Utah

We drove to Utah via a new route: Rifle, CO then north to Meeker and then west to Rangley, CO. It becomes more dry and desolate the further west you go. Rangely is full of oil drills and if you believe the sign, it's a great place to live (but we don't think so!). From there, we drove to Vernal, Utah then north to Flaming Gorge - a huge dammed-up reservoir full of power boats. We found a pretty nice campsite, but the drinking water was orange. Needless to say, we didn't drink it!

Next day we headed toward the northeast corner of the Uintas, making a detour along this scenic byway:


It was very interesting, with lots of cool rocks to look at. We also saw some mountain goats; they have scary eyes!

After camping one night at a very dusty and tilty campground at Spirit Lake, and doing a fantastic 7 mile hike to some lakes, we drove to Park City and to our favorite campground in Utah, Jordanelle reservoir. They have awesome hot showers and we could plug in the van to recharge the batteries. Plus the skies there are always changing...

When we were here 2 years ago, we started a mountain bike ride called the "Mid-Mountain Trail". It's the classic Park City MTB ride. We never did finish it because thunderstorms turned us around. We did the whole 23 miles this time, and it was great, challenging, and mostly very nice single track. We took the lift up this year...

After cushy camping at Jordanelle, we drove back into the Uintas (the west side this time) to do our Utah backpacking trip. Our objective was Amethyst Lake. We had packed the day before, so we could hit the trail upon arriving. It's about 5-1/2 miles and 2000 vertical feet one way. The trail goes from meadow, to hillside with about a zillion springs to cross, to raging stream with waterfalls to subalpine crags. We found a pretty nice campsite where the mosquitos weren't too bad. Anna just about froze to death that night... we figure the temp got to around 37 degrees (we were at 10,000 feet). My 35 degree sleeping bag just wasn't enough.

On Saturday, we hiked up to the lake, then bushwhacked around some cool slabs and found lots of springs. Then the storms hit, it rained like mad, the wind kicked up and it got cold. We took a nap, made an early dinner then packed up and bailed out. We started hiking out at 5:15 pm and made it to the car in 3 hours. It rained on us, then got sunny and sparkly. We slept in the van at the trailhead, and were warm & dry.

Anna takes a contemplative break on the hike up. Notice the cool pack cover that Bob sewed (it had been sprinkling).

Here's the lake. It was spectacular up there...

We're off to Nevada tomorrow - we'll try to keep in touch!