Logan, Utah

November 3-4, 2007

For about a month now I have been trying to find a time to drive down to Logan to visit Jenna Forsyth, a good friend from college. In a spur-of-the-moment flurry of e-mails, we discovered that this weekend was our only chance, so I set out Saturday morning aiming to take the scenic route through Star Valley. Heading toward Jackson, I tried to capture the morning sun on the snow of the Salt River Range.

The road took me over three passes though the first two were not all that high. Here is the little Celica (going on 238,000 miles) at Salt River Pass

An oddity that might be worth checking out in the summer.

A new state for me, though I only went through a tiny corner.

I ran into construction in a canyon after the second pass (Geneva Summit, west of Geneva, ID). A short wait and a rough road, but not too bad.

"Do not run red light." Ya think?

Not what you expect to find on a federal highway (#89) in November.

Bear Lake, on the border of Idaho and Utah.

Highway 89 climbs high into the mountains above Bear Lake before twisting and turning for 30 miles of 45 mph through beautiful Logan Canyon.

After some MapQuest mess-ups involving a road that does not exist in reality, I rolled into Jenna's house at around 1:30. We took a short hike to Wind Cave, an interesting limestone formation of natural bridges and hollows. I forgot my camera for this trip, so I stole somebody else's pictures to put here. (To be fair, both photos were taken May 17, 2007 by Matt Durrant and posted on SummitPost.org.)

Wind Cave from above.

I wanted to take this picture, but alas - no camera.

On Sunday we tried a 12-mile round-trip hike to the Jardine Juniper, a ~3200-year-old tree that is mostly dead but is still growing slowly at the top.

Tree-touching.

Tree-hugging.

Tree watching people hugging.

After putting off leaving as long as possible, I took the shorter route (200 miles, 3 1/2 hours) back to Pinedale, passing about 30 deer in 8 separate locations and trying to avoid becoming a hunter by accident.