Real Man and a Smug Coyote - Antelope Island State Park, UT

Smug Coyote - Antelope Island State Park, UT

I’m a real man.  Not to be confused with a manly man.  My wife once suggested I watch ESPN so I could talk to manly men.  What I mean when I say “real” man is that I like real things.  I want my animals in nature, not in a zoo. I want to climb a mountain, not the stairs attached to fake mountain in middle of an amusement park.  While we’re talking about amusement parks, I should let you know that I fear the happiest place on Earth.  My neck tightens up and I get agitated at the mention of Disneyland.  I want to stay as far away as possible from the asphalt desolation and the Mad Max style battle for parking supremacy, where urban assault vehicles reign and the Mini Cooper is a myth. Let me ask you this, once you are actually in the park do you really go from ride to ride, or do you go from line to line.  Which activity do you actually spend more time doing?  Oh, the horror.

There is something innate in many of us that finds pleasure in these synthetic experiences.  From a young age we would rather eat strawberry flavored gummy bears, rather than actual strawberries, or watch a movie about surfing rather than going to the ocean. In many cases it just gets worse as we get older.

Growing up in rural Colorado, I spent a lot of time running, camping, exploring, and, if I was lucky, canoodling in the high desert canyons and sandstone peaks surrounding my hometown.  Now I just hope that a moose will wander next to the road so I can take its picture and call myself Ansel Adams. 

I recently took a trip to Antelope Island State Park.  The largest of the Great Salt Lake’s Islands, at 42 square miles, Antelope Island is surrounded by salt water and covered in mountain peaks.  In 1845, John Fremont and Kit Carson were the first anglo explorers to step foot on the island, and provided the island’s name after hunting pronghorns (a.k.a., antelope) during their time there. Fielding Garr first settled the island in 1848. The state of Utah acquired the islands in several different acquisitions, culminating in the final acquisition in 1981.  The island came with its own heard of bison, an import to the island in 1893, as well as birds, deer, coyotes, bighorn sheep, all manors of small furry critters, and of course antelope. The island offers miles of trails for the weekend warrior, but it also provides easily accessible wildlife for the drive and point crowd.

During our trip to the island, my son and I drove the islands perimeter road and got up close and personal with variety of animals, including a massive heard of bison.  But the encounter was not earned.  Rather, I waited in a line of cars with other people that want nature to be like a TV show or an amusement park.

The bison made their way through the field, faces nose deep in the snow, looking for something to much on.  There slow trudge through the frozen tundra seemingly indifferent to their surroundings.  Meanwhile, people were taking selfies outside their idling cars and kids screamed about being bored.  All I needed was a turkey leg or a funnel cake to complete the experience of a wildlife amusement park.

After we finished waiting for our turn to photograph the bison, we drove a little further down the road and once again found ourselves in a line of cars waiting for some mystery animal to appear.  I was surprised to see that the 12-car lineup was for a coyote that walked nonchalantly along the shoulder of the road. The coyote was tailed by several people with expensive cameras with lenses longer than their arm.  This was no Wiley Coyote; this coyote didn’t give a shit about the rural paparazzi.  This point was driven home when he literally stopped 10 feet from my car to drop a deuce, while the clicking of shutters filled the chilly winter air.  The camo wearing class in my hometown would laugh their asses off if they had seen these people chasing the coyote like some elusive creature never before caught on film.  Hunting coyotes was the closest thing to a universal pass time in northwestern Colorado.  They bought specific guns and calls just for going into the dessert to hunt these clever creatures.  This coyote new that no one was going to take a shot at him, and might as well have been a trained animal at a petting zoo.

