Afternoon Drive

Wednesday at about 4 p.m. I went for a short drive, thinking maybe I'd go up the canyon and read for a while. A few hours later I called Chieko from Green River and told her I'd probably not be home that night. I stayed in the Robber's Roost motel, which was along the same vein as the motel Randy and I stayed in in Cortez, but this one smelled clean, and there were no black stains on the carpet. And it was only $35 for a king-size bed. I like these inexpensive motels when they're clean. They are cheap and reasonably comfortable. This one even had a big walk-in closet with a little refrigerator and a microwave. However, a metal carpet edge that jutted up at the bathroom door took the skin off the top of my toe in the dark. Ouch.

On Thursday morning I woke up at 5 a.m. and headed for Dove Creek, Colorado, where I bought 100 pounds of pinto beans and two 40-pound bags of Anasazi beans at the Adobe Milling store, the only place I know where you can get Anasazi beans. These beans are similar to pintos, but they have 75 percent less of the carbohydrate that causes gas, so they say.
This is southwestern Colorado in the early morning.

And this is what drives industry in southwestern Colorado.

And this is a newly plowed field. I wasn't sure whether the farmers plowed these fields after harvesting the beans or if they've just planted a new crop of winter wheat. I thought I saw some green sprouting in some of the fields.

Anyone who starts a nonfarm business, such as this restaurant, in the middle of nowhere has a tough row to hoe.

The owners must have had trouble with vandals or theft even when the restaurant was still a going place.

I guess everything that man builds will be undone by nature eventually. Nature always wins.

I imagine the homesteaders in this cabin watching progress pass them by.

Back in Utah, between Monticello and Moab, there is one place I've passed a few times and wanted to visit but never had the time. That's the Needles Overlook in Canyonlands National Park. I've always wondered where the road went and what was at the other end. Well, the 20-mile drive to the overlook was well worth a side trip. This picture is my first-ever attempt at a panorama (other than a train I stitched together once). It isn't great, but if you click on it you can see some of the view from the Needles Overlook.

I call this sandstone outcrop Belly Button Rock. It's on the road to the Needles Overlook.

This is the view from the belly button. Not really. It's the same outcrop, though, where someone started blasting a house or something (this isn't too far from Hole 'N The Rock, where a guy did blast a house in a rock mountain). The person at Belly Button Rock gave up after about 10 feet.

The cottonwoods on Kane Creek were starting to turn brilliant yellow. Not everything in southeastern Utah is orange rock.

I guess there's a reason this road to Kane Creek said "Four wheel drive or mountain bikes only." It turns out the Corolla Cow is neither. (I call it the Corolla Cow because it was Christened by a cow last week.)

Lizards are about the only animal life I saw. If you click on this picture, you'll see that he's staring at you.

Next I grabbed a Subway sandwich in Moab and headed for Arches, where I had a little picnic. Then I hiked to Delicate Arch. So did a lot of other people. I couldn't believe how many people were at Arches. The place was packed and buzzing with tourists--on a Thursday in the middle of October. I checked the cars in the Delicate Arch parking lot, and at least 80 percent had plates from states other than Utah. And of the Utah plates, I would guess 1/3 or so were rentals for all the Europeans who were hiking around. When I passed the hotels in Moab about 6 in the morning, they all said "No Vacancy."

Other than wondering who was going to fall off one of the cliffs or slide into the rock bowl in front of Delicate Arch (one guy's iPhone and at least one camera lens cap tumbled down the rocks and into the bowl), we had to keep an eye on the dive-bombing crows.

This photographer decided to get a picture of Delicate Arch from the other side of the canyon. Click on the picture for a better view.

This proves that Darwin was wrong. There is no natural selection, or all these people would be at the bottom of the canyon. This is the same cliff that the lone photographer was sitting on in the picture above. Notice the children playing on the edge with no supervision.

Everyone was waiting for the sun to set on Delicate Arch, and this is why. I heard a lady in the visitor center say that she told her husband that if he said "Wow" one more time she was going to duct tape his mouth shut.

