2018 Ely Air Races

The Inaugural Ely Air Races were held in June 2018. I didn't want to miss an historic event, so we went. I had never been to air races before, so I didn't know what to expect. And since I wasn't sure that we would like them, I wasn't too keen on paying the $50 family fee and $15 parking fee (which they ended up not charging), so I signed us up as volunteers. The organizers said they needed lots of volunteers, so we were happy to help out.

 We signed up to help pick up trash on Saturday morning from 8 am to 10 am. I figured an early morning shift would be cooler, plus then we'd have the rest of the day to observe. 

When we got there, the tethered hot air balloons were still up in the air. They had started at 5 am the last three mornings. Folks could pay a fee and go up in the hot air balloons.


This is something I still haven't tried and would like to someday.

Hot air balloons do best early in the morning with a big temperature difference and slight winds, so a little after 8 am, it was time to deflate them.

It was interesting watching the process of getting all the air out of a big balloon.

Here are the stickers on the bottom of the basket.

Then the balloon is strapped in place and put away.

Soon after we watched this old Russian (or Chinese) trainer aircraft arrive. (I didn't remember the details, but Desert Boy remembered more than me.)

The National Anthem was sung.

And it was time to look at planes! Desert Boy went for a closer look.

So did Desert Girl.

Then the planes for the first race were towed to the starting line.

And they were off!

I don't know how they decided who was taking off first.

It was fun seeing the different colors of planes.

The planes flew around a circuit, so it was sort of like a race track in the air.

It was a little noisy, but not overwhelming.

It was really fun when a plane chased another one.

 How fast can you go? These races were touted as the highest elevation air races in the world.

The crowd kept increasing on the Saturday morning. There really wasn't much litter to pick up, so we could watch quite a bit of the races. It was about half an hour in between races.

Time to fly again!

The yellow plane is ahead...

...but not for long!

Now the white one is trying to pass! (Sorry, my plane knowledge isn't too extensive, so the colors were my best way of telling them apart.)

 At one point the AirMed plane took a patient to Salt Lake City. That's a fairly frequent occurrence, as Ely has a simple hospital and more complicated cases go to the big city.

A number of booths were set up. I was interested to see that Southern Utah University has a bit aviation program, with both fixed wing (plane) and helicopter programs.

Desert Boy enjoyed asking some questions at this booth.

Overall, we enjoyed our time, and we hope to attend next year. Kudos to everyone who helped put it on, it's not easy to get a new event going. Here's more info on the Ely Air Races, and an article from Air Race 1. 

Sledding at the Rock Glacier and Swimming in Brown Lake

 My friend Jenny had some visiting nieces, and I had a day I could take off work, so it was time for two moms and eight kids to head out for a hike. We've done most of the hikes in the area, so we wanted a way to get the kids excited. So we decided to go sledding at the rock glacier and swimming in Brown Lake.

That was enough to get them hiking. And then they were happily talking to each other, and the miles passed quickly.

I pointed out some SPLAT verbenone that had been applied to a limber pine. This synthetic pheromone mimics the scent that mountain pine beetles give off when they have invaded the bark of the tree and the bark is full. Basically it tells the incoming beetles to pick a different tree. This tree is being protected because seeds from it are being tested to see if they are resistant to white pine blister rust, a non-native pathogen. If they are resistant, then this tree could help start many more trees that are resistant.

We had some fun poses as we got up to the bristlecones.

I love the beautiful colors and lines of their wood.

Even the roots are amazing. And roots are often exposed because they've been there thousands of years, and the surrounding soil has eroded away.

We didn't stay in the bristlecones long, though. We continued up into Wheeler cirque to see the rock glacier.

I had to pause to admire some beautiful wildflowers. The pink ones are in the saxifrage family, white-daisy ones are Erigeron leiomerus, and the white matted ones are Phlox pulvinata.

And then we were there! On the east side of the rock glacier, we found some nice snow patches. It turned out to be slipperier than we expected. 

Which made it good for sledding! Even Jenny and I gave it a try.

We found garbage bags and backpacks were good items to slide on.

We kept at it for quite awhile.

Eventually, though, we headed back down the trail. You can see Brown Lake from the trail, but there's not a trail to it, so we had to step carefully on the moraine, which has lots of big boulders that like to move.

Eventually we got to the lake. It's obviously brown in color.  It's also not very deep. I walked all over it and found the deepest spot to about 1 meter (3 feet).

Even though it's not deep, it sure has a scenic background!

The water was quite pleasant in temperature, but the rocks in the lake were covered with algae and very slippery. We found it was better to crawl around than risk falling.

Eventually it was time to get out.

The hike back was easy, and we even managed to bring back all the kids!

Jenny was much better about posting this hike on her blog in a timely manner. Oh well, I guess better late than never!

Floating the Sevier River-Leamington Canyon Utah

One day in June, our friends Andy and Bonny asked if we'd like to go kayaking the Sevier River through Lemington Canyon with them. That had been on our bucket list and we had nothing going on that Sunday, so we said yes! Then we had to figure out what we were getting into! It turns out there isn't much information about floating/rafting/kayaking the Sevier River. We were able to find a little information, and it suggested that the river, at 385 cfs, might be a little low, since the website recommended a minimum of 500 cfs for kayaking. I checked with someone from Leamington, and he said that locals usually tube the river on Fourth of July and he thought we'd be okay, so off we went. We met our friends at the put-in, near the railroad tracks in Leamington Canyon, and stationed another vehicle in the town of Leamington.

The river started off mellow. Andy and Bonny had nice inflatable kayaks.

Meanwhile, we brought a menagerie of boats. A kids' hard-sided kayak, an inflatable kayak, a SUP, and an inner tube for just-in-case. We figured that since a highway was nearby, if we ran into trouble we could always get out and hike over to the highway.

We quickly figured out that the inner tube was very hard to steer, so we ended up dragging that along. That meant one person (usually Desert Girl) doubled up either on the paddle board or inflatable kayak.

Eventually the mellow section ended. We pulled over to shore to investigate the loud, roaring noise ahead of us.

This was the first diversion dam. It was quite impressive.

Downstream was quite rocky, beyond our family's ability, but Andy and Bonny were able to negotiate it just fine.

Here was our portage, with a couple trips for my husband and me. It wasn't too long.

Then we were back into the water, this time moving faster.

Eventually we came to another dam, this one made of boulders. Here's Bonny easily negotiating it. (Our family also portaged this one!)

Downstream was quite exciting, with lots of white water. Desert Boy loved it.

But you couldn't go too fast, as a barbed wire fence crossed the river! Andy stopped and held it up for us. This was just the first of many more (I think about eight). We never knew when they'd be coming.

Once in awhile we could see more from the river, like the Leamington Canyon cement facility.

At a third diversion dam, a rancher warned us about the upcoming barbed wire under a trestle. It turned out to be at the second trestle down, and it was easy to miss, just out of the water a couple inches.

Navigating yet another barbed wire fence. I'm not sure how the kayakers do this at higher flows--some of the places it was hard to go under or over and if the water was moving faster, you might have a hard time getting out if needed.

Can you spot this one?

The river mellowed out and had lots more big turns. Still plenty of barbed wire fences.

It took us about 6.5 hours to negotiate 10 miles of river. It was a fun trip, and I'd do it again. (My husband probably wouldn't, he found it got a bit tedious after awhile--maybe partly because Desert Girl took a two-hour nap slumped against him in the kayak!)

Here's a view from Google Earth of our route. I couldn't find all the fences on Google Earth--there are many more than shown!