Grand Wash trail
This was closed the day before for flash floods, due to thunderstorms all afternoon, so we were some of the first hikers up the gorge. Lots of red mud and gravel, so boots soon collected big dollops of clay (Lin - but not as bad as that mud bath of a field near Ulverston that we dragged you and Rob through!!).
A lot of the mud looked just like chocolate sauce (still dreaming of those choccy milkshakes), - a bit like walking through Willy Wonka land.
Great hike though and a long and interesting conversation with a geologist employed by the Govt and part dealing with climate change. They had a 45 million dollar budget and the Trump proposal reduces it to zero, if it gets through. Her Dept is busy redefining projects so that their titles do not mention "climate change", but the research can carry on under another name.
A lot of the mud looked just like chocolate sauce (still dreaming of those choccy milkshakes), - a bit like walking through Willy Wonka land.
Great hike though and a long and interesting conversation with a geologist employed by the Govt and part dealing with climate change. They had a 45 million dollar budget and the Trump proposal reduces it to zero, if it gets through. Her Dept is busy redefining projects so that their titles do not mention "climate change", but the research can carry on under another name.
We're not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.
March 16, 2017
On a lighter note, the following extract is about the canyon:
Grand Wash was made famous by American outlaw Butch Cassidy, who reportedly had a hideout in this area (nearby Cassidy Archis named after him)
Butch Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker in 1866 to devout Mormon parents in Beaver, Utah. After several itinerant years in mining camps across the west, Parker pulled off his first bank robbery in 1889. He adopted the surname 'Cassidy' around this time from an elder small-time horse thief he admired in his youth, and as legend has it, the first name 'Butch' from a short stint in a Wyoming butcher shop.
After spending 18 months in jail for stealing horses, we was released in 1895 and reunited with members of the Wild Bunch, a loose knit group of thieves who graduated to robbing banks and trains in the 1890s. The Wild Bunch found refuge in a maze of canyons across SE Utah, an area that came to be known as the Outlaw Trail.
With pressure mounting from bounties and pursuit by the Pinkerton detectives, Cassidy fled the US sometime between 1901-1902 for South America. He reunited with his infamous partner Harry 'The Sundance Kid' Longabaugh in Argentina, where they invested in ranching operations while resuming a life of banditry.
Details of his fate remain unclear, and stories range from a deadly shootout with Bolivian authorities to a quiet return to the US where he is rumored to have lived out his final years under an assumed name.
Scenic drive
A 10 mile drive through more spectacular scenery.
"Mormon pioneers took eight days in 1884 to clear the first road through the Gorge, and settlers had to remove heavy debris after every flash flood. Early travelers recorded their passage on the canyon walls at the Pioneer Register. The road was closed in 1962 when Utah Highway 24 was paved through the Fremont River corridor."
It was cloudy and threatening rain again on the drive, with remnants of the flash floods across the road in many places - was going to do it again next day to get better photos, but it clouded over again and we had had such a great day that we gave it a miss. Something to come back for - CR rapidly gaining on Bryce as number one place in the world!
"Mormon pioneers took eight days in 1884 to clear the first road through the Gorge, and settlers had to remove heavy debris after every flash flood. Early travelers recorded their passage on the canyon walls at the Pioneer Register. The road was closed in 1962 when Utah Highway 24 was paved through the Fremont River corridor."
It was cloudy and threatening rain again on the drive, with remnants of the flash floods across the road in many places - was going to do it again next day to get better photos, but it clouded over again and we had had such a great day that we gave it a miss. Something to come back for - CR rapidly gaining on Bryce as number one place in the world!
Laundry
On way back home we dropped in at our old laundry place - always need to keep up with clean undies! Something else that doesn't change!
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