I thought about staying until the stars came out so I could get a picture with them as the backdrop, but I would have had to stay in Green River another night. I didn't get home until 1 a.m. as it was.

Beaver Video and Miscellaneous Mirror Lake Stuff

Okay, let's get this out of the way first. During the summer I hiked up Bald Mountain, beginning on the trail at the top of the Mirror Lake Highway. The only complaint I had was that the outhouse in the picnic area had no lock on the door. Luckily there was a short line when I was there, so the person at the front of the line more or less guarded the door for the person inside. But I'm sure this open-door policy proved embarrassing for more than a few people over the summer.

While up there this past weekend, I noticed that a bolt had been fastened to the door. What surprised me, though, was the toilet paper. I swear it has tougher security than my house: 1/4-inch plate steel with padlocks.

Now that we've got that out of the way...

I love the aspens this time of year, because they turn so white.

And they're everywhere mixed with the pines in the Uintas.

The beavers also like the aspens. They store small aspen branches and willows in a big pile mostly underwater next to their lodge so they'll have food that they can access below the ice all winter.

Here's a one-minute video of the beavers at work near Mirror Lake. I wanted to capture video of them climbing up the hill and gathering aspen branches, but I spent two days at the ponds, while all the beavers did was eat grass and gather willows in the meadow. I paid $45 for an annual pass for the Mirror Lake Highway. You'd think with that money the least the Forest Service could do would be to publish a schedule of when the beavers will be gathering willows and when they'll be gnawing down aspens.

I stayed at the beaver ponds a little too late, until it got pitch black, and there was no moon. Lucky for me, my video camera has an infrared function, so I was able to turn on the recorder and use the display to see my way, kind of like those night-vision goggles the military and the macho guys on TV use.

I made an important discovery some time ago for driving home at night: Don't even approach the speed limit, because there are deer, moose, and cows all over the road. And even the high beams don't cast nearly enough light to be traveling at 55 mph. At 40 mph I saw about four sets of deer and a moose along the highway on Friday night alone.

And oncoming bright lights are blinding.

This is something you don't want to see, trust me. I have a broken headlight, broken turn signal light, dented hood, dented fender, and missing driver's side rearview mirror to prove it. I went back on Saturday to see whether there was a dead cow on the road with my mirror stuck up his nose, but all I found were skid marks, a piece of the mirror, and the cow that had been hit by the red Dodge pickup on Tuesday night. I was being so cautious and alert, and this black cow stepped into my headlights as if from nowhere. What's worse, all the other cows that were here on Tuesday were gone on Friday, taken to winter pasture I suppose, except the cow I hit (or did he hit me?). It was the only cow I saw all afternoon and evening.

Confession: The night-vision video is real, using the camera's infrared, but I staged it just to see what it would look like. I wasn't really lost by the beaver ponds.

The cow is Photoshopped into the last picture, but this is almost exactly what I saw at 40 mph.

Beavers Storing for Winter

I should have been looking for work today, but instead I decided to see what the beavers by Mirror Lake were up to.

I planted a chair and tripod near my favorite beaver pond and waited about 20 minutes. First I saw one beaver swimming across the pond and climbing over the dam on the far side. Then a second one swam in my direction, swam up a small channel, climbed out, and headed up the hill to collect aspen branches. I'm guessing the first beaver was a male and the second a female. My guess is that the male would have ventured out first, but that could be backwards. Buck deer usually send the females out first. Anyway, beavers usually live as a pair in a lodge, where they care for their babies for their first year of their lives. If I guessed correctly, the beaver in the picture above is the female.

As the female beaver climbed up the hill I sneaked down near her trail. I stood and watched her for some time when I suddenly wondered where the first beaver went. I turned around and found him floating in the water like a piece of dead wood about 10 feet behind me.

