Tuesday, September 6, 2016
My maternal human is laying on her side. I must climb on her and make her turn on her
back so I can lay more comfortably. I am
perched on her side. I am
balancing. Move human! I can't stay like this forever! I guess I will go lay on her legs.
My morning walk took me up a dirt road overlooking Bear
Lake. The Bear Lake Valley is wide,
surrounded by low mountains - cerritos if you will. There are homes here, large properties with
acreage. They are perched atop the hills
overlooking the lake. The surrounding
cerritos have splotches of fall colors.
It is a picturesque landscape.
When I got back, we got Hannah ready to move. We are not going far, only to Logan Canyon
about 30 miles away. We were here 3
years ago and were in awe of the beauty.
Lots of deer road kill along the route... Ugh... We climb to the summit overlooking
Bear Lake for one more shot of the scenery.
We thought of taking Rudy out of the truck for another photo op like we
did three years ago, but decided against it.
Last time, he was more apt to go with the flow. Now we know he doesn't like cars and we were
not in the mood to risk getting our clothes shredded!
We have been on the road for all of 30 minutes, and time to
start looking for a place to stay. The
first campground is closed for the season.
So much for that. It also says no
trailers over 20 feet. We are 31 feet,
so it wouldn't have worked anyway. Our
recollection is that we were not expecting the campgrounds to be big enough for
RVs but until we really looked at it, we wouldn't know. We checked our GPS for campgrounds and found
the Beaver Mountain Ski Resort.
Ok... really? What the heck, let's check it out.
We head up the road.
The GPS tells us to take a dirt road to the right for 4 miles. With Hannah?
But the ski area is to the left... let's go left. The GPS readjusts. We climb the hill and Samantha tells us it is
on the right. We see a sign with the
prices, so we turn in. It is a dirt
road... a small dirt road. Really? It advertises RV hookups, so it has to be
large enough for RVs, right? We crawl
along passing what looks like a few really small tent sites. As we turn the
corner, we see this narrow road climbing a short steep hill. Really?
Nowhere to turn around, so Spouse puts Jack in 4WD and up we climb right
into the parking lot of the ski resort.
So, in other words, if we had gone an additional 50 feet from where
Samantha told us to turn, we would have been where we needed to go without the
drama! Go figure.
We are in a parking lot at the base of the ski resort. The hookups are lined up against a bank of
trees. Since we back Hannah in, the
trees are what we see out the back window.
Looks downright foresty! There are picnic tables but nothing else. The only RV there is the camp host and he is
nowhere to be found. We find a forest
service lady, and she tells us that we probably won't find much our size so
this would be the place to hook up. The
minuses: it is a parking lot. If it were full of RVs, it would be way too
cozy, but since there is nobody here, it is no big deal. The pluses:
there is nobody here! It is a
great location, far off any road. It
smells like pine and it is an easy set up for Hannah. We don't plan on hanging around the camp, we
plan on exploring, so this should work.
We set her up and gave her Rudy to watch over, then headed off to
explore.
We are less than 30 miles from Logan, so we thought we would
head into town, have lunch, then fuel up.
We are about 10 miles into the drive when we saw a bicyclist struggling
to carry his bike, and trying to hitch a ride.
Spouse talks to him and decides to give him a ride. He is in shorts, thongs and a Tshirt, so he
does not look nefarious by any stretch of the imagination, and the bike was an
expensive bike. So we meet Jack Chang
from Taiwan. He is a mormon, but by his
own admission, not a very good one. We
take him to his house, admiring his new zen garden. A nice guy he is, and now my spouse is his
hero.
Logan is a big city.
We haven't seen one of those in a really long time so our senses are a
bit overwhelmed. We eat, run an errand, and
fuel up. I am proud of Spouse... he voluntarily passed a gas station that was
charging 2 cents less because he didn't want to make the turn into it. He did not whine, he put his big boy panties
on and paid the extra money! Who is this
guy? The old spouse resurfaced about 3
minutes after we left the gas station when he saw a price a full 5 cents
less! Oh the pain... Heeee's baaaccck!
Back into the hills to check out campgrounds... Like the
forest service said, they are small sites.
Not that Hannah couldn't fit into a few but it would be very challenging
given the short turns, and overhead trees.
We stopped at the Forest Service station to get a topo map
of the area. I waited while Spouse went
inside. The girl next to us got out of
her car and raised her hood. She was
looking, and poking, but couldn't start her car. She didn't think it was the battery as
everything else was working ok. We
started talking and I offered my spouse when he came out. Spouse asked her a few questions, looked and
got in the driver seat and started it right up.
She gasped, 'How did you do that?'.
'I put it in park'. She was very
embarrassed but thankful! My spouse, a
hero once again!
We cruised in and out of campgrounds. When we got to Lodge Campground, it was a bit
off the road, and the road kept going.
Hmmm, where does this road go?
Why not? We turned right. It turned into a gravel road, but graded
fairly well. After a while, we pass a
Forest Service truck and asked the guy if this road would get us back to
89. He smiled and said yes, but it would
be a while, over an hour. He had just
done it. Ok, an hour seemed kind of long
for the nine miles Samantha said we had, but what do we know. The road is easy gravel, this guy doesn't
know how fast we can go... He told us to
follow the signs to Efraim's grave (a large grizzly - the last in the lower 48). Ok, we can do that.
We tool along, this will not take an hour. After about 10 minutes, we see a sign that we
are leaving the national forest... and our nice gravel road. It is now a rutted dirt road. We now know why he smiled the way he
did... We get out the topo map as there
are options we weren't planning on. We
find ourselves. We are in the middle of
nowhere without a sole around. Ok, we
can do this.
Jack crawls slowly over the ruts. We are kicking up dust big time. We climb some major hills holding our breath
hoping we don't meet someone coming the other way. When we crest the hill, we hold our breath
until Jack is actually pointing downhill where we can see the road. At one point, there are steep dropoffs, which
would not be a problem except the road is graded in the same direction as the
dropoff, giving the feeling that you are going to roll. There are some stunning views but we are more
focused on surviving. Once the dropoffs
subside, we can stop to admire the view.
At this point, we are committed to going forward. We have come this far, and we are NOT going
back, so forward we crawl. We see a
car. If a car can do this, we certainly
can. There is a hunter with a gun slung
over his back. He is hunting
grouse. He says he wishes he had a 4WD
but until then, he wings it with the car, but he really knows these roads. On we crawl.
We see a free range cow. We pass
a man with a horse and a dog, probably overseeing the cattle herd. We crawl.
We turn on the next road and crawl.
UP UP UP... DOWN DOWN DOWN. Jack
is filthy but he is doing well. We are 2
hours into this and we can only imagine how the Forest Service guy is laughing
about us on this road. We ultimately get
to the road that will take us back to 89.
But where is Efraim's grave? The
road signs point in the direction, but there is never a sign telling us where
it is! Oh well... We are NOT going back! We get to the last dirt road. It is gravel, this will be easy... NOT! The first half mile is slow, then it smooths
out to some decent gravel. Some
beautiful views await us as we twist and turn on this more humane road. We pass a deer. We pass some hunters on ATVs...
We finally get back to 89.
What were we thinking? Back to
the ski area, back to our pussycat, back to my vodka tonic!
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