Our first location was the Fishlake National Forest.

Fishlake National Forest is the home of the Aspen Pando, a clonal colony made up of a single tree with multiple trunks covering 106 acres. The tree has been declining in size and health in recent decades and so the park service has been experimenting with different ways to help it, including fences to keep hungry deer away from the small trunks.

Later we visited Bullion Falls one afternoon, it's an easy walk and it's canyon contain an interesting series of displays showing mining history in that area.

While driving along one day we came across a crew installing fiber along the road. Since that's a effort that's near and dear to my heart I stopped to see how it was going and realized that putting cable in the ground is a lot harder when the top soil is just and inch or two thick with nothing but rock below. The crew basically had an enormous rock saw and were making much slower progress than crews back in Minnesota using vibrating plows to go through deep top soil.

Our second main area to explore was the Flaming Gorge Dam Area near Wyoming. This includes the Ashley National Forest and other areas around the Green River.

While hiking one day we came across an area with dozens of Antlion pits and even saw a couple ants fall to their doom.

One thing that we noticed throughout our trip was the quality of the facilities in Utah, they were numerous and very well maintained compared to many places we've visited. One day while driving between Wyoming and Utah we came across a border that illustrated this point.

One of the most scenic areas was Tamarack Lake, although we had to endure a few minutes of hail while hiking.

Last Updated: 11/23/2019 Anthony Anderberg - ant@anderbergfamily.net