Desert Boy Rides a Horse in the Kitchen

This morning I was in the kitchen eating breakfast when Desert Boy came trotting in on his horse. I couldn't help myself, I totally cracked up. The little stuffed horse is tiny in comparison to him, but still he thought up the idea all on his own and had a lot of fun riding his horse.

He even had some good horse riding noises and made the horse go in all different directions.

After a bit of riding nicely, he decided it was time to get adventurous.

His California cousins do vaulting, gymnastics on horseback, so maybe he was inspired by them as he started doing some interesting moves.

How low can you go?

Golly, I wish I was so flexible!

But alas, even a toy horse can buck, and Desert Boy ends up flat on his back on the ground. 

Desert Destination: Lexington Arch

Every Monday we visit a desert destination.

This past weekend, I decided to take a trip to Lexington Arch in Great Basin National Park. It's located in a remote canyon and doesn't get many visitors. But it should get more. Most arches are found in sandstone, but this 75-foot tall arch is in limestone, making it a little different. 

It's a twelve mile drive on a gravel road from the highway to get to the parking lot at the start of the hike. We didn't see any other vehicles on the gravel road.

Once we got there, it was time to get out the backpack. Desert Boy was very excited to go on a hike. So was Henry. Although dogs aren't usually allowed on trails in national parks, most of this trail is on Bureau of Land Management land, and so the park has made an exception and allows leashed dogs to also go on the last little bit of trail that is on national park land.

The first sign at the trailhead says the arch is 1.5 miles away, but the next sign and the pamphlet from the visitor center say it's 1.7 miles. One other thing that might be helpful to know is that the hike starts about 7,400 feet (2,270 m) and the arch is about 8,400 feet (2,570 m), so there's a 1,000 foot (300 m) elevation gain. The oxygen can be a little thin if you're coming from a lower elevation.

The trail starts out through a pinyon pine and juniper woodland, and then switchbacks up a sagebrush-covered hillside. It seems like the switchbacks will never end, but finally the trail heads into a Douglas-fir and white fir forest. 

The trail heads out to an overlook where you can get a good view of the arch. A bench is provided so you can take a rest and watch the birds. I watch birds a lot when I want to catch my breath. On this particular day, we heard and saw some raucous Clark's Nutcrackers flying about, looking for seeds to put into their caches for the winter.

One hypothesis of the formation of Lexington Arch is that it used to be part of a cave system, and the rest of the cave collapsed, leaving just this arch. If that's what happened, I sure would have loved to have seen the rest of the cave, because the arch opening is humongous! Nearly all the caves around this area are rather small and involve crawling.

Following the overlook, the trail descends to cross this wash via the bridge. Do you see the snow on the bridge? Yep, it was a little chilly, but that made it easier to hike than on a hot summer day. Water flows in the wash generally only during flash floods or fast snow melt on high snow pack years. Some people think that Lexington Arch should be called Lexington Bridge. A natural bridge is formed by running water eroding away the weaker stone, whereas an arch is formed by the processes of weathering, like freezing, wind, and erosion. Perhaps this creek used to flow through Lexington Arch/Bridge, but later the channel changed and now it goes on the side.

A few more switchbacks up a steep, rocky section, and then we're under the arch! Desert Boy was glad to get out of the backpack and have a snack. The view is spectacular, looking down the canyon and out into the valley.

The arch seems even bigger when you're under it. 

Here's another view of the arch, this time from below it. Old maps show a trail that follows the gully from the trailhead to the arch. I've taken it before, and much of the old trail is obliterated, making the hike a bushwhack with lots of rose bushes, downed trees, and rock hopping. So although it might be shorter on the map, in real life it really isn't a shortcut.

The hike makes a great half-day destination. No water is available here (unless you get lucky and experience a flash flood), so bring all you need. And sometimes no one comes here for a few days at a time, so it wouldn't hurt to tell someone where you're headed just in case you have vehicle trouble. It's great to be able to go visit something so huge and beautiful and not worry about it being overcrowded!

Sunday Fun: Animal Noises

Desert Boy has been working on his animal noise repertoire. He cooperated for a little film shoot this morning so you can join in on the fun. 

Sheep Camp

November is the month when sheep usually come into our valley for winter grazing. In the old days, it was a rush to bring sheep from more populated areas along the Wasatch Front in Utah out to our isolated valley. There would be one or two sheepherders for each 2,000 sheep. A sheepherder would live out of his wagon, going to a rural store every few weeks to get supplies. Otherwise, it was him, the sheep, his horse, and his dogs. A pretty solitary life.

Today it's still a fairly solitary life for sheepherders. Not many people want to do it, and sheep operators often have to recruit men from other countries to be sheep herders. We see quite a few Peruvians come to this area, spending a year or two watching sheep before they go back to see their families.

Our ranch doesn't raise sheep anymore and hasn't for quite awhile, but we still have this old sheep wagon. The other day I decided to take a peek at it to try to get some insight into what it was like being a sheep herder.

The interior is sort of like an ultra-mini-RV. There's a bed, folding tables, and built in seats with storage space underneath.

One big difference from today's RVs is the presence of this coal/wood burning stove. Because sheep herders are out in these wagons on the desert valleys in the winter, it can get really cold. Sometimes they even get trapped by blizzards for days at a time.

Here's a wider view of the "kitchen/living area" of the sheep wagon. A sheep herder really doesn't have room for a lot of extra stuff.

There are some compartments on the outside of the sheep wagon, like this one for coal. There's a big one under the bed for spare tires, fuel, and other equipment. Often a separate wagon is left next to the sheep wagon carrying hay for the horse.

The wagons are simply built. A back window is a bit of a luxury. There are no shocks on the chassis, so everything has to be well secured before moving the wagon to a new location. Nowadays, the wagon is moved every week or two as the sheep continue moving to graze available forage.

The wagon above is obviously old, and you're probably wondering if sheep herders still live so primitively.

The answer is no. This is a newer sheep wagon. It still has small windows, a small shape, lots of storage compartments, and a wood burning stove. But it also has solar panels. 

A Desert Dump

While I was out walking this morning, some brown objects amongst the desert vegetation caught my attention. A small wash had some old, rusty tin cans in it. I decided to take a closer look, and started walking up the wash. 

Dumps in the desert are fairly common, especially because early miners rarely took any garbage with them. They didn't have Uhauls back then; they often were lucky to have a good wagon. Many miners only took what they could carry on their back from one mining town to the next. Once in awhile they left something interesting behind.

Some bright blue glass was a nice bit of color contrasting with the other trash. Often people go out and scour the desert looking for these trash piles, because an intact bottle might be worth a dollar or two if it's old enough.

Some of the old debris is a bit confounding. Why is this metal bucket filled with concrete? Washes can be good places to find the old trash because it gets washed down them, and it was also easier for people to throw things downhill or dump a wagon into the gully.

I walked long enough to find the motherlode, a huge pile of old tin cans. I happened to be on National Park Service land, and the park archeologist has trained the staff not to pick up old cans like this. Even though it might look like trash to most of us, because it is over 50 years old, it is considered historic, and is thus protected. If the old tin cans are taken to the archeologist, she loses information about where they came from. She also has to catalogue them and put them in the museum. The museum is a locked room where no one gets to see them, so they don't do much good there. She likes to tell the story of a Boy Scout troop who thought they were doing a good deed and brought her three or four trash bags full of old tin cans. She had to process each one, plus they made the historic district they were taken from lose some of its flavor.

When I look at these trash piles, I can only wonder what people are going to think about our trash someday.