I watched the female go up and down the hill three or four times, collecting a branch each time and sticking it in a tangle in the middle of the water channel, which was connected to the main pond. Interestingly, the male, the one staring at me in the picture above, had been collecting branches on the other side of the pond and was taking them all the way to the lodge.

After he decided I was not a threat, he started taking the branches the female had left in the tangle and swam them back to the lodge. Okay, maybe you didn't find that so interesting.

I crept to within about 10 feet of the female's trail and crouched in front of some willows.

The click of the camera startled the beaver. She dropped her branches and took off for the water. I had wondered if beavers could run. When they get out of the water they waddle slowly like awkward pudgies across the meadow and up and down the hills. After she dropped the branches I realized that they can hurry, but not all that fast. Her run was more like a hop to the pond.

Once in the water, she swam off at a pretty good clip. I felt bad that I'd scared her away from her winter food storage, but I'm sure she ventured back to the branches after I left.

The sun went down soon after.

On the way down the canyon I drove only about 40 mph. Every time I drive down this road at night I end up slamming on the brakes for at least one deer. And tonight was no exception. I stopped for one fawn running back and forth on the road and slammed on the brakes for a fawn and a doe, hard enough that everything on the passenger seat ended up on the floor.

Worse were the black angus cattle. Being black, they're almost impossible to see until you're right on them. Even going only 40 mph, I didn't see one cow standing taller than the car on the road's shoulder until I noticed her (or his) eyes through the right side of the windshield. The ranchers must be gathering them up for the winter, since they were all along the road in places.

Just above the Yellow Pine Campground a truck came up behind me doing about the speed limit of 55 mph, so I turned into Yellow Pine so he could pass. I got out of the car to stretch and wait for a second car to pass when I heard a big "whump" and a "mooooo" just to the west. Sure enough, when I headed back down the road a red Dodge pickup truck with three elk hunters was parked on the side with the front left fender smashed into the front left tire. I didn't see the cow that had been hit, but I did have to weave around about 10 cows walking around on the highway.

Witch Hunt

Jared and Sara invited us to spend Family Home Evening with them yesterday. Where we went was some witches' home.

At Gardner Village.

A witch loaded us onto a wagon and sent us off to the witches' house across the field in an old railroad car.

On the way we saw a witch fixing her dinner.

And one selling frogs.

At the house some witches told us about how they live. They like their food with spiders.

By the way, Jackson at an eyeball.

And the witches signed autographs.

Then we stopped in Archibald's for dinner. The prices are good, and the food is generally good. Sara and I had prime rib, which was tasty, but I like my food hot.

Conference Weekend

This was a good weekend. Saturday started when I opened the front door and was greeted by a pheasant walking up to the porch, just five or so feet away from me. I've never seen a pheasant in our front yard. I'm used to quail, and ducks even wander over frequently to rest on the lawn or play in the puddle in the low spot in front of our yard (see my previous blog on the blacktop for that pot hole). I had just read that Midvale City approved zoning so people can raise chickens in their yards, and when I first saw the pheasant, I thought, "What is that? Is it a chicken rooster?" It took several seconds for my mind to register that this was a pheasant. He ran away when I went out to take his picture, and this was the best I could get.

I decided to drive up to the Uintas to see if any beavers were active, so I loaded up the Toyota with camera gear and winter clothes. On the way I went to breakfast with Randy at Kneaders. They have great apple bread french toast with carmel syrup, whipping cream, and strawberries for $4.99. I invited Randy to go to the Uintas, since he just got a new camera yesterday. He was going to go, but then we realized he didn't have any warm clothes, and there's certainly still snow up there from last week's storm.

Just as I was leaving Kneaders, Jared called and asked whether I wanted to go to the Golden Spike National Historic Site with him and the kids, so I changed my plans and we headed to Corinne.

Just near the turnoff to the Golden Spike NHS is the ATK rocket headquarters (formerly Thiokol or Morton Thiokol). ATK builds the solid rocket fuel motors for the Space Shuttle and various other rockets and have a bunch of rockets on display in front of their plant. This is Jackson and Tanner at the base of a Minuteman missile. The Minuteman is the United States' only land-based nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile.

