Utah Adventure Journal

You are browsing the archives of Andrew Gulliford.

Jensen, Utah   Dinosaurs are back! Well, maybe not from the Cretaceous Age 150 million years ago, but they’ve returned again on display at Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah. Actually, the large lizard bones never left, but the quarry exhibit building had been closed for five years because it had broken free of its […]

One of Utah’s most famous sons was a thief. For stealing a $5 horse, Butch Cassidy spent two years in the Wyoming State Prison. He learned his lesson, though. He never got caught stealing horses again. Instead he turned to robbing trains. Butch figured they’d pay better. He was right. Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, […]

As a young canyoneer and backpacker, Steve Allen wanted to learn more about the red rock canyon country of southern Utah. He began a desert quest that took him into some of the wildest country in America. Forty thousand hard-hiking, boot-busting, knee-wrenching miles later he shares his knowledge in Utah’s Canyon Country Place Names, a […]

San Rafael Swell, Utah Of the thousands of Indian rock art panels in the Southwest, none are older than Barrier Canyon pictographs found throughout the San Rafael Swell. From tiny five-inch animal figures to stunning seven-foot tall human shapes with no arms or legs and alien-like bug eyes, Barrier Canyon style images are almost always […]

    I came out of my room at one of the lodges near Lees Ferry, Arizona and there he stood in the parking lot. Eyes crinkled. Hair white.  Faded blue, quilted coat with duct tape on the sleeve. As a young man he had walked thousands of miles through canyon country, often alone. As […]

The shadows grew long. I knew I had to get off the slick rock and out of the canyon soon or I’d never cross the wash in the proper place, find my way through the mud and the tangle of tamarisks, and up the other side to my truck. Shadows lengthened. Impatient and a bit […]

Natural Bridges, Utah Americans have lost silence, solitude and darkness, but now the National Park Service has new initiatives to preserve and appreciate our dark skies, especially on the Colorado Plateau. Natural Bridges National Monument west of Blanding, Utah, has been named the world’s first Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association and visitors […]

Two hours after wearing a surveillance wire in a pot-hunting investigation, I placed a loaded .38 Colt revolver in my pickup. Just in case. I told my wife to lock the doors and windows, shut the blinds, and keep our small sons inside. The young pothunter I had just helped  the feds bust knew I […]

  San Juan County It takes a long time to find a mammoth, especially if it’s been buried beneath tamarisk, oakbrush, and Russian olive bushes. I’d heard rumors about a mammoth in San Juan County, but a beast from the Pleistocene is hard to locate and even harder to prove. Now thanks to the BLM, […]

                  Most explorations into southern Utah and the Southwest became famous. Here’s one expedition that didn’t. The explorers visited 100 archaeological sites between Durango, Colorado and Comb Ridge, Utah—80 of them never before described or recorded, but they had a miserable time of it, constantly underfunded, underfed, dehydrated, with sand in their […]

Bluff, Utah Ed Abbey called her a “girl ranger” and she was—the very first.  She began her federal career tracking grave robbers and pothunters in southeast Utah and ended it catching pot growers in western Oregon.  Lynell Schalk broke through the sagebrush ceiling as the first female armed ranger and Special-Agent-in-Charge for the Bureau of […]

  Bullfrog, Utah Each summer I do penance at Lake Powell for the eco-sins of the West. This summer was no exception as I worked on the Trash Tracker houseboat picking up trash in 108 degree heat along 1,900 miles of shoreline. Our team found the usual amount of beer cans, soda cans, diapers, toys, […]

  Cedar Mesa, Utah Standing on a wide stone shelf, looking across canyon as mid-morning sun lit the opposite side, I stood in silence viewing Moon House for the first time. I stared at the complex of 800-year-old rooms with multiple doorways. Here was an entire stone village with both McElmo style and Mesa Verde […]