In the desert spring sprang a couple months ago and now it’s summer. The cheat grass has gone dormant and the temps are flirting with 90*back in Fruita.

At the Blacktail Creek Campground spring is just now springing. The camp is at 9100 feet in a mix of aspen and pine trees. The Aspens are bright green, and the mountain flowers are in bloom. The camp is between Toponas and Kremling on CO 131. Dirt road, pit toilet, and a dumpster round out the accommodations.

I’m on my way to MeadowFest to join my chosen family for a long weekend of singing songs around a campfire

ॐ

After we got west of the rough-ass concrete mess UDOT calls I-80 and onto the smooth silky asphalt the trip to Wendover was nice and flat. Flat like a lake. Because it is a mostly dry lake. Since it snowed recently the area is more mud flats than dry-lake-bed though.

We stopped at the salt-flats over look and saw mostly water. I’m guessing when it drys out it will be salt flats again. I never really thought about it before, but I suspect that when snow falls on salt flats it just turns to water and pools up. I do wonder how cold it would have to get for the water on the salt flats to freeze AND I don’t want to be there if it ever happens!

We stopped off at the Wendover airport because it looked interesting on Google maps and we were not disappointed. Turns out Wendover is where the B-29 crews that carried atomic bombs to Japan were trained. There is a museum, the officers club has been restored, and the “Enola Gay” hanger has been mostly restored. We parked on 7th street, which currently is a dirt two-track in the middle of what use to be barracks, and the boys got to go romp around for awhile.

.

.

.

.

.

ॐ

Day one – Rain showers and orientation day. I rode around with a Ranger who showed me where everything is and I got a hat and a vest to wear while I’m hosting. I also got a golf cart to ride around in.

Day two – More rain and training in the morning. Lots more rain in the afternoon. They say this is the first time it has rained since March which means I was here the last time it rained! I came here in March for a week while the house was being shown and it rained. I must be a rain-god or something.

Even though it’s only my second day (and technically my day off) I still had more people come knock on my door today (3) than the entire 5-week stay at Tongue River SP. This park fills up every night with RV’ers passing through; sort of an RV motel. We are close to the I-70 highway and it’s easy on easy off for fuel and camping. That and cyclists hanging out in the desert.

Day three – Still my day off and I had 3 more people come ask for assistance. Easy-peasy requests like turn on the power.

Day four – First day of actual work and I’m flying solo! No Ranger in the park, no experienced host. Just me and a massive thunderstorm. I got around the park one and a half times before it started to rain & hail. I saw the storm coming so I had rain gear with me, but it’s real hard to play with paper cards when they are soaked into a recycled paper-paste. The rain let up after and hour or so and the sun came out.

Day five – Second day of solo-hosting and no rain. The process is a lot smoother when the sky is benevolent and there is a Ranger in the park. I finished by 1pm and then went for a bike ride near Loma.

Day six and the rain is back. I’m guessing this is the moisture left over from a big tropical event that made landfall on the west coast last week. Luckily the rain held off until I was done with my host-duties.

’twas a dark and stormy night. Day seven started with steady rain before sunrise which lasted until the end of my shift. I had a break between rain showers so I sprayed some simple green on the RV and ran a brush over it. I’m not technically washing the RV in the park, but I get a clean coach none the less. Rinse cycle came a bit later when the sky sprang a leak and cleaned the soap off.

My plan-A was to spend every afternoon riding my bike on the wonderful mtn bike trails near Fruita. 18-road, Mary’s, Lunch Loops – repeat! Plan-B has me sitting inside watching it rain which turns the trails to mud. Need to come up with a plan-C.

Some friends are over in Moab and since the rain ended sooner over there I dashed over for some riding on Hymasa and Capt’n Ahab. 4 hours of driving for 4 hours of riding isn’t too bad a deal after a week of rain. The trials we rode have a lot of slick-rock and sand so they were drained if not quite dry. Kane Creek was only a few inches deep so that was a nice crossing. The down side was the wet sand sticks to the tires and gets drug up on the slick-rock making it sketchy to steer until the sand falls off the tires.

Yup. Well below freezing. Camp is north of 44* latitude at about 6600 feet and the temp dropped to 17*F before the sun came up. The furnace ran 20 minutes at a time with a 15 minute break between most of the night. It’s a toasty 65* inside and I have a cat on my lap (prrrrrr). My friend Tom, who camped next to us, does not have a real heater in his camper yet. It’s something he has planned for the future so I’m going to guess that it’s a bit chilly over there this morning. (after I wrote that Tom came over with his breakfast to eat in a warm kitchen)

In the shadow of the Sawtooth Range
I met my friend Tom and his 85% completed expedition vehicle near Stanley and after I took the 10¢ tour we went for a bike ride on the Fisher Creek Loop trail. The trail is in an area that burned a few years ago. The first part has a climb up a dirt road through the changing colors of fall. Yellow, oranges, and bright greens – delightful! The last half of the trail is single-track through burned areas followed by single-track through a nice pine forest.

Swamp Creek Ride
Day two Tom and I went up Swamp Creek about 5.5 miles. I think they named it Swamp Creek to keep people from going there. It was a great ride through forest along a creek on single-track the whole way. There were about 17 creek crossings in late Sept so I bet it’s real wet in the spring. We saw paw prints of a mountain lion on the trail. One paw print was placed precisely inside a horse’s hoof print and it filled the hoof print. Big kitty!

The Mountain Lion foot print is on top of a horse hoof print. The horse shoe print is visible at the top of the pic. And yea, we looked for claw marks and it’s not a dog paw print. We saw a bunch of them!

.