Green River Watermelon

We've been craving watermelon from Green River, Utah, this summer, but no one around here has stocked it yet. So today I drove to Green River, about three hours each way from here. 

The most direct route to Green River is down I-15; through Spanish Fork Canyon; past Helper, Price and Wellington; one mile on I-70; to Green River. That's the way I went. Coming home, I turned near Helper to take Hwy 191 to Duchesne. This is along the way. 

I hadn't planned to do sight seeing and thus didn't take a camera, tripod or other camera gear. When I decided to take a picture of myself in the BMW, I had to make a tripod for my iPhone out of aspen. I was actually surprised that it worked quite well. 

This is someone's log home next to the highway a ways before Duchesne. 

Here's my car from the log house. 

And here's what's across the highway from the log house. You know you're near Duchesne when oil rigs are pumping away every couple of blocks. I believe these are pumping natural gas. 

Here's what you can see every few blocks along the highway. If you take the dirt road from Nine Mile Canyon to Duchesne, you'll also see a lot of these along that road. 

The summit before dropping into Duchesne. 

Duchesne is in the distance there somewhere, before the mountains in the background. 

I'm not really very familiar with Duchesne. I know Highway 40 from Vernal, through Duchesne to Heber is paved, but I'm guessing not many other roads in Duchesne are, if this is a city bus. 

So, instead of turning right at Heber and taking Highway 40 and I-80 home through Parely's Canyon, I turned left and drove past Deer Creek Reservoir and down the top part of Provo Canyon. I then turned at the road to Sundance and drove over the Alpine Loop. This guy was a few miles past Aspen Grove. 

He crossed the road in front of me. I had to wait a few minutes for him to get his rear end off the road so I could go around. 

When I did get around, I was almost close enough to touch him. Remember that I'm in a car with no roof. 

Here's the watermelon (with seeds) and three cantaloupes I bought. The cantaloupe is delicious, as expected. We haven't cut into the watermelon yet, because we still have some mediocre watermelon from the store in our fridge. However, the lady at Vertere's melon stand in Green River assured me the watermelon is vine ripened and ready to eat. And the black goo coming from the end is sugar seeping out, which is a good sign.