Options for 2019

I've got a few trips already scheduled around which I need to plan my hiking.  But, one (maybe two) of those other trips are actually hiking trips!

Let's have a look, shall we?  I get about four weeks of vacation annually (plus a good two to three weeks of paid holiday; I do fairly well, although I'm excited for about two more years when I get bumped up another week of paid vacation) and I tend to try and chunk my stuff into weeks, as much as possible.

Already planned

1. Week for Caribbean cruise in late August, ending right around Labor Day.
2. Week for Isle Royale hike with some friends of ours, and my wife even is talking about going(!) around July 4th
3. Week for High Adventure; possibly a Pictured Rocks National Shoreline hike/kayaking hybrid, although assuming I do go, my son and I will decide together what we're doing.  This would also be in late June; the week before my Isle Royale hike.  There's a lot of options, because it's the whole state of Michigan "All LDS Encampment High Adventure."

Now, the High Adventure trip may fall through or we may end up not doing it, and the Isle Royale trip might have unexpected complications.  But that's the plan now, anyway.

This leaves me with one week for my trip somewhere.  Here's some stuff I'm considering:

• Maybe an early trip, to make up for the fact that the schedule is already pretty slammed during the summer.  Maybe even as early as January/February to some place like Big Bend or Guadalupe Mountains National Parks, which is usually a good season to visit those places, actually.  I went to Big Bend ten years ago in Feburary, and half the time, I'm wearing a t-shirt (admittedly, the other half of the time I have a sweatshirt on.  And I slept in the lodge, not a tent.)  I could also fly out to Phoenix, visit my brother and his family, and do some stuff in the Supes or elsewhere in Arizona, for that matter.  By mid March, the crowds (such as they are) have already descended on these destinations, and by late March, they're already hot.
• A later spring (mid March to early May) trip to somewhere on the Colorado Plateau.  The Needles District of Canyonlands, maybe, plus some Moab and/or Grand Junction exploration.  There's actually so much to see here, and much of it can be broken up into several smaller trips rather than one big backpacking extravaganza, that I could really get a ton of interesting things done and really enjoy this (although spend more money on gas, and maybe a few extra hotel nights, compared to the way I normally do things.)
• Go back to the mountains in mid to late September like I did in 2017.  Maybe even hit the West Elks again and see Mill Creek, or Maroon Bells.  Although Sneffels and the Blue Lakes hike beckon, and the fall colors in the Sneffels area is notoriously beautiful.  Lots of options, but the slightly more southerly Colorado ranges are preferred because there's a better chance of better weather because of the latitude.  I'm actually going on the cruise the last weekend in August, so I have a relatively big window between the 4th of July weekend and the last week of August.  If I don't mind further breaking up my work schedule for the summer, I could also go in late July or early August to just about any Rockies destination I choose, come to think of it.  The Uintas or the Wind Rivers or the Beartooths or some of the other ones that I've noodled around with in the past and not ended up doing probably shoot to the top of the list in this scenario.