Why the State of Utah shouldn’t control public lands.

It was a nice day, so I decided to go find some dirt roads and mud.  I hadn’t been out to Stansbury Island in years, so that’s where I headed.

I found a nice mud puddle to play in and a muddy hill to go up and down.  It was fun, and the Jeep did well.

At one point, I decided to pull into a spot with fresh snow so I could turn around.  That was a bad idea.

I got stuck and had to work at getting myself out of it.  I tried to back out, like the original plan, but that wasn’t going to happen. I rocked it back and forth and finally got it out of the rut going forward.  And once you get going, you don’t stop, so I ended up plowing through until I could turn around and get back to the road.  That’s when I discovered what the problem was.  Not only was the snow fairly deep, but is was over sand, which by itself is hard enough to deal with.

I decided to do a full loop around the island.  I had never been up the west side, I wasn’t even sure I could go all the way around, so I headed up that way. 

A couple miles up a snow covered road I ran into a gate.  It was closed and adorned with “No Trespassing” signs.   I turned around, figuring I’d go along the eastern shore.  I wasn’t sure how far I would get, but the last time I was on the island we made it quite a way up.

Not this time.  Before even making it to the eastern side, right about where it turns from the south shore to the east shore, there was another gate, another “No Trespassing” sign and a whole lot of rocks to stop you.

It seems that about 3/4 of the island is now closed off to the public.  And since the signs look sloppily hand made, not like the Public Lands Department put them up, I can only guess that it is now private land.

Yeah, I sure hope Utah’s lawsuit against the Federal Government works and they get control of a whole bunch more public land.  Because there is no doubt in my mind that they will hold on to it, preserve it and keep it accessible to the American public.  Nope, not me, no fear that they will sell it off to some private company that will rape it of all it’s natural resources and then leave it as a huge, ugly scar on the landscape.

Yeah.  Right.

07/07/07 : Lucky day for taking pictures. Maybe.

Saturday, on the infamous 07/07/07, I left the house around 3 to go up behind the capitol and take some pictures before they build all the houses on that spot and it's unaccessable. Well, I got the pictures, stopped here and there to get some other pictures on the way down, ended up at Liberty Park, way out in Delle, Utah and finally out on Standbury Island for the sunset. Even went through Grantsville on the way home for dinner. Took a ton of pictures, click HERE to see some of the better ones. I decided I really love the new Nikon I bought, and really love to take pictures. Something about capturing a moment in time that will never be here again. Ot it could just be the really cool clicking sound the camera makes.