WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Fall Break Out West

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they chat about Nicole's fall break trip out west to the San Juans, Arches, and Canyonlands. 

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. I just got here, guys. I'm Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Seguerat, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. This week... Some weeks are better than others. Some weeks are better than others.

Dude, you guys don't understand the times Nicole makes this record, bro. It's 3 a.m. right now. No, it's not. She said, wake up. It's off the trails time. I ran all the way here. This is Storm's own fault. He knew we were recording, but he has a boy's only recording episode after this with Dr. Peters. And because it's a professor this time, Storm actually can't push it back and be late because normally what Storm does is we record first. He shows up late to me and makes his other guest. Not purposefully. Well, he still does and makes his other guests wait. But this time, because it's an actual adult, an actual adult who deserves respect.

This is on you. No, no, listen, listen. No matter level of age, everyone is on the same degree of deserves respect. It's all about experience. That's true. And speaking of experiences, my trail marker is that I just ran here. Oh, great. Yeah, I ran all the way here.

Through the falling leaves? Yes, it is very pretty outside right now, which I'm very happy about it. Good running weather. Not that I can run, but if I could, I would be out there. Yes. Do I look like I'm in shape, though? Yeah. I do. You look like, I would say.

I'm light. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm stronger than I look. You look like you should be a good distance runner just because you're very slender and like, lots of, lots of, lots of male runners are very thin guys. Well, I'm not. My true marker is that I'm out of breath. Your turn.

Go. Take it away. My trail marker is related to fall break, which is what we'll be talking about this episode. I don't think I actually mentioned that, but we just had fall break. Fall break. And over fall break, I went away. I left for just under a week. Someone took you away?

A secret place. You can't say. Take me away. All right. Well, yeah, where'd you go? We went to the San Juan's in Colorado as well as Utah. And then I was home in California for like two days. Well, a day and a half as well.

You went to all three of those. I thought you were just in Colorado. Well, that was the original plan. Wow. But a specific little moment from the week was Arches National Park. In Utah. In Utah. I've always wanted to go there.

I've never been. I haven't been in quite a few years, a long time, actually. And it was kind of drizzly while we were there, but I was just looking around. I was like, wow, this is literally, this is 10 hours away from home, maybe a little less. I don't know. It's just, it's so beautiful and so incredible. Are there actually big giant sandstone Cheerios out there? Cheerios?

Yeah, big old giant Cheerios made of sandstone. Big old loop-de-loops. Sure. Sonic the Hedgehog Green Greens. No. You know he runs and then he does the loop on the things. Isn't that what it is? There's like big arches.

Yeah, there's big arches. With holes in them. Yeah, I wouldn't say they're all very circular. Have you seen a cheerio? Of course I've seen a cheerio. You know, they have holes in them too? Yeah, but it's not, that's more circular. Oh, wait.

What are these like? They're more like sunset shaped. You know, like half a sunset that you see. Obviously, delicate arch doesn't look like that. You look at almost anything and say, that's kind of sunset shaped. You know what, Storm? Picture half of a sunset, and that's what a lot of the arches look like. Half?

Isn't the sun already half when it's setting? I'm saying, I'm saying, okay, you could technically be looking at a sunset, and it's like three quarters of the sun. I bet there's a cool spot where you can look at a sunset or a sunrise. through. That is true. There is a place called sunrise arch, but that's in Canyonlands National Park. Canyon land? That sounds like a board game in which you draw colors. But anyway, so just a little trail marker, but we're going to get into actual fall break stuff. Do you want to go first? No. Okay. I want to hear about your, you did something way cooler than me. So let's go with you first and hear what happened in, do you want to go chronologically, Colorado, then Utah?

Yeah. So fall break, technically. starts on Wednesday after classes end, but I may... That's boring. So Andrew and I, Andrew came along. We left Monday afternoon and Storm and Liam drove us to the airport. So shout out to them. Thank you guys. Why did I do this?

I feel like you had a great time. I did. Although we listened to I would walk 500 miles, way too many times. Hey listen. I would walk the 500 miles song comes around. You could listen to it. Just try this experiment one time when you're drawn a long

road trip or driving to a hike or something, cue up that song and then queue it up about 27 more time. You're like, what? You're crazy. Yes, I am. But also that's what's the point. The real point is that that song will get old and then it will get unold. It's unbelievable. You'll be like, you'll be like, bro, this is the fifth time you've queued it. And then we'll get to the seventh time and you'll be like, this is the greatest song in the world. It's the only song that comes around like that. Anyway, we ended up flying into Vegas because flights were cheaper. My dad drove from work picked us up and that evening we drove to Cedar City which is like six hours away from home but there's a little national monument there called Cedar Breaks which I've never been to and it's

basically a miniature Bryce Canyon Bryce is the national park in Utah as well and they have these formations called hoodoos so we spent the night there a little chilly in the tent but that's okay it is called Utah not Colorado this is Utah yeah um woke up next day and we Saw the canyon, took a couple pictures, and then we were on our way to the San Juan's. We got there around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and we ended up driving this road called The Last Dollar Road, which takes you right by the front of the range. And all of the... The last dollar road.

