Leg 2 of the Manti trip.

It's Saturday morning and finally time to get in some Sanpete County fishing.  We decided to go South this time and get to the lakes through Ephraim canyon.  From the maps I had seen, there is clearly a road to the lakes from Ephraim and we thought it would be more adventurous to take a different route.  The first thing we did was stop at the Walmart in Ephraim for some food and supplies. I needed a hat. 

Dale thought I'd look great in the Corona hat.  I didn't look to bad in it but I've never been much of a country boy. 

Here's Dale going a little more Minnie Pearl with his hat .  I ended up getting a very plain looking baseball cap.  For snacks we bought some wheat thins, Fig Newtons, Gatorade and we were on our way. 

We got quit a surprise when we began heading up Ehpraim canyon.

Ugh!!!  A dirt road!  We did not anticipate this.  At this point, it might have been advisable to turn around but we decided not to.  It would be ten miles going back the other way and even with a bumpy road, the lakes would still be closer going this way.  So we pressed on.


There wasn't too much stopping for photos but this spot looked nice.  I had Dale pull over and I ran the full gamut of the scenery with my camera.

Looking Southwest.  The road dirt road we've already covered can be seen o the left.

Looking up the Mountain face. 

One more stop for photo's  We're getting close to the top I hope.

Boy was that a long drive to the top!  We finally made it.  

There was some snow drift to the south when we reached the top.  We parked the car and got out to examine it.  

Dale having some fun playing in the snow drift.  

A photo of me in the snow drift.  I'm really going to have to teach Dale how to take a photo.  Yesterday, he cuts my foot off and today he can get his finger out of the way of the lens.

Dale was having so much fun exploring the snow, it was hard getting him to leave. 

I took the next three photos from a look-out point about a quarter mile down the road.

At the look out point, there was a man who was four wheeling with his kids.  I took the opportunity to ask him for directions.   

Could tell us how to get to the Huntington Reservior?", I asked.  He pointed down a dirt that was Skyline drive.  

"Great! How far is it from her?".

"About 20 miles or so", he replied.

"20 miles! Is that just to the lake?  How long before we would hit some paved road?

"That would probably be about 20 miles, as well". 

20 miles to go! And on a dirt road even!  Are we ever going to get to the lakes so we can fish?  It looked like coming up Ephraim canyon was the wrong way to go.

We decided to press forward.  We had already come this far and we might was well keep going.  There was still plenty of time to fish even if it was going to take us a few hours to get there. 

The quality of the dirt road did not improve. Actually it was worse and it would continue to get worse as we continued on.

We could see all the way down into the valley from this angle.

This radio tower was an interesting site.  Or is it a cell phone tower?  We couldn't tell, though I will say that I was still getting cell phone coverage from up there.  That might have been because we were so close to the mountain rim.

Here was our first stop.

Dale was insatiably curious about the dead pine trees that were still standing.  How old were they?  And how long had they been standing there since they gave up they died?

                                        

Dale couldn't help it.  He had to walk down to try climbing one of them.  

 

He didn't get too far but at least he was enjoying himself.  

A photo take facing east of the trees. 

And now we're back on the road.   And the road keeps getting worse.  

We could make out this sign so we pulled over to have a look at it.  

It was barely readable up close but it was readable enough to understand that this was another bad omen.   "The "ROAD" is not maintained for passenger car traffic beyond this sign".  Still, we continued on.

This was a nice little stop for some photo's.  

The dimension of this photo might be a little deceiving.  I'm not looking up the mountain.  I'm looking almost straight down.

A slightly higher angle of the same view.

Looking the other way across the grassy terrain.

On we go.

I got a photo of this sign because I was curios to find out more about the Horseshoe flat on the internet later on.  As it turns out, there was much about it in the internet, either.  We must be pretty far out there.  And it would only be another half mile before we would realize how wrong of a turn we had taken.  

This was the point of now return!

A snow drift was blocking the road!  We had no chance of getting passed.  A group of people four wheeling had just got finished clearing enough snow so they could pass this part of the road. We would not be following them. There was definitely not enough clearance for my car.  On this one, I did manage to capture the crazy moment on video as the last four wheelers were passing over the drift.

The road quality was obviously just as bad on the way back.  We decided to stop here and move some of the rubble to make sure it was safe to pass.

Terrible to drive on with my normal passenger car!

We had one stop on our way back.  We wanted to investigate the wooden enclosure across the field.  This photo was taken parallel to the dirt road.

Walking across the enclosure was like trudging through a field of perpetual cow dung.  There had definitely been plenty of cows that had been in here before   But where are they now?  How long has this this wooden structure been here?  Why was it built.  Is it still used?  We could find no evidence of it's history or it's use.  

The field seemed to continue on forever beyond the enclosure.

We noticed a trail off in the distance.  It can be seen in this photo on the left hand side.  Dale wanted to hike to the trail and explore it.  I also wanted to but was uneasy about straying to far from the car that was parked in a non-parking spot.  I to convinced Dale that we should return to the car.  But I did get a few more photos of the grassy mountain terrain.

Walking back to the car.  It can be seen parked off in the distance.  

The hills are alive with the sound of Music!  Dale got rather caught up in the beauty of the mountain scenery. Before getting back in the car I snapped this photo of Dale having an incredible Julie Andrews moment.

It took forever to get back down that dirt road.  Here, we can finally see the city of Ephraim again

We were planning to head back to Fairview and up canyon to get to the lakes....but we never made it.  We made the mistake of stopping at my mom's to rest. And because we did that, we weren't able to get ourselves out the door again  We were enjoying the rest too much.  So we never got around to fishing today.  But we did have an adventure.  You can't complain too much about that.