Given the spate of clear weather that the Southwest has been experiencing, our days of hiking and enjoying on foot our public lands just keeps on going and going. I’ll give the bunny a break here and say that my wife and I keep energized the natural way by the endless opportunities that wait not far from our door.

Three hours by car from Durango, Colorado, is Moab, Utah, where mountain bikers, off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, climbers, paddlers, backpackers and hikers covet as a kind of recreation Mecca. In every direction there’s something fun to do.

So yesterday, with Thanksgiving turkey packed into our bellies for sustenance, Chris and I, lusting for adventure, put in mind Canyonlands National Park and started the car. Although both of us had in some way enjoyed the Moab area in our pasts, neither of us had been to Canyonlands. Great two-day weather forecast, two days of nothing but time on our hands and a full tank of gasoline spelled “go”, and in what seemed like no time at all we were handing over a $10 entrance fee to get into the north end of Canyonlands National Park. We inquired about paying the $5 camping fee, too, but the ranger said that the fee box was not yet in place at the Willow Flat Campground. He said to enjoy the campground for free. Okay.

Because we had only 3 ½ hours of daylight remaining we decided that we would spend the time visiting various overlooks. Late sun was clearly best on the easterly views while the sun put a foggy haze to the west. Sun and how it affected the impressive landscape only inspired us to agree to rise early the next morning so we could gasp anew at the vistas. Canyonlands is so named because the character of the land is canyon within canyons. As one layer of sandstone washes from the earth’s crust, creating a wide craggy valley, a new layer begins to wash away by cutting through the valley floors. Layers of rock are eaten back, creating huge and deep canyons in the canyons. Meanwhile, wind blows through sculpting the standing rock. Chris commented that the oil paintings she has seen of the area are nearly surreal, unbelievable in their perfect beauty. Now, she said, she realizes that the painters were just good at capturing what they saw. The paintings were not lying.

We thought we had ended our sightseeing part of the day with the splendid view from Grandview Point Overlook but we were wrong. With nearly an hour of daylight remaining after we set up our tent at Willow Flat Campground, we walked the short 1/10-mile distance to the overlook – and then got carried away.

Candlestick Tower, a tall monolith of impressive sandstone towering to the west between our sandstone overlook and the Green River, which snaked southerly far below, begs a closer look. Between our viewpoint and that begging look rises a steep – hundreds of feet steep – sandstone cliff broken by a ledge of grass and boulders. Ominous-looking from afar, we walked toward the ledge hoping that we could traverse the cliff. Sure enough, a deer trail picked an easy route across the cliff. We followed and got our look, then made an arc around the backside of the sandstone to our camp.

Frosty night -- freezing.

Today broke clear and cold. Keeping our promise to get up early for a new view of the area from the overlook, we watched the sun break slowly over high sandstone to the east. The early strokes of sunshine that hit the valley floor below shined heavenly as they painted golden the distant canyon rims overlooking the Green River and its side canyons. Each golden ray put a dazzle on anything that it reached. An awesome touch, the tops of small towers rising from the valley floor poked through the sheets of light. The Green River grabbed a slice of the sunshine, sparkling.

Two buck mule deer chasing does through the juniper, love drunk in the throes of the rut, stalked about ignoring our presence while two does watched us intently.

Breaking camp with a purpose -- to get on with the day and to put behind the bone-freezing chore -- carried an air of excitement. Our plan was to hike the Syncline Trail, an 8-mile loop around the Upheaval Dome crater (online map: www.nps.gov/cany/ppmaps/island). At the center of the crater rose a dome of salt. Scientists gather around two ideas to explain the creation of the crater and dome. First, the exciting idea, is that a meteor blasted the surface of the earth, giving rise to the dome. The second, the ho-hum idea, is that the crater simply pushed through a thin layer of crust.

With a 1,300-feet elevation loss and gain, the Syncline Trail circumnavigates the crater at the low side of the outer wall, through canyons and along a section of sandstone crumble that asks to be called a slope. We chose to hike the trail counter-clockwise. The hiking is relatively easy on the first and large half of the hike, with the exception of the crumbly slope on the north side of the crater’s west-side breach. Despite the caution required to descend the trail, we enjoyed the scrambling. At one point Chris squeezed through a short “tunnel” while I chose a bypass.

The bottoms of the canyons are often marked idyllic with groves of trees and grassy flats. Creeks that become active during rainstorms cut furrows through the bottoms of the canyons. Shallow pools showed us that rains had recently visited the area.

In the breach of the crater a 1 1/2 –mile trail takes interested hikers into the crater to see the salt dome. We ate our lunch overlooking the main drainage and contemplated where the trail continued from here. It was one of two canyons, both coming in from the east. We wouldn’t know until we followed the trail down the drainage.

At the confluence with the first drainage, a wood sign indicated we could continue about 5 miles down the drainage to the Green River or turn east up the canyon. We stuck to our plan to hike the Syncline Trail around the crater, and began our hike up the canyon. The trail followed a heavily eroded wash, in and out of the creek bottom, to a point it decidedly climbed out of the wash and up a steep slope.

Chris, at two months pregnant, set her pace and found plenty of opportunities to hurrah her progress. She was doing better than she had thought she would do on this hike. In fact, she felt great, feeling happy with her fitness and pregnant well-being.

Hiking a short distance ahead, I had opportunities to take photographs of this impressive area and feel proud about my growing family. Chris and I have often talked about someday taking our child to places that we enjoyed during its stay in its mother’s belly. We are all together, even today, even though our baby floats while we hike. We have so much to be thankful for.

A series of climbs to cresting plateaus took us to a point on the trail where we think we can cut north and intercept the mile-long trail to a dome viewpoint. Our plan couldn’t have worked better. In ten minutes across slickrock our decision proved to be spot on, landing us on the viewpoint platform where groups of people stood to marvel the salt dome.

I try to get into my view finder the entire dome, but couldn’t, opting to take two photographs. The crater is immense. Chris and I notice that Israelis, Danish, Japanese and Germans are enjoying the viewpoint. A lot of cameras are getting a workout. Americans are busy today, too, either elsewhere in the park or nowhere in the park.

Americans are always busy.

Public lands are not an off-season option, not always. I think of last year at this time when I was skiing over wolf and mountain lion tracks in Glacier National Park. Hunting season had ended not long before: we had a good start on enjoying excellent venison steaks from the Flathead National Forest. I was toying with the idea to ski across the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Public lands. They’re an all-season, any-time phenomena built on American ideals. It doesn’t take a lot of experimentation to discover that today can be a perfect time to visit public lands.