Life Elevated – Day 3

We enjoyed a delicious continental breakfast served by the Guest House and welcomed pleasant 70 degree temperature to begin our journey a little before 7:00 am.  We actually retraced our tracks to begin as we went past Linda’s and Bob’s house heading up Emigration Canyon road.  We saw lots of bicyclists on the road as we had the evening before.  The road makes a gradual (probably not so gradual on a bicycle) climb up the canyon with lots of curves.  The surface is not particularly great but still a fun ride.  After a few miles of climbing we came to a tee and took Highway 65 toward Morgan.  This is somewhat open mountainous terrain with lots of sagebrush. 

As Geocaching goes, this was not a particularly good day.  We began with two DNF’s and as I had only four lined up for Morgan County I was a little concerned.  The first DNF was along the old Pony Express and Mormon trail.  After this failure we backtracked a short ways to take Highway 66 to Morgan through Porterville.  The next DNF was at a rock “Welcome to Porterville” sign.  I succeeded in accidentally pulling a piece of loose concrete cap off the sign as I was trying to climb up to look on top.  I tried to replace it as best I could but we thought it was a good time to give this one up.  After arriving in Morgan Yancey quickly snagged a couple so we were safe. 

From Morgan we took Interstate 84 a short distance before exiting to find a cache hidden on an old railroad bridge in Summit County.  We continued on this same winding old rural highway to find another one on a graveled trail next to a reservoir. 

We had even more trouble with Wasatch County.  We turned south on Interstate 80 and then Highway 40 exiting to Highway 32 where we made a short ride up to Jordanelle Reservoir and State Park.  We did get off to a good start in this county because we found the first one overlooking the beautiful reservoir.  We turned back down the hill and got back on Highway 40 heading south taking the southwest fork on Highway 189 which borders the eastern edge on Deer Creek Reservoir and State Park.  In retrospect we spent way too much time stopping and looking unsuccessfully for three caches along this stretch.  I’m pretty sure they were missing.  Realizing the time we had wasted we decided we had better cut our losses and settle for just one cache in Wasatch County.  

After leaving Deer Creek Reservoir and State Park we began a beautiful curvy hilly ride continuing west on 189.  It’s too bad we didn’t have a helmet cam on this trip because we just didn’t have time to stop to take pictures of all the fantastic country we saw.  In the bottom of a canyon we turned off onto another twisty uphill road to get our first Utah County cache.  It was a difficult place to park our bikes because there was no shoulder and it was gravel and not level just off the road.  Nevertheless, we managed to park and found the cache after a short hike through high weeds. We shortly picked up another cache and called it good for that county. 

We skirted the north end of Utah Lake on the Interstate and Highway 145 before continuing west on Highway 73.  Now we were in desert country and it was hot.  At our next cache I told Yancey it was almost in the middle.  He didn’t bite so I guess he knew I meant the middle of nowhere.  We stopped at another cache just west of the middle and in spite of having no shade we sat on someone’s 4-wheeler trailer and had a bite to eat.  These caches were in Tooele County and reminded me a lot of Nevada.  Juab County just south was much of the same.  We stopped at a Rest Stop with no shade but two caches.  As I was bending over to get one located on a bush next to a barb wire fence I heard a rip and it was the skin on the top of my bald head. Luckily I had some band aids along.  This motocaching is a dangerous game.

 

We soon passed into Millard County which was much the same and tried to find a micro sized cache with no hint and scored another DNF.  The next cache was classified as a “small” but the description said it was a “micro” but with no hint.  We had to hike a ways across high dead grass and some railroad tracks and I was about to give up when Yancey found it in a sage bush.

We were on Highway 6 and at Lynndyl we turned east on Highway 132 toward Nephi.  We stopped at Leamington and found a cache at a tiny post office.  We stopped for gas at Nephi and noticed a thunderstorm approaching. [Speaking of gas – my Triumph Street Triple R (675cc) got better than 51 mpg for the trip and Yancey’s Suzuki SV650S (650 cc) got 2 or 3 mpg better than that.  The elevated and thinned Utah air improved my mileage 2 or 3 mpg.]  At Nephi we continued south toward Ephraim and Yancey grabbed a quick one in a sprinkler pipe almost before I got off my bike.  I think we may have gotten a drop or two of rain but that was all. 

We stayed at the Iron Horse Motel in Ephraim which appeared to be the only one in town although Yancey thought he saw another one.  I soon because fast friends with Leonard, the 89 year old gentleman who helped us get settled.  He was tuning an old Ford truck and we established an instant rapport.  Leonard located a fridge for us and we were set.  The Iron Horse didn’t look like much but I thought it was nice enough.

There was a Super Walmart across the road from the motel and after dinner we strolled over and got a few supplies.  No one seemed to know the population of Ephraim but research shows 6,000 which seems hardly believable.  However, Snow College with an enrollment of 3,000 is located there.  We also walked a short distance down the road and picked up our last cache of the day.  (To be continued)  M/W