Desert snow.

How many of you out there, when you hear the word “desert” and picture this scene from Spaceballs?

Go ahead, raise your hand, I know you do.  Or something like it at least.  And snow in the desert?  Nah, no way, are you kidding?  It’s too hot in the desert.

Well, ok, a lot of you already know that ‘desert’ is defined by the amount of rain (or snow) that an area averages in a year, not how hot it is.

Today I went out to the west desert with my friend Lisa Shafer, to get shots of the desert in the snow.  If you’ve been following my blog at all, you’ve probably seen pictures of this area before, but here it is in the snow:

The marsh area at Horseshoe Springs Wildlife Area.

A shoe tree along Skull Valley Road, just south of Horseshoe Springs.

Coming back down from Lone Rock.  We would have spent more time there, but there was at least 3 groups of target shooters and it kind of felt (sounded) like we were in the middle of a battleground.

Lone Rock, from the foothills on the other side of Skull Valley Road.

Looking away from Lone Rock – the foothills I took that last picture from.

A washtub, out in the middle of nowhere.  What’s it doing there?  Enlarge the picture and you’ll see it’s riddled with bullet holes.  The west desert is a popular place for going target shooting, and even a wash tub can work as a target.

The snow super-highway.  This road parallels the highway, about a half mile east of it, and goes almost the entire length of the valley.

More target practice.  There was also an empty donut box with a target taped to the back right next to the pallet.

Stansbury Island, from atop the mountain between Skull Valley and Tooele Valley.

We had dinner at the Subway in Grantsville, but right across the street was this place.

Fun way to spend a Sunday.

And the sun came out today....

Tuesday, June 10th : Day 3

Well, I culled the 3,645 pictures I took down to a mere 11. I have no idea what my memory limit is on blogger, but I don't want this to be the photo gallery. Here, they're supposed to enhance the story, not be it. So, you'll have to wait until I cull through the 356,950 pictures from the two trips and get the photo galleries up.

Anyway, today was the ghost town day. Sego and Thompson, and as it turns out Thompson Springs too. The day started out much as usual, with the hotel's continental breakfast. Writer had to have twice the English Muffin as she meant to, because one, in a fit of suicidal despair, jumped out of the bag and fell to it's death on the floor. Right in front of her (musta been traumatic). Most Jr. High teacher's firmly believe in the 5 second rule, so rather than throw the muffin away, she killed any germs on it by toasting it and ate it.

Despite the post-trauma stress of the muffin incident, we headed up towards I-70 and Sego, Thompson and Thompson Springs. Sego and Thompson are true ghost towns, nobody lives there and nobody has for several decades. Thompson Springs is right off the freeway, and is not a full fledged ghost town, we didn't even realize it was a ghost town until on our way back

First we went to Thompson, which is up about 4 miles of dirt road. We had several petroglyph sitings on the way up, some of them were really cool, some had been defaced. Some were defaced by autograph carvings and pictures dating from the 1910's and 20's, which sparked a conversation about the difference between ancient writings and graffiti. After all, petroglyphs really are just ancient graffiti, and looking at the "Joe was here" from the 1920's was cool, but the same thing from the 70's was annoying. Not that I am in any way condoning the destruction of petroglyphs, but the truth is that if I had written "Max wuz hear, 2008" alongside the others (and no, I did not), a couple hundred years from now someone would look at it and think "Wow, 2008. Who was Max and what the hell was he trying to say?" We also saw a really cool old trestle on the way there, most likely used to carry the ore down the canyon.

Thompson itself was set in quite an idyllic setting. At a bend in the canyon, up against the hill shaded by huge colttonwood (I think) trees that were right along the bank of a obviously not always dry river, it was beautiful and calm. There were three houses in different levels of decay, but the coolest thing was the oven that looked like it was still in functioning condition. (see picture at top).

Next stop was Sego. We passed their little cemetery on the way there, a lot of the graves were unmarked, and on one it was obvious some $%^9*% stole the headstone. But it was pretty interesting nonetheless. Sego is on a small incline hillside in the center of the canyon. We found three structures that were still standing, ahem, well, sort of. The house, a wood construction building, fared the worst of the three, the other two are what I would consider salvageable, this one not so much. Most of the plaster was gone, you could see the lathe on the remaining walls. The front outside wall was all but gone. (In the picture you are looking at the back of the house, the best preserved part). Neither Writer or I dared go inside the building, don't know if the floor would have held us or if our movement on it would have brought more walls down. From what was left, though, it must have been a nice house. Two floors, many rooms. On Writer's blog she has a picture of Sego from the 1920's, you can see what the house looked like when it was in use. There was also two stone buildings, or shells of buildings left, that I think was a store and some sort of office. The insides are completely gone, floors and all, but the outside walls look strong enough that if Sego ever came alive again, you could build inside them and have original looking buildings.