If you want to see animals up close without bars between you and them, you should take a ride around Antelope Island.  The island is truly beautiful and when drive on the causeway across the salty waters and stand at the shoreline you can feel like you have traveled to another land, or at least left Utah.  But as I drove through the park, and thought about a lot of my recent trips, I’ve come to the conclusion that nature really doesn’t start where the asphalt ends.  Nature starts where civilization ends.  And civilization ends when you can’t see your car or hear other people.  It ends when your cellphone has no bars and animals treat you like a predator or like prey.  We all have to start somewhere, and going for a ride in a state park, national forest, or national park is better than watching the Revenant on your couch.  You all know from reading my previous posts that I have been a clean boot road warrior, a habit that has formed for a variety of reasons, including having a young child and carrying around an extra 50 pounds.  This year I have a goal that 2016 will be a year of change.  This year I will stop flirting with nature on the edge of the road.  This is the year that I look for animals in their own lands.  This is the year I search for silence.  This the year I climb the mountain, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.  Here is to a year of adventure, getting out of the car, howling at the moon, and running naked through the woods and I hope to see you out there (though hopefully fully clothed).

Ax Wielding Maniacs - Ouray Ice Festival, CO

Ax Wielding Maniacs – Ouray Ice Festival, CO

Ouray, Colorado is one of those great little mountain towns that’s a little bit now and a little bit 1890s.  Surrounded by a staggering wall of mountains that create a sense of separation from civilization, the town is a small oasis in an ever-urbanizing world. I’ve always been drawn to this town for its setting, historical charm, and its interesting residents.  I have on occasion sat in my suburban cookie cutter house and thought about the life I should be living in Ouray, though I realize these thoughts are like someone fetishizing over a supermodel, my fiction may be better than the reality.

Over the years, I have read about the Ouray Ice Festival, a mid-January event held in a box canyon at the north end of the Uncompahgre Gorge, just outside of the town of Ouray.  In the 1990s, Bill Whitt and Gary Wild began using hoses and piping to farm ice by cascading water down the sheer canyon walls to create an ice climbing wonderland for a burgeoning ice climbing movement.  The ice festival draws thousands of people each year to participate in the ice climbing events, climb for fun, or just watch the ax wielding maniacs take their lives into their own hands.  I am definitely in the later category.

I find the idea of adventure sports fascinating.  When Ouray was founded in the late 19th century, people risked their lives to trek across the mountains, ford white-water rapids, and pad across ice covered lakes and streams, just to gather the food or get the things they needed to merely survive.  I’m sure that our pioneering relatives and predecessors imagined a day when people could get unspoiled food from one central location, stay inside to take a leak, or have bridges across rivers.  And yet, in a day and age when we can tell the woman (or English accented man) in our phone to order a pizza that someone will deliver in an electric car, more and more people are taking up sports that actually lower their predicted life span.  And yet, as I write this, the hypocrisy of my wonderment is that my high stress, sit behind a computer, eat late at night job, is doing the same thing.

So I say to you squirrel suit flying, water filled cave diving, rock arch swinging, ice wall climbing crazy people, who are you?  What are you chasing, or running from?  How do you live in the monotony of modernity when you regularly face your own mortality?   And most importantly, will you take me with you?  My Rock Climbing Zen magazine classified ad would read: “Pasty white, nearsighted, middle aged man with an aggrandized sense of his own wit, seeks thrill seeking, wild person with delusions of invincibility to teach them how to just let go (though to be clear not let go of anything that would cause me to fall to my death).”