The last dollar road. That's a high noon shootout road. Because everyone who has a house on that road probably spent their last dollar on their house, because, boy, is it gorgeous, and those houses are like millions of dollars. So one day, one day, we'll see. Maybe I wouldn't give for a few dollars more. Exactly. But all the aspens were yellow and orange.

And originally we were kind of nervous. We weren't sure if the aspen leaves would have all fallen off by that point. Because a lot of places were saying that the colors had already peaked in that portion of Colorado. I would say we hit it right at the peak. It was fantastic. So don't listen to those people where they're like, there's no leaves left because they just don't want you to go there. There's no leaves left in early October.

It's like middle of fall. Well, so there were a couple places where there were no leaves left, such as Silverton, but that's a little higher up. But anyway, we drove a little... I told you where it's prettiest when I'm from is in, like, November. Yeah, that's like booming. That's true, but you're also somewhere warmer. So we drove Last Dollar Road.

That takes you across, or over the mountains, I guess, down into Telleride. And Telluride is a little ski town. We didn't spend much time in there, just kind of stopped, took a couple of pictures. and then we drove up this dirt road to Alta Lakes and nowhere near Alta, but it's called Alta Lakes. And we ended up spending the night up there, which was one of our warmest nights. It was surprisingly warm, beautiful. We had a nice sunset that casted just like all this orangeish light on the mountains behind the lake. And it was very, very pretty.

So romantic. No. No, not at all. No. Okay. Never mind. And the next morning we woke up and it was actually warmer than when we went to bed, which was crazy because it's fall. And it was like 44, 43 degrees when we woke up.

You know it's like a minor pet peeve of mine? What? Not warmer or colder, but just when the temperature is like drastically different. But then when I wake up and go to sleep. Yeah. If it's like hot and I'm like, oh, and then I wake up freezing. And it's freezing. No, it's the worst of all time.

But conversely, if I'm like dying cold and then I wake up just sweating. That's also bad. But if it's like, it's the same thing. If you're like freezing and then you wake up it's still cold, it's like, okay. Yeah. Well, this is nice because it was warmer, but it wasn't so much warmer where it was like disgustingly warmer. We probably went to bed and it was like 37 degrees and we woke up as like 43.

Perfect. So that day we drove down and we drove up Ophier Pass, which is one of the many mountain passes in the San Juan's, which requires a four-wheel drive vehicle, which we have. and we made Andrew drive all of the passes for the trip. That's kind of cool, though. Yeah. That was a cool experience for him. Oh, he loved it.

He loved it so much. He was like, I could do this all day. Yeah. So we drove up Ophier Pass, and then that kind of drops you down onto the million dollar highway. Another fun name. That is a road that takes you from Urey. Those are the guys who did not spend any money on their houses and $1 million. No, there's actually, there's really no houses along this highway.

It's called that because it connects Urey to Silverton. and Silverton is in the heart of the San Juan's, and in order to maintain access, they spend around a million dollars every winter maintaining the roads, doing avalanche mitigation, just to keep it open. So trucks can drive across this road. And it's a very windy mountain road.

Lots of people will drive off the road. We actually saw people. Oh. Well, not people, but we saw a car down in this very deep canyon, and we don't know what happened. If they survived. We don't know if, yeah, that's what we need. We don't know if they survived.

So hopefully they did. But anyway, we drive down and just outside Silverton is a canyon you can drive up that takes you to the island and ice lake trailhead. But we ended up driving past that. I have stressed fractures, so I can't really do any hiking right now. But we drove up to Crystal Lake and we ate lunch there and that was beautiful. That's at like 12,000 feet, 12,300 feet or something. And you can drive all the way up there. No, it's beautiful.

It's really blue and like... Yeah, because it's crystal. Because it's crystal. Yeah. You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. And so we had lunch up there, drove down, got some gas in Silverton before we started on the alpine loop. So there's this dirt road loop that takes you through the San Juan's. How long is it?

Oh, I actually don't know the mileage. How long did it take you? We did half the loop one day and half the loop the next day. And spent like all day running up? I would say we left Silverton around 2 o'clock and we drove to the top of corkscrew pass. We didn't go down corkscrew pass because that takes you off. Is corkscrew pass just the straightest? No, it's not.