After Sego we headed back towards Moab, and decided to stop in Thompson Springs to look at, well, ok, I saw a 1970 Ford XL Fastback sitting out in a field rusting and just had to check it out. You'll see the picture later, because even more interesting was the old Cadillac camper we found in the same field. Yeah, looks like someone took an old 4 door Cadillac and cut the roof to custom fit the camper to it. Must have been a sight to see cruising down the highway. We ended up spending an hour or so in Thompson Springs, because despite it being an inhabited (sort of) town, it had several abandoned buildings. One of them was a Cafe, looked like the left in the middle of a shift, there was still syrup sitting on the counter. The other buildings I'm not sure about, one looked like a residence, maybe for the Cafe owners. That too looked like it had been left in the middle of the night. A small office of some sort, a stable. Not exactly sure, but they were all clustered around what looked like it used to be the center of town. Right across the street from the abandoned Motel. Creepy, horror movie motel. There was only one room that still had a front door that closed, the rest were wide open, despite signs of recent (6 months maybe) inhabitance. That wasn't the creepy part. I felt like I walked into the middle of a teen slasher movie at the 3rd room, where someone had put paint on their hands and left smeared hand prints on the wall, along with the writing "This is my home, forever" and "Go home". But that wasn't the eeriest of it, that came back at the office. Hand prints all over the place. A typewriter with a beer bottle next to it, on a desk in the middle of the room. Writings on the wall about death and hauntings. A half empty (or is it half full?) can of peanut butter and almost empty jar of strawberry preserves on top of the refrigerator. The one thing that actually made me laugh was the word "Yum" painted on the fridge door. Other than that, creepy, creepy, creepy. After the motel we pretty much left the wonderful town of Thompson Springs. Once out of town we started talking and realized that even though we heard sounds of inhabitants (vehicles running, dogs tied up outside houses, water, etc..) we didn't see a single person the whole time we were there - which was at least an hour. Maybe it was because of the motel, or maybe it just added to it, but now we were really creeped out. Not nightmares for the rest of the week creeped out, but just "that was really freakin' weird" creeped out.

Next stop was a return to Canyonlands Visitor Center, for two reasons. We had to get some pictures of the Shafer Trail from up on the ridge and we had to tell Ranger Nate that we made it down the trail with the Subaru. Ranger Nate was really busy with some lady, trying to get her credit or gift card or whatever to work, so we just left a message for him with the other ranger. She seemed pretty impressed that we took a Subaru down the Shafer Trail and assured us that she would let Ranger Nate know we survived.

Thus endeth the Moab trip. We went back to the hotel, packed up and headed home, mostly on accounta there was a storm coming in the next day since we had the time left I'd rather drive home in the evening than get up early and drive home the next day. Fortunately Writer, who would have preferred it the other way around, agreed to my plan.