The Ouray Ice Festival is a magnet for the worlds thrill seekers, and in my case contact thrill seekers.  On my first day at the festival, the climbing event seemed a practice in masochism.  Contestants had 12 minutes to climb a slab of ice, then a rock precipice, and finally, because nature isn’t challenging enough, a man made box covered with an assortment of seemingly random things someone found in someone’s closet.  Because I’m terrible with judging distance, I will say that the total climb was some where between 30 feet and 1,000 feet, though it was probably closer to 30. I went through the same progression of excitement for each contestant.  The person would start their climb and for the first few minutes, I would think that maybe this was a dumb idea to drive 7 hours to watch something so boring.  Then the climber would hit the rock portion of the climb and the human drama would begin.  As the climber sprang, dangled, and lurched from point to point I started to lean and wonder what their next move will be.  Then as exhaustion began to grind on the contestant and they started to slow and stretch limbs that were pushed over the red line of exertion, I would say their name.  Quietly at first, but louder as their time ticked away. At this point it didn’t matter who they were or where the were from.  This was a solitary human drama playing out for a crowd of people in over priced outdoor gear, and in that moment Emily, Chris, Alejandro, or whoever was climbing, was my hero for doing what I knew I couldn’t.  Inevitably they all fell, or at least the ones I watched, gravity pulled and flesh failed and my hero, my maniac with an ax separated from the canyon wall and we all made a collective gasp as nature once again came out on top.  And then the rope caught and our proxy of human strength and endurance descended to the ground.  Their name, like so many great men and women of history, quickly faded from my mind, as the next thrill seeker began their ascent, and I again wondered why I drove all that way to see this, and so the cycle of drama went for several hours.

For me, the highlight of the festival was not the competition, rather it was the people climbing for the joy, or challenge, or thrill, or who the hell knows why. The competition took place lower in the canyon.  As one moved deeper into the Uncompahgre Gorge, away from Ouray and the competition, the canyon became deeper and the ice became thicker.  The scale of the climbing became inconceivable to my numbed city brain.  Below me, in the iced over gateway to a frozen-over hell, the men and women that took on the massive sheets of ice were only noticeable, because of their bright blue, orange, yellow, and green gear.  I came closest to understanding why they do it when the sun broke through the overcast sky and threaded the needle of the crevices opening to illuminate the ice.  I have heard that the Eskimos have 1,000 words for snow, describing it in all of its conditions.  What I saw in the canyon also required 1,000 words to describe.  With the extra light I could see brown ice, white ice, and brilliant blue ice.  It was rock hard, brittle, and slushy.  The surface was flat, rippled, mounded, and jagged.  It broke into powder, bits, chunks, and Volkswagens.  It was beautiful, it was harsh, and it was an amazing thing to behold.

When the sun fell behind the peaks, the wind picked up, and the temperature dropped, my family made it clear that it was time to go.  As we walked back to Ouray, I had my own moment of delusion when I said to my brother that I thought I could go ice climbing.  My brother, as is his right as my brother, promptly reminded me that I was to chicken to jump the 20 feet from a bridge near our childhood home into liquid water, so he had some doubts about me climbing up 60 feet high on frozen water.  He’s probably right, and while in my heart I feel like I could do it, the truth is that for the foreseeable future the only ice I will be testing my will against will be the icicle I knock of the eve of my house or the cubes in my gin.

 What: Ouray Ice Park – Ouray, Colorado

Where: Ouray is located on US Highway 550, 70 miles north of Durango and 98 miles south of Grand Junction.

Website: www.ourayicepark.com

Recommendation: Get the Mouse’s Famous Scrap Cookie at Mouse’s Chocolates and Coffee (520 Main St.) in Ouray, Colorado.

What We Left Behind - Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, UT

What We Left Behind – Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, UT

My son used to cry when he saw me first thing in the morning.  I like to believe that his tears were simply a reaction based on the fact that I am the one that takes him to daycare.  On the other hand, sometimes his actions make me wonder if there is something deeper going on.  For example, he once took a wooden sword I have in my office, snuck up behind me while I worked on the computer, and with the power of a three-year old Conan tried to split my skull.  Yes, I have a wooden sword, but that isn’t the point.  The point is that I have one child.  I have put all my eggs in one basket, and one day he will pick my nursing home.

