Thematic Photographic–Treasured

One of my most treasured places is the family property up by Duchesne (doo-shane).  We call it Back of Beyone Ranch, in honor of Edward Abby and his book “The Monkey Wrench Gang.”

It was either 1995 or 1996 that we bought the first 40 acre parcel and quickly set up camp close to dead center of the property.

It was very basic camping.  One small tent trailer and the rest of us slept in tents on the ground.

But we were happy to have our piece of wilderness, where we didn’t have to compete for the prime campsites, or put up with people that had no respect for the others around them.

Below are my two brothers and myself at the top of what we named “Rossi Draw.” 

The following year the parcel adjacent to ours on the west side came up for sale.  The land was still pretty cheap, and we really liked the hillside that was right on the line of the two parcels, so we bought it and moved the campsite into the clump of trees on the hill, putting it pretty much smack in the middle of the two parcels of land.  Below is the new road leading from the old campsite to the new one.

Since then we’ve brought up trailers to sleep in, built a couple of sheds to keep our stuff in and built a one-room cabin for eating and socializing.  Here you see us taking a golf-break from building the cabin.

We also acquired a bath tub that sits out in a clearing and is gravity fed water from containers on the hill.  Cold water only, which is great on those hot summer days.

Rossi Draw is on the first parcel of land, right along the border between the two.  When we bought the second parcel we acquired what we had already named “Lost Draw.”  We named it that because when we were first looking at the land, before buying any of it, the real estate agent walked us up to the southern corner of the property.  I had headed back to the car a little before the rest, became disoriented and ended up coming down this draw, thinking it was the other one (Rossi Draw) where we parked the car.  Completely lost, I started screaming out for my brothers hoping to get their attention.  I had been screaming for about 10 minutes and just as I had resigned to walking down the 3 miles down the hill to the highway, and then 3 miles back up the dirt road to where the car was, my brothers found me.  As a way to perpetually harass me for getting lost, they immediately dubbed it “Lost Draw’.  Gotta love brothers.

My sister-in-law riding the ATV at sunset.  Every time I see this picture the theme to M*A*S*H runs through my mind.

And finally – winter camp.  Where the fires can get big, because everything is covered in snow and wild fires are unlikely.

Labor Day Weekend

We went up to our land for the long weekend.  Both my brothers and their families were there, including two of my nieces and their families too.  19 people, and 9 of them were under the age of 14.

It was kind of chaotic with nine kids chasing each other around the woods, but we have the room, and it was a lot of fun.  And the food was good.  My niece’s husband made a Dutch oven lasagna and a fruit cobbler that were awesome.

One of  the biggest laughs was when my niece had a bug on her arm.  It took her a couple minutes to realize it was there and she was a little freaked out when she found out it was on her for a while.

My niece: “What was it doing there?  Maybe it was sitting there sucking my soul!”

Her 12-year-old daughter: “No mom, that’s my job.”

Weekend away from it all…

Ahhh, school is out for the summer.   We start back earlier than usual next year, so I headed up to the family property (which we call The Back of Beyond Ranch) my very first day of vacation.  I got there earlier than the rest of the family, so I just hung around taking pictures of things, then followed some dirt roads to nowhere.

Just because we live in a desert doesn’t mean there aren’t any colorful plants around.

My Jeep in my personal parking spot, right next to my camper.

The sunset lit up some trees, while others were left in the dark.  This is looking out over our east 40 from the cabin.

My old 1965 Jeep that we zebra striped for use on the ranch.  It ran for a couple of years, and has been sitting ever since.  We’re going to tow it down this summer and junk it so someone can use it’s parts.

The cabin.  It’s just a 16’x16’ single room, but that’s perfect for family dinners and someplace to play cards when it decides to rain, or to stay warm when we come up in the winter.

More sunset shots.

I really liked how this one clump of needles was lit up on an otherwise darkened tree.

Here, the same shot, but I played around with the lighting.

A deer hiding in the brush?

Nope, just an antler out there by itself.

Looking down on SR40 from a high spot on our land.

More colorful foliage.

Everyone else finally made it up (we ended up with 11 adults and 6 children), and the next day the kids started digging for fossils.

Cider wanted some of my grand-niece’s breakfast.

My grand-nephew learning to ride his motorcycle from his father (my nephew-in-law?).

Riding solo.

Looking out over the Strawberry Pinnacles from the ridge just south of Back of Beyond.

A closer look at the cliffs.

Humanity rears it’s ugly head, even up 6 miles of dirt roads.

Looking northwest from the same ridge.

A dead tree right on the ridge.

A nice little valley you can see from right next to the dead tree.

Back at the ranch, we needed to make some of our own shade to accommodate the 17 people that were there.

At the beach on Starvation Reservoir, just outside of the city of Duchesne.

The water was still a little cold, most of the adults just got their feet wet.  My grand-niece was the only one who did any actual swimming.

This poor boater fought the wind for about 10 minutes, standing still in the water, until he gave up and took a perpendicular route to the shore.

So much for the “War on Drugs”, these guys looked like they were waging a “War on Fish”.

A seagull, out in the middle of the desert.

Unlike that smaller boat, this one had the power to beat the wind, but not without some major spray.

Dinner that night was my nephew-in-law’s famous Dutch Oven lasagna and a mixed-fruit cobbler.

My niece brought her bow and arrow.  Some of us were so good that we completely missed the target, and at one time we had lost 5 of her 6 arrows.

We finally found all but one of them.  We couldn’t figure out how this one got in this position, it looked like it had come straight through the tree.

Of course there was some tree-climbing.  that red blur in the middle is my nephew, half way up the tree.

The last day my grand-nephew was out on his motorcycle again, but this time he had his own self-proclaimed pit crew.

I had my GPS with me, and I was surprised to see that a lot of the dirt roads were actually named.  But it was these two roads that really confused me.  A fairly nice, obviously used, dirt road showed up as “Unpaved Road”,

Whereas this one, that was quite rough and not as commonly used, was given a name.  In Utah, a lot of the roads are named for how many blocks, in a given direction, they are from the center of town.  Even roads with actual names also have their number, for example the street I lived on while I was in high school was Vista View Drive (3150 East).  So, 39100 W means that this dirt road is 391 blocks west of whatever they consider the center of town.  If they use the same scale as we use here in Salt Lake, that’s about 56 miles.