Monday, June 9th : Day 2

Day 2 started out with a wonderful, complimentary, Continental breakfast. Which means something different wherever you go. This one wasn't bad, English muffins, coffee, fresh fruit even. Not worth the $90 I paid for it, but then again, they did throw in a nice place to sleep for the night. Anyhoo, today was Shafer Trail day. Going down the Shafer Trail you start out in Canyonlands National Park and end up coming out somewhere right outside of Moab. It's all dirt road and descends, or rises, some 2000 feet and is 19 miles long*. Writer knows the history of the trail better so I'll let her tell it, click HERE to scoot over to her post. We started out by going out to Dead Horse Point, which overlooks part of the Shafer Trail. The picture at the top shows the view of part of the Shafer Trail from Dead Horse Point. From there we went to ?Canyonlands National Park and went over to the Visitors Center. We were talking to Ranger Jaime and we asked her about the trail, how it was and if my Subaru could take it. She consulted with Ranger Nate and the response we got was "We wouldn't advise it". Ok, there was a lot more chatting back and forth, but that was the basic gist of the conversation. Basically what they were saying is that, if done carefully, my Subaru would make it through alive, but they won't say that just in case something happens and I feel like suing. Shafer Trail starts out as a nice smooth dirt road across a mesa, turns into a relatively smooth road that's cut into the side of a cliff then turns into some pretty rough switchbacks. It makes at least half, if not 3/4, of the 2000 ft drop (or rise) in a matter of about 3 or 4 miles. Hairy driving, but exciting. Writer was extremely calm when she was on the up side of the road, not so much when she was on the down side. But it seems that she trusts my driving, because she never showed it. I could just tell by her not looking out her window when she was on the down side. She didn't complain, didn't yell for me to slow down and didn't jump out of the car and walk down the hill. (I won't admit it, but I'm a little nervous when I'm looking out the window at a thousand foot drop off. did I say that out loud?) After the switchbacks, it's relatively level for the rest of the trip, but there were some rough spots on the road. I scraped a total of 4 times, but made sure they were all on the outside of the bottom of the car where there were no vital organs. At one really nasty spot there was an orange cone marking it. It seemed somewhat out of place on a dirt road miles out into nowhere. But alas, it was there, as was a 15 MPH sign, which frankly made me laugh because the chances of running into a UHP out here were about the same as GW having an intelligent thought, and Rangers were almost as sparse, but also because for the most part, going over 15 MPH is not physically possible, except for during the 1000 foot fall off the cliff. Eventually the trail meets up with the Potash Road, which is paved and leads you right back to the highway into Moab. It took us the better part of the day, if you've driven dirt roads, you know how long it can take to drive 19 miles, plus you add to that all the times to take pictures, we pretty much got back into town just in time to get dinner. Which, if I remember correctly, was Mexican night, where I had the M.O.A.B. (Mother Of All Burritos) . This is not your 99 cent Taco Time burrito that you can eat 4 or 5 or 6 or even 7 of if you are really hungry. Oh, no. It was huge, I swear they stuffed a whole lamb in there, hoofs and all. (see picture here) Writer has the picture of it, so you'll have to scoot over there to check it out. Well, it was gooooood! And I actually ate the whole thing, although I felt like I usually do after Thanksgiving Dinner, nothing left to do but to go back to the hotel and lay in bed. Thus endeth day 2.

*4WD Trails of Southeast Utah, Peter Massey & Jeanne Wilson, Swagman Publishing, 2001

Sunday, June 8th : Day 1

As I've alluded to in a few of the recent posts, I just got back from a driving trip around the Western USA. Utah, north and south, all the way through Nevada and skirted up the side of California. Well, because I know you won't read the whole thing if I write about the entire week in one post, I'm going to take it day by day.

Today (according to the title), I picked up Writer, whom most of you know I taught with at a Jr. High for 4 years. She had spent a lot of time down in the Moab area, and knew of a couple nice ghost towns and offered to show them to me. So, off we went. I picked her up around noon and we headed down. We were making really good time by the time we made it to SR191, so when we saw the upside down airplane at the Moab airport we decided to pull over and get a few pictures. Great in theory, not so much in practice. Now, I've gotten in the habit of not locking the car using the little button on the door, it's got me into trouble before. Unlocking it with the button is safe, unless you mistake 'lock' for 'unlock' and leave the keys in the ignition. I knew the second the door clicked shut. Good thing my brother has a set of keys to my cars. Oh, wait. He's 233 miles away. And my cell phone is in the car. So Writer and I trek down to the Moab "International" Airport looking for a pay phone and a wire clothes hanger. We get the hanger, and the phone number for Gary's Locksmith in Moab. I figure I'll call and see how much it's going to cost to have him come out and open my car, before wrecking it with the hanger. $50, and unlike the joke, it's not the same as in town ($40). So, rather than fight with the hanger, shred the weatherstripping on the door and scratching the panel, I ask him to come out. He doesn't even flinch when I tell him I'm 300 yards or so north of the Airport, pulled out on the side of the road. Makes me feel better, obviously I'm not the only idiot to lock his keys in the car out in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway. 45 minutes he says, and to his credit it was just over an hour. Good thing I found a chair stuck on the fence on the way back to the car, gave us something to sit on. (see picture way up there) I tell ya, we got a lot of looks from the cars passing us on the highway. Well, it took him 34.65 seconds to get the car open and cost me $50. The rest of the evening was enjoyable, but uneventful. Well, except for when Writer spilled water all over the table at dinner. I think she did it to make me feel better about locking the keys in the car. At least that's what she said.

If you've ever driven the Shafer trail you'll get this...

If you haven't, then click on the picture in the previous post. It'll send you to some pictures of the drive down the trail. Entire story to come later.....
And Writer - There's a reason I didn't post your comment - you'll understand when I post it.