Tears and acts of violence aside, we can have a good time.  One of my favorite father-son activities is road tripping to new and interesting places.  Living in the Mountain West provides a lot of opportunities for photography, hiking, or any manor of outdoor activities within an hour’s drive, and when needed also provides the opportunity for some relief by legally restraining a hyperactive child in a car seat.   On a recent and memorable trip, we went to the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area.    Farmington Bay is located on the Great Salt Lake about 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City.  The Waterfowl Management Area is a largely flat stretch of wetlands and water divided up by manmade dikes and diversions, and peppered with birdhouses and roosts.  The primary draw is the wide variety of birds one can see while driving down the road.  Over the years, I have seen pheasants, owls, bald eagles, kestrels, hawks, ducks, and cranes. 

The first time I went to Farmington Bay unrealistic expectations were established.  The road was literally filled with birds asking to get their photos taken.  There was a huge golden-eyed eagle finishing off a rodent in the middle of the road’s hard packed snow.  A barn owl sat a foot off the road and was posing for me like I worked for National Geographic, and another owl was literally perched and resting on a sign that read “Bird Rest Area.”  Each subsequent trip has been a slight let down, in that I have to actually get out of the car to get a good photo.  The most recent trip provided ample opportunities to take pictures of all manor of water birds.  Tall cranes stood like sentinels on the frozen grey water of the Great Salt Lake.  You could hear the whoop, whoop, whoop of their wings from yards away anytime one of them took to the air.  Little black ducks darted around everywhere ice gave way to open water.  But let’s face it; getting photos of these birds is like getting a kiss from you mom. (I heard this phrase “like getting a kiss from your mom” in reference to something that was easily accomplished, but I always feel weird when I use it, because it could mean so many different things.)  We want photos of the predator, razor beaked killers in the sky, circling the killing plane or finishing off its prey.  And on this day, those birds were not feeling photogenic, that is with the exception of a lone kestrel. 

For those of you that don’t know, a kestrel is in the falcon family.  It’s a smaller bird of prey that is brown and white with a spotted breast.  This particular kestrel came with all the prerequisite tools of a bird of prey: hooked beak, sharp talons, bright yellow eyes.  The only problem was, when it puffed up to ward of the cold, I would dare to say it was cute.  Almost like a stuffed animal.  The other problem is that the bird was a tease.  I first spotted it on a metal post sticking out of the snow.  It was just close enough for me to know I wanted a photo of it, but just far enough that my camera couldn’t zoom in for a great photo.  So I hopped out of my car, rumbled, bumbled, stumbled through knee high snow, and just as I was about to take the photo, the bird flitted into the air and flew fifty yards down the road and landed on another post.  So I jump back in the car, made sure my son was ok, and drove down the road fifty yards and life repeated itself.  Bird close enough to see, to far for a photo. Rumble, bumble, stumble through the snow, and whoosh, whoosh, whoosh the bird flies down the road.  I am not above swearing, and I am pretty good at it. There in the snow, with wet jeans, and camera gear in tow, my swearing was inspired.  I repeated this exercise no less than three more times.  Stop car, walk through snow, swear, walk back to car, ask son if ok.  On literally the sixth time trying to photograph the cutest killer on the bay my luck took a turn for the worse.  

I’ve heard over and over again that parenting isn’t friendship.  I understand what that means, but at the same time I want my son to be my little buddy, future therapy sessions be damned. In my effort to bribe my way to my son’s adoration, I let him get away with things on our father-son trips that would not fly if his mother were around.  We eat a little more junk food, listen to the music a little louder, and, when traveling at bird watching speed, I let him sit in the front seat.  My son is my co-pilot.  Look, other than having a different taste in music, he likes Pitbull and like the melodic musings of Terry Gross (I know not really music), its fun having him up front with me.  He has even taken to grabbing my phone and using it to take pictures with me.  I realize I just keep digging myself into a parenting hole with some of you that are reading this, but seriously those of us born before the 1990s were in constant sanctioned danger, and turned out just fine, or at least fine-ish.  Remember the old days when kids sat on parent’s laps or in truck beds.  I’m not condoning this behavior; my son wears a seatbelt. I’m just saying four-year olds used to fix machines, because it was too dangerous for adults, and now we are to scared to let them spend the night at their friends’ houses.