It actually is really like curvy switchbacky turns. I'm just waiting for one of these things to be. be named very counterintuitively to what it actually is. Oh, wait, there are some counterintuitive names. So we drove to the top of corkscrew pass, got a beautiful view. In this portion of the San Juan's, there's a lot more snow. And so that was really pretty because it was contrasting with the yellow aspen, and that was great. We drove down from corkscrew and we drove to the top of hurricane pass. There was no hurricane, if you're about to ask. No hurricane. That just seems pretty like normal.

Really? Okay. And then we drove to the top of California Pass. I guess in the state of California. Yes, we drove all the way to California. And there was quite a bit more snow up here as well. Like actual kind of little snow banks. They had gotten some snow the previous week. And I think we were some of the last people up there

because the day that we left, a bunch of rain was coming in at lower elevations, which means no higher elevations. So every day in Colorado. Okay, Storm. Well, I feel like when I was there or when I've been there, because I'm going to Colorado a good bit. Every single day you hit like 4 p.m. And they're like, go home. You don't want to be out here anymore.

And you're like what? And then you just see like giant clouds rolling in. That's like summer afternoon thunder showers though. Yeah. It's not like the entire year. But California Pass once again takes you up really high in elevation. I would look it up, but I don't really want to. It's like 12, 12.8?

that's too high. It's high. It's 12 something. Maybe it is 12.8. And then we drove down to Animas Forks, which is where this old mining town used to be. The San Juan's, they've been mining there for hundreds of years now, like 200 years. They're still doing some mining in the San Juan's. And so there's these old abandoned houses, and it's just crazy to see what these people used to live in.

From there, we drove over Cinnamon Pass. Totally normal. Totally normal? Yep. Okay. And... Was there a guy on the side of the road selling lattes? No. And you also can harvest. You harvest cinnamon? Yes. What do you? What? So, fun fact, the fun fact of the day, cinnamon is a plant. Okay, good. I was correct. You do harvest cinnamon.

When I was little, I ate a whole cinnamon stick. And... Were you okay? Fell over and had like passed out. Oh my God. So cinnamon's actually highly poisonous. Yeah. Eat a lot of it. when I was like three years old or five years old or whatever and you'll pass out. Nice. Mm-hmm.

And from Cinnamon Pass, we drove to American Basin, which is the trailhead to Handy's Peak. An American Basin is one of my most favorite places in the entire world. Normally, there's all these beautiful wildflowers by the creek. We'll get part of this place. I'm sure I've talked about it. But of course, being falled, there were no flowers. However, it was just as beautiful because the basin has like, this circ of mountains in the back, all 13ers.

And then off to the left, you have Handy's Peak. And you're just looking up the basin at the creek and the 14ers, or the 13ers, which were covered in snow. And it was just, it was so lovely. Like, I could live there. I could set up camp and never leave and be so entirely happy. I like it how with places like that, with the basin, you can go there in spring and go there and fall.

And it's just like an entirely different experience. Totally different. But like, equally, equally beautiful. Exactly, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like totally like different experiences both times. You can go like to everywhere in the world at different times of year and it's just like, wow. Wow. This is crazy.

Yep. It's like you can go everywhere two to three times. You'll be surprised. Exactly. And that night was freezing. I went to bed with cold toes and I woke up with even colder toes. So not very fun. Next day we woke up.

This is when we finished the Alpine Loop. So I would say we got to camp around 6 o'clock. So like four-ish hours of driving with stops along the way the previous day. And we left American Basin at probably like 7 a.m. And we drove down through Lake City. We saw three moose. That was pretty cool. Meese?

No, not mees. Moosen. Moosin. We saw three moosin. No, we saw three moose. And then from Lake City, we drove up Engineer Pass and also a very tall pass. Fun fact, totally naturally made. No engineers required.

But yeah, engineer pass. We ate lunch up there. And then we drove down back to Silverton. I would say we made it to Silverton by like noon. So five-ish hours of driving. So you could have done it in one day if you had set out in the morning. Oh, yeah. It's very doable in one day.

But you're also going, you're going slow because you're on a dirt road. There's lots of rocks. All of these passes require a four-wheel drive vehicle. So please don't go up there with your little. Honda fit or whatever and be like, I can do this. Yippee. So anyway, get to Silverton and then we drive the million dollar highway over to Urey. That's where we saw the guy who had like drove off the road.

