Snow Melt

The snow on the tops of the mountains in the top picture is pretty much all melted now.  It has been in the low 90's which melted it quickly.  The good thing is that the temperature drops to the 50's at night and there is no humidity.  We saw them spray for mosquitoes the other night but we have never seen any.  We have still had no rain so now it is almost two months with nothing wetting the ground.  Clouds form but no rain hits the ground it just evaporates.  

The 4wheeling trails have been very busy.  We are only a few hours from Salt Lake City so people come for the weekend to ride.  It always amazes us that they can bring so much stuff for just two days of fun.  Staying in an RV is supposed to be a good way to enjoy the outdoors and do the social distancing thing.  The problem is they come with their friends and then large groups of them hang out together so there goes the social distancing.  

We have had a good view of the comet the last two nights.  It was visible under the Big Dipper close to the horizon.  If I was any good at night photography I would try to get a picture because it has a pretty good tail.  

Mountain Lakes

We needed to go up high to get out of the heat so we went up to look at some mountain lakes.   The top picture is a reservoir called Manning Meadow.  Manning creek runs out of it and flows all the way down almost to Marysvale.  The lake is at 10,000 feet so it was nice and cool up there.  The other lake is called Barney Lake and was much smaller.  There were some people fishing on it using a canoe.    There is a dirt track, barely a road back to Barney Lake but they had gotten a small truck in there.  

We have seen lots of wildlife on our trips.  Mule deer, wild turkeys, black tailed rabbits, yellow bellied marmots, glimpses of elk, grouse and several rattlesnakes.    The snakes seem to like to cross the road in front of us so we just stop and wait for them to get out of our way.  It has been hot here and it is extremely dry.  It hasn't rained in more than a month and it doesn't look like it will any time soon.  There are lots of wildfires popping up but so far nothing very close to us.

Dry Falls

One of our 4wheeling trips took us to an area called Dry Falls.  You can't see it from the road so someone marked the spot along the trail with a pile of rocks.  We stopped at the pile of rocks and looked down into the canyon and finally spotted the falls.  I used a telephoto lens or it would be hard to see in a picture.  The creek that feeds the falls still has water running in it so we got to see it before it dried up.  We have great mountain vistas but the snow on top of them is almost gone.

This is fourth of July weekend and the campground is full.  If you are in the market for an RV that can haul a 4wheeler in the back of it you an see every make and model here.  We have even seen travel trailers with a 4wheeler on a trailer being pulled behind it.  That is not legal in most states and most insurance companies won't cover that arrangement.  If  don't have a 4wheeler you can rent one from several outfits in the area.   So with the miles of trails, several motels and plenty of campgrounds 4wheeling is the recreation of choice in this area.

Blackbird Mine Area

We took another 4wheeler trip.  This trip took us to a mining area that had a town by it.  We found the outlines of a few foundations.  Jim tried metal detecting around them but all we found were pieces of metal and nails.  At least it was different from most of our metal detecting adventures where all we find is lead from bullets.  A creek ran through the area and must have been their water source.  The mine in the area contained manganese.  This is a purple rock and used to be an ingredient in glass making.  Really old glass turns purple in the sun from this mineral.

We found this to be a nice quiet area up in the mountains.  Not a lot of 4wheeling traffic and its nice and cool by the water.  We tried doing some gold panning in the creek but only got a little black sand.  This particular area isn't known for gold so we didn't think we would find anything.

The weekends at the campground are very busy.  Lots of campers come from the Salt Lake area to go 4wheeling here.  They bring all there toys and have a good time even if it is only for two or three days.  We are happy when they leave because it cuts down on the dust and noise.  We do our trips during the week when it is quieter.

Bryce National Park

Its so hard to choose a few pictures out of over a hundred that we took.  I love Bryce with its interesting rock formations.  Most of the formations are from wind erosion.  We went to the park early one morning.  We got there before anything was open but the visitor center did have fre.  e maps for the taking at an outside kiosk.  There is one main road you follow with lots of overlooks.  We went to the very end of the road first and then slowly made our way back to the entrance.  We made sure we stayed away from other people at the overlooks and footpaths.  The shuttle buses are running so you don't have to drive and if all you have is an RV to drive you have to take the shuttle because parking can be tight. 

We have been to Bryce before but it was sure nice to be there without all the tour buses full of Japanese tourists.  The hotels and campgrounds were just starting to open up and the restaurants should be open by now.  The virus has had a major impact on foreign travelers and when we were there it was mostly folks from in state that were visiting. 

Silver King Mine

Our second 4 wheeling trip on the Paiute Trail was to the Silver King Mine.  We traveled up and up and up with lots of switchbacks but the road was in good shape and fairly wide.  The ride up into the mountains was very pretty with a creek running alongside for awhile and then great mountain peak views.   When we got to the old mine site it was nicely laid out for a walking tour.  There was a lot of silver taken out of the area and it was fairly remote site.  Its hard to believe they could haul the ore out of here.  The owner of the mine lived right on site because it was so far out.   The storyboard says a rich silver vein was found after mining low grade ore for quite awhile.  Unfortunately they used dynamite to get at the rich vein but brought the mountain down into the mine instead of exposing the vein.  It is now buried deep beneath the earth.  

We have done some shorter rides along more of the Paiute Trail on the east side of the highway.  The roads are very nice and we try to stick to the easy to moderate rides.   We aren't up for the trails marked difficult.  We might start down one just to see what makes a trail difficult.  We have been on some steep winding trails that were adventurous enough for us.  Now maybe if that was the only way to get to the gold we might me more inclined to give the more difficult trails a try.

Kingston Canyon

We took a ride in the truck and checked out Kingston Canyon.  Its a short drive from where we are staying.  It turned out to have an interesting history.  We have come across the old Spanish Trail several times in our travels.  This canyon turned out to be an off shoot of the trail.  It was called the Fish Lake Cut-off.  We are also in the Fish Lake National Forest area so that seems to be the name for everything around here.  There were several people fishing in a small stream alongside the road.  We followed the road to the Otter Lake State Park and then turned around but if we had kept going we could have gone all the way to Bryce National Park.

So far we have discovered a nice little restaurant in Marysvale and try to go there when no one else is eating.  We also managed to get haircuts from a stylist that has a little shop in town.  She only comes once a week so she is very busy.  The closest big town is Richfield which is right on I-70.  They have a Walmart and just about every other store a smaller town should have.   We are looking forward to trying some ice cream at their local dairy store.