Open Range

Having been to Royal Gorge on a previous road trip, it was only natural to go visit  Flaming Gorge.

 Bridge over Green River

It was a hot day, the water looked inviting. We wandered over to the visitors center, the tour for the trip into the bowels of the dam was hours away, and we really didn’t want to wait so we went to check out the river. The Green River.

The road goes down to where you can launch your raft into the river. Not having a raft and only having motorbikes we parked in the parking lot and started to walk down the steep trail to the river.

Even Miners In Utah Know Pebble Mine Is A Bad Idea

Aboot half way down the steep trail I noticed there was a rode right down to the water. We hiked back up the side of the mountain we hiked down and rode right down to the water.

No Wild Rivers Here

The fellow who let us through the gate has now rode his motorbike down to where we are, and has noticed that we are parked right next to a sign that says “No Parking” He attends to his duties of restocking the outhouses, and I am so tempted to go photograph him actually stuffing the round rolls of toilet paper onto the square rod that holds them at the ready, but I decide to wait and shoot the next person I see doing this, beside I don’t want a parking ticket.

We ride highway 191 out of the hills of Utah onto the open range land of Wyoming.

In Rock Springs we stop for petrol and lunch at a roadside steak house. They have no steak on the lunch menu. The waitress doesn’t even think this odd.

Back on the road for a 50 or so mile grind on I 80 our timing is perfect to run right into a drenching thunder storm. The driving rain is intense. Visibility is reduced to almost nothing. We slow down, way down, with flashers on. Some other vehicles slow down also, but others just race by doing better than the 80 mph speed limit.

Finally the rain lets up, and for a moment I think hypothermia might set in, but then the sun comes out, and warms things right up again.

After a few miles the sky again looks very threating up a head. We pull off at a ramp wait for a bit, get geared up better, and again our timing is perfect to run into another even stronger thunder storm, with drenching rain, and gusting winds.

As we get into radio range of Rawlings I listen to the weather radio and learn that we have just ridden through severe thunder storms, winds gusting to 50 mph…

Slightly damp we check in for the night and I wonder…That was severe weather? That little storm was severe? Oh well we ain’t in the north no more.