Waiting for the missile to fire.

This is the business end of a rocket's motor.

Jared, Jackson, and Tanner playing inside a section of a rocket.

Next we drove the last 10 miles to the Golden Spike NHS. Here's the group waiting for the train.

And here comes the 119, a replica of the Union Pacific's coal-fired engine that came from the east to Promontory Summit in 1869.

The engine lets off a lot of steam as it rolls. It needs to refill the tender with 2,000 gallons of water about every 35 miles, and fill the tender with coal about every 100 to 150 miles, depending on the terrain.

Jackson and Tanner are on the rails in front of the wood-burning Jupiter, which came from the west as the Central Pacific's representative for the driving of the Golden Spike.

Jared, Jackson, and Tanner sitting on the rail over the tie where the Golden Spike was driven.

And Michael with Jackson and Tanner.

Tanner dreaming of being a steam engineer. (Bonus, you can see the stripe where he cut his own hair the first of this week. Sara had to cut the rest of his hair off to try to match.)

Jackson looks pretty happy here, but a few minutes before this we were standing next to one of the engines when the steam pressure built up and a release valve popped open on top, letting out a loud steamy whooshing noise. Jackson and Tanner ran in two directions at top speed with their hands over their ears. Jackson never quite recovered, and on the way out he said, "I'm never coming back here. We can go to the rocket place again, but I'm never coming back here."

We tried to go on the west auto tour, but it was locked up (after we had driven seven miles down a dusty road to the entrance), so we came back to the National Historic Site at 4 p.m., when the Park Service put the trains away. We watched as the train blew its whistle (which also made the kids jump again, since we were sitting very close and the whistles are very loud, but this time we were expecting the noise), chugged up the track and back, and then chugged away and into the barn. The kids enjoyed this.

Sunday morning came with lightning, hail, and rain. And wind. And cold. This is the flag at Murray Park, where I listened to the morning session of general conference.

At 1 p.m. we went to my dad's for our traditional general conference pot luck. Janet made her great chicken salad sandwiches on croissants and seven-layer salad, and everyone else brought salads, brownies, cheese cakes, and other good stuff. I asked who brought the watermelon with real seeds, since I haven't seen oblong-shaped watermelons with seeds in any stores around here for a long time. The last one I tasted I bought in Green River when Randy and I went to Mesa Verde a few weeks ago, and it was the best watermelon I've tasted since the last time I had eaten a seeded watermelon several years ago. It turns out Reed Tranter and my dad were looking for something to do one day, so they drove to Green River and bought a watermelon. Green River is about four or so hours from here.

At the dinner were Nancy and Cecil; Andrea, Jordan, Maddison, and Kaitlin; Lindsay, Ryan, Thomas, and Emma; Janet; Jennifer and Stanton; Chieko and me; Sara, Jared, Jackson, and Tanner; Paul, Cindy, Megan, and Marcus; Heather, Jason, and Parker; Tiffany, Mick, and Addy, who came later after they unloaded their boat from a Lake Powell trip; and Neil and Julie Scovil (Linda was invited but was hosting a singles dinner in her ward). Did I miss anyone?

After dinner, Jennifer took the kids to her house to feed Stanton's lizard. It eats live crickets and meal worms (pretty much little maggot-like worms that turn into beetles if lizards don't eat them first). The kids all had fun holding and petting the lizard. Some were more timid than others, but Tanner was not one of the timid ones.

Jackson was a little more timid, but after his first turn holding the lizard, named Skinny, he wanted a second turn.

We also watched the last session of conference. Some watched most of it in the TV room upstairs, and some of us watched just President Monson's closing remarks in Janet's living room.

You can download full-size versions of these pictures and some others from my gallery at http://gallery.mac.com/michaelastle. Email me for the user name and password for this album.