So there I was, 20 feet from the only bird I had seen that day that was worth photographing.  I was cold, wet, and about to finally achieve my objective.  I brought my camera to my face, adjusted the focus and my son, my adventure co-pilot,  blurted one of his colorful phrases, “Dad, I have to poop it.” I turned to see my son jump out of the car into the freezing snow with no jacket, hat, or gloves.  I quickly rationalized that kids used to fix machines too dangerous for adults, so he would be ok, and turned to get my photo, but only found a metal pole. 

My query once again having taken to wing, I trudged back to the car to help my son “poop it.”  Luckily he refers to all forms of bathroom activities as “poop it,” so I felt pretty confident that he was just going to turn this lemon of timing into lemonade colored snow.  My son has only recently taken to peeing outdoors, and it has gone from novelty to adventure for him.  When I got to the car he was already assuming the position at the ditch by the rear of the car.  When I got to him he was already making abstract art in the snow.  He finished up what seemed like a relatively efficient operation and I went to help him get his jeans back up he started shaking his head.  As I looked him in the face, I could only imagine that his look of concern was merely a reflection of the look of fear that I must have been giving him when I realized what was about to happen.  My son let nature take its course without bending or squatting. The combination of smooth muscle movement and gravity created a scatological nightmare before my eyes.  My son, his cloths, and the pure driven snow were all sullied in one ugly moment.

Here’s the thing, I panic and create bizarre narratives to support my panic.  As my son stood half naked in the freezing air, I bounced from foot to foot trying to figure out how to clean the mess and get my son in the car, without bringing biohazard material with him.  My panic wasn’t necessary.  Crap happens, but in the distance I could see a car approaching slowly, so I created this narrative where the car will reach us and they will see my half naked child standing in the freezing cold and they will, what, judge me.  I don’t know, but at the time it seemed serious.  So I ransacked my car looking for something to clean my child up with.  As a good parent, I had a big package of baby wipes in the car.  As a bad parent, I left them in the car over night and they had become a brick of ice.  In the end, I found a partially used brown napkin, a lone sock, and a paper bag.  Like a parenting MacGyver I used these items to quickly clean off and strip naked my child in the frozen tundra of Farmington Bay.  By the time the car reached us, I had put the dirty clothes on a plastic sled in the back of my car and my half naked son in his car seat, which he found to be novel.  My one regret in the whole situation is what I, or rather my son, left behind.

In what felt like karmic balance, as we left the wildlife refuge I came across the kestrel, once again sitting on a pole.  This time the bird was only a few feet from the road and, in an act of mercy for what he had probably just witnessed, sat scanning the frozen plain letting me take all the pictures I wanted. 

In the end I think we had a good time.  I just wish my son will remember our time at Farmington Bay, because someday, hopefully decades from now, I may be the one that has to “poop it” on the side of the road.

Event Photos: http://www.peakedinterestmedia.com/photos/

Where: Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area - Open year round 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. seven days a week at the main entrance south and west of Farmington at 1325 W. Glover Lane (925 S.).

Website: http://wildlife.utah.gov/habitat/farmington_bay.php

Getting Steamy - Golden Spike National Historic Site, UT

I recently found myself standing in the biting cold in the middle of nowhere; waiting for a train I had no intention of riding. I had risen early and drove far to watch the replica of a train that was used in 1869 drive a half-mile and blow steam.  Dry air sapped the moisture from my lips and I wondered how cold it had to get for my eyeballs to freeze, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the puffs of steam in the distance.

Every year the Golden Spike National Historic Site holds the Steam Festival.  The Golden Spike National Historic Site is located where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met and completed the transcontinental railroad in 1869.  Calling the event the Steam Festival is a bit of misnomer, because while the event is big on steam, it is sparse on festivities.   Even without festivities, the event is totally worth it.

