Final Adventures in Utah

Pando, the biggest aspen grove in the world, from the slopes of Mt. Mytoge.

 Resulting from a discussion of BIG things (a fully loaded 747 is like 36 school buses duct taped together and flying through the air at hundreds of miles per hour!), Jan-Man and I decided to spend our final weekend in Utah at Fish Lake, home of the biggest aspen grove in the world.  Pando is one organism, one that's like 7 Walmart Supercenters all next to each other!  In taking vantage of Pando, I had the opportunity to scale a 10,000 ft mountain.  The peak of Mytoge reaches 10,097 feet.  We camped on BLM land on the backside and then walked up the trail.  Fish Lake is a popular summer destination, but we didn't see a single person on the trail that day.  In a stunning example of how averse people are to hiking when they can fish, boat and car-camp, ospreys decided to nest right on the trail because it gets such little use.

One of the ospreys that lived next to the seldom-used trail around the Lake

 Pando is incredible, but it is hard to spend a whole weekend there, given that there are no advertisements to avoid adding extra human traffic to the stress it is already under from the vacation homes being built in it.  Aspen groves share a root system, so all the trees are clones.  This most massive of groves is ancient, and a simple view from the slope across the lake is plenty.  After hiking and looking we found ourselves at Saturday afternoon with nothing to do, so we decided to drive to Spiral Jetty and go looking for ghost towns Sunday morning on our way around the Great Salt Lake to the Salt Flats.  About 8 hours later, in the middle of the night and in complete darkness, we reached the end of the line on the gravel roads on the Promontory.  Miraculously, we awoke to find ourselves at Spiral Jetty.  And we had it all to ourselves.  The northwest side of the Lake is some of the most barren land of the desolate state of Utah.  We awoke to see no souls, no lights and no buildings.  It's a beautiful way to experience Smithson's piece of environmental art from 1970.  He used construction equipment to place sand and boulders to make a jetty in the shape of spiral in such a way that it would spend half it's time submerged and half it's time exposed and salt-crusted.

Spiral Jetty is just that, and it's huge too.  1500 ft long

 There was a lot of snow this year so even in August the jetty was still submerged.  The basic shape is visible above, and the haunting quality of the piece and location is apparent below.  The water is a reddish purple from the bizarre, salty creatures that live there.  It's all very to odd to find in a desert, and it's even weirder when it wakes you up in the morning.

Janet enjoying a quiet morning at the Jetty

 After leaving the jetty, we happened upon a creepy man sitting by an abandoned spit.  As we walked by he asked if we had any water.  I replied that I did in the car and I inquired if he would like any.  He declined and then in the most cryptic manner anyone has ever talked to me he said, "You should go get it.  You'll regret it if you don't.  There's no water out there."  He lingered on 'regret' and 'no water' like he either knew something I did not or else he was some supernatural being.  Regardless I forgave water on the fifteen minute walk around the spit, and the creepy old man didn't murder me.  This interesting exchange made up for the lack of a ghost town across the lake.  The road around followed an abandoned railroad track to Nevada.  From there we circled back to I-80 and the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Mr. Whitney may not approve of this blur, but by no fault of the Buffalo.  Odyssey was haulin'.

 The Salt Flats are maintained by the BLM, which more or less means anything goes.  As long as there is not an official speed test going on, people are allowed to drive their own vehicle anywhere they damn well please out there.  Flat, white salt stretches in all directions, cones outline the course for speed tests, and mountainous islands rise out of the salt.  It was a perfect occasion to drive at breakneck speeds with no hands on the wheel and your head out the window and to take glamour shots of the charging Buffalo.  Check and check.