Little Wild Horse, Poison Springs, and Butch Cassidy

Oh hello Elder Rivera,

Thanks for calling me tonight, you look great, you look confident, you look happy. That makes me happy! 

I can’t say that much has happened this week. We’ve noticed a few issues with mom’s new car, nothing major, but I’m going to take it back to be looked at. It has a very slight vibration between 60 and 70. It’s also difficult to fill all the way with gas. Otherwise it’s really nice. It has car play, a giant sunroof, fancy cruise control that helps you steer, and heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel. Both mom and I still trying to figure everything out.

Mom was so busy this week. She’s doing her internship, taking her night classes, and Friday she had a retreat up by strawberry reservoir over night into Saturday. She’s tired but I think she recovered yesterday and today.

Friday night I took your brothers to meet aunt Patti and cousin Cecily to get our favorite tacos at my relatives restaurant. After, we came home and took advantage of having no adult supervision and watched a scary movie…Alien. It was good, but not nearly as scary as I thought it was when I was 13 when my brother took me to it.

Saturday morning Ben and I went to breakfast with Doug to plan our upcoming jeep trip. So next week we’re going to Hanksville with that jeep club I hang out with sometimes.

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Okay, that was the start of last week’s letter that never really got up enough steam to finish.  I don’t know how many or how much of my letters you read, but generally I like to write them.

So to follow up on what I started. Moms new car. It’s back at the dealership now. They are fixing the vibration. Apparently the bearing (the same part that was making so much noise on the Jeep Compass when I made you not drive it until I fixed it) and the axle were still damaged from the original crash. They didn’t get the axle in time for mom to get it on Friday so hopefully we can get it tomorrow. I hope that’s the only thing to go wrong with it.

Last Sunday we went to the Bergs for dinner. All of my family was there. It was fun to be together as always and I was enjoying being together. I remember a thought coming to my mind that clearly said that being together at that time was a miracle. As I looked around the room I saw your aunt Patti who had to go through that terrible divorce and she wondered if she would ever be happy again. I saw your happy and chatty cousin Cecily who has had such a difficult time for so many years with her disease and how difficult the recovery from her transplants was. She could barely stand to eat for so long. Then I saw your amazing and gregarious mother who has all the charm and charisma in the world who has been incredibly busy for a month since her recovery. Each one of those ladies practices faith, each one of them where given blessings by the priesthood of God. Each one of theme submitted to their trials without succumbing to their fears. Joe, you can tell the people in Dalhart that we live in a time of miracles and that God is mindful of each one of them. 

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Well, back to this week. I was excited to only work three days this week. But the three days I did work were pretty busy. Monday night Boston won the nba championship for their 18th time, but we didn’t watch it. Tuesday night was mom’s last night of class and by all accounts she did very well. Wednesday night I was going to pact the Toyota but I was too lazy so we just hung out. 

Thursday morning Ben and I got up to take mom’s car as stated above. They still have it and I hope to have time to pick it up tomorrow. After we dropped it off we got breakfast and came home and loaded up. Ben makes things easy on me as he knows what we need and he pre prepared a couple of meals for the trip. I showered and off we went.

I didn’t really have a solid plan in place for Thursday, and with the late start I didn’t want to plan anything overly ambitious. We had the idea to go to Hanksville through Capital Reef National Park. We ate burgers at the local place in Torrey, based up in what looked like an abandoned gas station, where they did not seem to be gouging tourists on gas, and headed to the visitors center. It was semi crowded so we just got a map. We thought we’d take the back way to the Bullfrog marina, but I had heard that the ferry choosing the Colorado River might be closed, and I didn’t want to backtrack forever if it was, so we headed east after about 10 miles which led us up into the Henry Mountains. It was fun to see the road progress through the most barren landscape through sub alpine then alpine environments. It went from virtually no vegetation, to dry grass and brush, to juniper and conifers, to aspen and pine with small but bright wildflowers every where. We went from about 4,500 feet in elevation to nearly 9,000 feet. We went from 98 degrees to 70. All the way Ben and I were chatting about music, instruments, geology, and history grad school. I love Benjamin always but my favorite Ben is the rare and elusive chatty Ben. 

The road started to look familiar when I realized that you and I had been on that very road that time we went with uncle Steven on that tv show adventure. Which, by the way, ranks super highly on my list of all time favorite trips and a rare occasion to be alone with you. I have a picture of that place we stopped that was super windy where we could literally lean into the wind. I didn’t remember how long and rough the road back down to Hanksville was, but it was.

