

Just wanna see the pics? Here you go.

We have a group of friends to go places – Hawaii, New Orleans, now the 4 Corners area of the Colorado Plateau – Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. One of our troupe spent time in Bluff, so we went there, Blanding, and Moab.

Day 1 – Riding the SlickRock trail in Moab was the most fun I’ve had on a Mountian bike in 10 years. I rode it once before – with crappier equipment and far less experience. I made it a half mile. This year I rode my dream bike – an Ibis Ripley (ok, there are probably dreamier bikes). It was like riding a nice shoe: invisible, predictable, bouncy and fun. Electric shifting was… Weird. It makes a squeaky mouse sound, and it was hard to get used to hitting the right button. Probably nice in the long run. The dropper was key. And the rock, the route – amazing. Like: *Amazing*.

Lovely dinner at El Tapatio.

The Ladies & DT made it to firey furnace in Arches and had a lovely time…

Day 2: thrifting (nothing good), Wilson Arch was 15 minutes of goodness. Then off to a wander in Bears Ears and Newspaper Rock. And then the farm House.

Day 3 -Ancient Architecture: House on Fire in Muley canyon. Tiny rooms with incredibly small doors tucked into the crevices of canyon walls. You can literally walk right up to them. We were stalked by a noisy cadre of annoyers, even so I managed to spot these 4 hand prints hiding high up on a ledge:

Incredible to think they were 800 years old.

Back to the Farmhouse: a strange place indeed. Nothing was level. The bathroom was on 3 different levels (not bathroomS, just the one bathroom) the sill was raised up higher than the floor, the sweep of the door was cut out of the raised platform of the bathroom propper – weird as fuck. Birds in the roofing, turkeys clicking outside, insistent cats stealing mutton – this place had it all and yet was missing so much (e.g. windows that stayed open).

Day 4 in the next post…