I am the classic man-child.  I have a professional job and provide for my family, but come the weekend my inner child slips the bonds of responsibility and makes a direct line for comic movies, model rockets, Legos, and trains.  Look, I fully own each of my guilty pleasures, and they each have their own allure, but I’m not sure what it is about trains that pulls me in.  Before the holidays, I bought a small model of the Durango & Silverton locomotive and cars.  I put the track together on a table in my basement and just watched the little black engine go in circles for longer than I’m proud to say.  I’m not sure if it is the mesmerizing sound of the train clickety-clacking around the rails, the feeling of certainty in an uncertain world that comes with a defined track, or just the beauty of design and engineering that goes into a locomotive, but I am drawn to trains like a jock to balls.

This brings me to standing in the frigid winter wind, blowing my own steam, and scanning the snow covered desolation for the first glimpse of the Union Pacific train named Jupiter.  As the assigned hour of the train’s arrival approached, a crowd actually formed around the tracks.  As the train began its approach the park rangers had to remind the crowd that was angling, straining, and jockeying for position that the train would squish you if you were actually on the tracks or scald you with steam if you stood to close.  Aren’t trains awesome?

This year the star of the Steam Festival was the replica of the Union Pacific wood burning locomotive, Jupiter.  The train is, for lack of a better adjective, beautiful.  The locomotive’s mat black boiler is accented with shiny brass piping and rides on bright red wheels. At its back sits the red and blue cab in which a very happy engineer stands pulling levers and turning knobs. I knew true jealousy as I watched this master of 19th century technology waive to the crowd in his period appropriate engineer costume.  In the crisp cold morning air the steam billowed from the front of the ornate train in large white clouds of superheated water vapor that seemed to constantly envelope the slow moving train as it passed through the crowd. I happily snapped photos as the train made a couple of ceremonial passes through the on lookers. It eventually stopped and ladders were erected so the crowd of cold weather masochists and train enthusiast could get up close and personal with Jupiter.

After the initial crowd finally succumbed to the weather, I took full advantage of the opportunity to climb onto the train and into the cab.  In an age where simple design is often touted as good design, the complexity of craftsman wrought levers, knobs, gages, doors, and pipes that filled the cab are a sight to be seen.  Every day I work with technology that is more advanced than what used to put man on the moon, but I couldn’t even begin to figure out how to actually make the engine go, which would have been important if I was to fulfill my fantasy of the greatest train heist of all time.

Eventually, I had to relinquish my place in the cab to a small group of millennials that felt that paying the entrance fee gave them the right to stand in the cab, too.  I knew it was time to go, I had taken photos from every imaginable angle and exhaustively interrogated the engineer with questions like, “how much wood does it take to fuel the train?” (30 miles per cord) and “How did you get this job?” (I’m not going to tell you what he said, because I don’t want competition.).  To commemorate my first Steam Festival I considered getting a plastic replica of the golden spike that was used to mark the unification of the railroads or the book “Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad.”  I went with the book. I always go with the book.

Anyone finding himself or herself in Northern Utah in late December should consider making the pilgrimage to Promontory Summit.  You get a little bit of history and can feed the inner child.  Also, if you do go, I’m told the colder the better.  So here's hoping for subzero next year. 

Event Photos: http://www.peakedinterestmedia.com/photos/ 

Where: Golden Spike National Historic Site ($5 Fee Per Car In Winter)

Directions: Northbound on I-15 from Salt Lake City – Take Exit #365, turn west on Highway 13 to Highway 83.  Follow signs to Golden Spike.

Website: http://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

Book: Empire Express – Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, David Haward Bain

Ghost of Blacksmith Fork Canyon - Blacksmith Fork Canyon, UT

Highway 101 through Blacksmith Fork Canyon, from Hyrum to the Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area is one my favorite roads for an afternoon “hey, let go for ride,” because it is like a natural exhibit of the animals of northern Utah.  For fifteen miles, especially in the winter, you are likely to get up close and personal with moose, deer, elk, eagles, and fox.