We camped at that same place we had dinner with uncle Steven for the TV show. We stayed on a small dirt patch at the back of the RV park. In the next spot over there was this young guy who was riding his bike from Brooklynn, New York to San Francisco, California. He was pretty chatty but it was fun to hear his stories. It was pretty hot and windy that night but with your brothers help we got camp set and Ben cooked dinner. Last time we went camping without the trailer I had a bad time sleeping. This time I had bought a new cot. It made all the difference with my fancy sleeping pad. I didn’t use a sleeping bag because of the heat, I bought a small camping quilt the other day that was perfect for the hot weather conditions. Truth be told, but about midnight or so we heard a few raindrops and while nothing got wet, it cooled down into the 70s, which is perfect sleeping weather in my opinion.

The reason I chose to camp there was because they offered showers. No they were not luxurious facilities, but being clean is clean, and it makes everything more pleasant. So we got up fairly early to have some privacy in the showers then Ben made breakfast. We gassed up, got sandwiches for lunch, and a soda for the day, and met up with the group.

The group is the Lone Peak Jeep Club. The club is mostly comprised of old timers (yes…older than me) with nicely built jeeps. But they are all friendly and easy to hang out with only Ben would prefer less radio chatter and fewer stops. We met up, one guy had prepared audio presentation of the history of the area including a story of Butch Cassidy and the Robbers Roost. Then we had prayer and departed.

My buddy Doug had joined us the night before. Doug is an very good friend and a really fun to hang out with. We all took off for the trail head near Goblin Valley. You may not remember, but the last time we went to goblin together we headed down this road and had lunch. Anyway that was the route we took it’s called the Little Wild Horse Road. It follows washes and canyons until it opens up into Mars and moonscapes with bentonite hills and formations. It otherworldly and seemingly devoid of any life. So pretty. We ended up at a long abandoned ranch complex with a corral and homestead. Ben and I went there on our first jeep adventure after I bought our old Cherokee. We had lunch there and it was getting hot. 

After lunch we headed to the dreaded Muddy Creek. Yes, the infamous location of the dreaded Jeep drowning which I’m sure you remember well. I’m not going to lie Joseph, I was fairly anxious over this crossing. The water was deep, and the trail leader went the wrong way, which meant that we crossed a total of five times. On the second crossing the trail leader in his Wrangler on 37 inch tires got stuck, luckily his jeep didn’t sink like mine did. Doug also got stuck, but it was on the muddy bank and not in the water. The third and fourth crossing were back tracking and we had to go through thick branches and reed’s which left plenty of trail pins tripping on my 4Runner. I’m going to need to buff those out. The way out was full of incredible vistas, but no obstacles. He did lead us to a pretty spectacular overlook that I’ll send pictures of because it’s difficult to describe.

We made it back to the highway but made one more detour up what is known as Cow Dung Road. I think the southern Utah pioneers take particular pleasure in their descriptive names. That wasn’t a long or challenging road, but there were two interesting stops. The first was a Mars Research station which I can only assume is there for the desolate red landscape. The signage made it fairly evident that they were not anxious for company. The next stop was an active dinosaur quarry that I had low expectations for. When we pulled up to this remote site we were all surprised by the warm and friendly reception we received including a tour and plenty of shared information. It was really cool. It rain while we were there, enough to wet our shirts and cool things down temporarily. We went back to camp for a while and chatted with another camper from Arizona who comes north in the summer because it’s cooler. Arizona must be the surface of Venus. We ate dinner at Dukes restaurant, good not great. On the interesting side, the power went out so everyone in town slept as warm as we did.

Actually, the power going out disguised our dirt patch enough to make it seem almost nice. A friend of mine from 28 years ago joined the cub this year and it was fun to catch up with him again. We attended the same singles ward during the last millennium. 

The next morning we headed out to the Poison Springs Road. It went through the Robbers Roast area including washes and amazing canyons. We found an inscription of Butcher Cassidy which I tend to think is authentic. We had another river crossing which felt far less treacherous than the day before. We did over 70 miles off road, the second half being very reminiscent of the White Rim Road. By the end of the trail it was 100 degrees out and just after 4pm. Ben and I aired up and headed home. We had a nice drive and were home by 9.

Today was a normal Sunday, except we had a Treats In The street activity on our Horse shoe. It was fairly well attended and since I asked the Dye family to proved treats, it’s as close to missionary work that we get lately. Mom made chips and queso, which was probably the highlight. Oh, and your brothers stayed out with us the entire time and the sky did not fall. I do like our ward.

Anyway kid, sorry for the long letter, but if you average it out with last week, it’s average.

Lyity, pops