Saturday, August 6, 2011

Just David and Me

David and I went for a little camping trip to a place called Lake Hill Campground, east of Ephraim, UT. It was a beautiful spot. We had ATV access to several trails and also drove up to the scenic, Skyline Drive. Most of these pictures are the view from Skyline Drive. It was a dirt road, something for trucks and ATV's to go on.

There are people who haul their trailers up there for the summer (elevation about 10,000 ft.), and we had a hard time believing that they had traveled some of the roads they did to park them where they did. This first picture is an example of that.

This picture is a view to the East.

We have been fortunate to see several areas of Utah this year in their prime wild flower season, mostly because of the unusually late cold and wet weather we have had.

Here is a Columbine with a type of Paintbrush.

I have to admit to a passion for Columbine flowers. I think it is their unique pattern that intrigues me.

This is a field of red, white and blue that we found: Columbine, Paintbrush and Larkspur.

There was plenty of snow at the 10,000 foot level. We found out that the stream in the picture, was built in the 1930's by the CCC to help capture the water melting from the snow, bringing it to a tunnel, and down to the communities on the west in the valley for drinking and irrigation purposes instead of going down eventually to the Colorado River to the east. It was just such a beautiful contrast of the blue and green and white.

The dead trees that are so abundant in the pictures are because of a spruce beetle during years of drought that we suffered. It would all look better if they could be logged off. At least we had plenty of firewood while we were there.

Along side of the road, we often saw these little cascades coming down. Little springs would just pop out of the side of the mountain. In some places it is more dangerous because it causes the soil on the side of the mountain to slough downward. It was interesting to see the damage that it caused to the road and how they were trying to alleviate damage.

Just a pretty mountain stream that we passed on one of our rides. David and I both like water, so it is hard to pass a stream so pretty and not take a picture.


Rocky Mountain Irises made us stop for this photo.


David is showing the view to the West of where we were at. This is the Sanpete Valley (Ephraim) in the background. Manti is a little further south.

Here is our camp. Wonderful shade for most of the afternoon.

I took this just after David set up our new tent. It has lots of room inside and we could stand up anywhere inside! Really good purchase for us. We could have slept more people in it, but this was a trip for just the two of us.