On my last ride, the snow covered mountain slopes provided me with new and unique experiences that literally had me squealing and pointing like a child.  It also caused a couple of moments of white knuckled panic.  I should explain that I am a deer magnet.  In my youth I officially hit two deer, although I contend that one of them hit me.  As a deer magnet, I couldn’t help but be a little nervous as literally hundreds of deer in dozens of groups ran across, along, or in the road.  For reasons I don’t know, the deer where primarily smaller, one- and two-year olds.  The small male deer, sporting thin toothpick antlers, seemed to strut among the does like teenagers at the mall.  Their daring sprints across the road could have been the result of “hey, Bambi, I dare you to play chicken with that car.”

It was among these juvenile delinquents that I lost all respect from the passengers in my car.  I rounded a turn and saw what looked like a deer that had been rolling around in the snow, but as we got closer it turned out to be an all white albino (admittedly, some in the car thought it was merely a blond deer).  I couldn’t help but start pointing and squawking, “Albino.  It’s an albino.  Albino deer,” and all other combinations of albino, deer, and the English language.   The deer, by itself, and seemingly shunned by the group of brown does gathered only fifty yards away, just stared at us, possibly thinking, “Look at that pasty white human pointing and squealing.”  With the frantic action of a madman, I slammed the car into park, yelled for my wife to “give me the camera” and jumped out of the car to capture “The Ghost of Blacksmith Canyon,” the slightly dramatic name I gave the deer.  Despite my gymnastics, and much to my disappointment, the waning light of a late winter evening resulted in photos that have a sort of blurry bigfoot quality to them, much to my disappointment.

The next moment of surprise came about two-thirds of the way through the canyon.  One of my passengers noticed big dark shapes in the branches of several trees.  I got out of the car and realized that the dark balls of feathers were actually wild turkeys.  Somewhere between 50 and 75 full-grown turkeys had flown into the trees to roost, often four or five sat on the same branch.  Below the trees, turkey runways crisscrossed the snow, where the large birds had had lumbered to-takeoff speed, their large wings making a line of snow angels in the otherwise undisturbed powder. After taking several photos of motionless birds in leafless trees, I was treated to a production of the turkey world’s Three Stooges.   I watched as a turkey gracelessly flew from one branch, to another with two turkeys on it. As it landed, the branch broke sending the three turkeys in mass of feathers tumbling towards the ground.  Somehow they all seemed to get their wings going and slowed their fall before hitting the snow, but I could almost hear one of the turkeys saying “Curly, why I oughta ….”

The bookend to a drive in Blacksmith Fork Canyon is the Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area.  Just over a rise in the road and past the ranch’s working farm is a sprawling snow covered valley floor that is the winter hangout for hundreds of elk.  Every year the ranch feeds 500-600 elk 300 tons of hay.  In exchange for full bellies, the elk allow the public to ride among them in a large horse drawn wagon. If you can take a little cold, the wagon ride is a unique and worthwhile experience.  The wagon makes a large loop through the lounging elk herd, getting you with in touching distance of cow and bull elk.  When I say bull elk, I mean some of the biggest and baddest in northern Utah, complete with the largest spear tipped antlers that the casual outdoorsperson may ever see.  On my last trip to the ranch I missed the last wagon ride of the day, largely because of the time I spent with the albino deer (seriously, an albino deer) and roosting turkey, but as the last rays of sun reached through the mountain peaks, I simply enjoyed watching the elk through my binoculars.  And yes, I was looking for an albino elk.  

On a side note, I was once asked by a visitor from another country, “When do the deer turn into elk?”  While I understood how someone that has never been around deer or elk, may think that elk simply look like bigger, darker, shaggier deer, I want to assure everyone that read this post that the deer and elk are two different types of animals.

Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area: http://wildlife.utah.gov/hardwareranch/