In Bluff, Utah, exploring desert ruins in Grand Gulch

The lengthening days and featureless gray skies of the season had started to get us down. This weekend we wanted something different, even if it meant hiking in the dark. So we left home in Durango, Colo., late Friday afternoon and drove three hours northwest to Cedar Mesa, a 70-mile-long plateau that juts out of the sun-scarred desert between Bluff and Blanding, Utah.