The Great Outdoors part 1

The great outdoors is something Amy and I have experienced the last few days. Part 1 is what I am writing about and part 2 will be on her blog in the next few days or so. On Thursday we went up to the Temple Quarry Site in the mouth of the Little Cottonwood Canyon. I had never been there and Amy took me there to see how it was all done 150 years ago. I love history and I really like to see how things are done.
Click on pictures to get a better view.

After that we drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon and over Guardsman's Pass to Park City. Neither Amy or I had ever done that before. It was amazing and it was nice to be in the mountains.

Yesterday, we went to dig Geodes out in the desert at the Dugway Geode Beds. I hadn't been there since I was young and didn't quite know how to get there, but we made it, eventually!! It was a long way out there and we didn't find any Geodes either, but we had fun just getting out of the house. There were some amazing views all the way out into the desert like this one.

It was very hot and half way there, we stopped at a place called Simpsons Springs. There is a spring out in the middle of the desert. It was amazing to see it since it felt like 120 degrees when we got out of the car!! There was a small stone cabin there and a few other ruins of where houses stood. Simpsons Springs is part of the Pony Express trail and every 5 or so miles there is a marker showing where the trail was. Some of it was where we drove and some was off the road quite a ways. It is really cool to think about how they could ride a horse all the way from the Mississippi River to Sacramento, rain or shine, day and night, all alone! Kind of scary, but thrilling at the same time!
A big green rock called Limestone.

In the far background you can see buildings at the Dugway Proving Grounds. In the foreground is the Spring that animals, Native Americans and of course Pony Express Riders and staff used.


After Simpsons Springs we were driving alone and Amy was feeling a little sick and we saw the sign for Dugway Geode Beds 22 miles. We just about died, but Amy said that we were almost there, so we kept going and when we got there I dug some holes and looked around and we didn't find a thing! We saw a lot of lizards and this one was amazingly big which Amy will have on her blog.

When we were done looking for stones that weren't there and since it was getting late, we left and decided that we would come again someday. All the way out there I had told Amy about all of the amazing animals like Antelope and Deer that I would see when I would go to Topaz Mountain. We saw only 3 wild horses driving in and tons of lizards!

Then at a moment I saw a Pronghorn on the side of the road and skidded to a stop. It hopped away about 30 feet and stopped and looked at us. Amy got a few good shots of it and we proceeded on our way back to Simpsons Springs.

I kept saying that it sucked that we didn't see any herds of animals like I had seen before and before we knew it we passed the Springs and there in the road and all around us were about 50 to 60 Pronghorn (Antelope)! Amy got a lot of great shots and when I was rolling away to leave, we almost hit one that was just kind of strolling in front of us. He was good sized and very close so we got a great picture of him too! We got going again and eventually we came across dust just floating above the ground. We were both trying to figure out what was making it. The answer came when we got closer. There were Hundreds of Wild Horses moving across the plain. I'm not sure if they were Mustangs, but it was amazing to see!!! My Mother would have loved it!! Amy got some great videos and she will be posting them along with some really cool pictures. It was really neat to see wave after wave of horses walking up to where we were to a watering hole and then moving on across the road out towards Dugway Proving Grounds. Amy said, "that that was worth the whole trip!" It was also way too dark to see anymore, so we just got going and about an hour and a half later, we got home.