Very scary. He was off of the traditional path. He was off the traditional road. Mm-hmm. Yep. Anyway, we cut and fix this. Okay, stop laughing. Oh, ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, so we drove up to almost Yankee Boy Basin, which is near Urey, took some more pictures of the Aspen. First claimed by Europeans. And that was kind of the end of the Aspen for that trip. And after we were done with Urey, I didn't mention this earlier, but a big monsoon was coming in to both Colorado and Utah. So we were like, we're going to go to Utah. we may get rained out, but we have nothing else to do because we kind of finished up with the sandwans, and we know for a fact it'll be snowing here. So we drove to Moab, which is right outside of Arches, and we set up camp along. What? The mother of all. The mother of all. Fill in the blank with something

that starts with the B. You've never known that before? The Moab. The Moab. The Mother of all bombs or whatever. Oh. I did not know that. That's what that definitely always means. Okay. Wait, what is it? It's an actual place in Utah? Yeah, Moab. It's a town, city town. And so we ended up camping along the Green River.

And this is really funny, actually. So we're sitting around the campfire that night. And there's a road right by the campgrounds over there. And we see this car just shining this huge light on the canyon wall. Because we're in a canyon right now. So like to our left is the river and then the canyon and to our right is the other side of the canyon. but like further away. And this huge light is slowly moving along the canyon walls and we're like, what are they doing?

Are they looking for someone? Just coming up with all these crazy theories. And while we were driving home the next day, we learned that there's actually like river rafting cruises that they do along the river, but at nighttime. That's fun. And so they shine a light up there. So very cool. And finally, next day we ended up doing arches, drove around through that, did some short hikes.

I walked a little more than I should have, but it was great. Landscape Arch is just incredible if you are going to go see any of them. I would say that one or Delicate Arch. Are they all kind of far apart from each other? Yeah, they're kind of spread out. There's little ones, you know, just everywhere. That's so wild. It's incredible.

You have to go. I would say Hiked Delicate Arch if you're not struggling from an injury. I hear that's just the sturdiest of all of them. The sturdiest? Yeah, that thing will be there for years and years and years. It'll never fall over. And after Arches, we had more time. So we went to Canyonlands.

It's also been a while since I've been to Canyonlands, but that was also just really, really cool. That just sounds like where they would film Mad Max. Right? I've never seen that movie. Kind of like cracked badlands, just... Well, it's kind of like the Grand Canyon, but not as grand.

Desolate, yeah. Yeah, very desolate. We really just got out of the car and looked around. and we didn't do any hikes over there. And we ended up driving home that very same day. So we got home around midnight. So a very long day. Next day, just kind of spent at home relaxing, not doing a lot of walking because my shins

were hurting. And Sunday, the following day, Andrew and I left California and we flew back to desolate Michigan. Here we are again. Here we are again. So that was a very long ramble about my fall break. That sounds like a great fall break. But it was incredible.

and I was not sure if I would like the San Juan's better in the fall or this summer, because we've been there in the summer so many times. Gotta be fall. And you know what? I think it is fall because there's fewer people. It wasn't that cold. Yes, one of the nights was very cold, but I could have dressed warmer, like, honestly. And we didn't get to do any hiking, but the hikes would be just as beautiful, but in a different way.

Sure, you don't get the wildflowers. But those aspen, you really cannot beat the site. just like looking up on the mountain side and there being swaths of yellow, which is not a color you see in nature very often if you think about it. Like in large quantities. Inko's. Yeah. Yellow things.

Yeah. But like you see green and large swaths. Yellow as a color has been progressively growing on me for like four years now. It's like top two for me now. I used to hate it. It was like, you yellow. It was bottom tier when I was younger. And now I'm like, I think it's one of my two favorites.

Yeah. I would say also like the last four years from. me. Maybe we're just maturing. Yeah, I think this is a sign of bro. I think growing up is realizing yellow is one of the best colors. Yep. Absolutely. So it was a fantastic trip. Not as many orange and red aspen as I thought there would be. We have a lot more of those in California. Orange is still mid. I agree. Pick a lane. Right or yellow. Um, yellow. No, but I'm saying for orange. If you're orange, like just pick a lane. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Or orange Aspen are very spectacular. But they are, I don't know.

I guess they're not a Colorado thing, more just a California thing. Who knows? Interesting. Do you have anything you want to say about your fall break in like two minutes? Yeah, I actually have a super duper long, extensive fall break story, but I'm getting cut short. Here's the story as far as I can go. So on what time we got off fall break? It's Wednesday, right?

Yeah. So on Wednesday right after classes, I went to sleep and I woke up for my classes on Monday morning. Wow, that's thrilling. Yeah, it was awesome. I was not on any trails, but I guess that's kind of the point of the show. I got a very restful time in. I woke up and then I was like, hmm, three exams. Three exams.

Oh, I heard about that. Yeah. Turns out I only had two of the three that I initially felt I had, but, you know, the more you know. But it was great. I'm glad that you had an adventure. I lived through you through this episode. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad.

Thank you for listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.1.6. 7 FM. We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. We'll see you out there. Happy trails. There's a song about Coldplay called Yellow. Go listen. Bye guys.