Pony Express, Geod Hunts, Geo Caches and BOMBS

We survived it! Came out with only a mild sun burn and Horse Fly bite. If your completely confused at this point that means your actually reading the post right! Congrates! Here I'll start at the beginning of our Wonderous Adventure to Western Utah.

Grant and I were invited to accompany my family 4wheeling, camping, and Geod hunting out on some BLM land west of Dugway. I can't give you presises locations because our only land marks were
1. Dugway itself

2. 30 billion sheep and cows.

3. a remake of an old Pony Express cabin, and monument.

I'd give you coordinates ( I've got 'em) if I thought that would help, but oddly enough I don't.

After an embaressing attempt at finding a substitute primary teacher for stake conference on sunday, and a pleading phone message to my sister asking her to please make sure my pets don't die; we were ready to go.

We pass Toole, we pass Terra, we get to Dugway and stop. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dugway (don't worry I was once in that vast number), its not really a town, its very much like Hill Air Fource Base, execpt they get to blow things up. Dugway is entirely fenced off, which is actually for the publics benefit. Why? Because they have Authorization to shoot if you step foot on their turf. Thats what the sign says, more or less.

We get to take a frontage road. This road lived up to the name "frontage" we are bouncing along eating dust when out of the corner of his eye Grant sees a Antalope. Now on closer inspection I notice it has a baby with it, which is apparently the cue for a Photographer to slame on the brakes and yell for thier camera. However in doing so he has spooked the Momma Antalope who starts to run, so does Grant. Now I watch the Momma leap the "frontage road" and take off in to the wilderness, I don't see the baby, I don't see Grant. I look around and Grants has found the baby crouching as low as it goes and he's just snap snapping away. My heart just breaks, Poor thing, I turn around and the Momma is now just a tiny dot. Afer a couple prime shots we drive away, hopefully Momma comes back.

Back to the road, its not exciting in the least so I'll move forward.

SHEEP There are herds and herds of Sheep, incidentlly they are all in the way.

More road

More Sheep

More road

Cows

More road.

Simpson Springs Campground!! After a fast lunch we head off to the Geod Beds! (Geods are rocks with pretty little crystalies in them :) Which means MORE driving, we took our car too.

This drive is not only uneventfull its very dull and ugly.

We get to the Geod Beds, this is actually very fun, its like an Archeologist Dig. And just as sensative, Geods break real easy espeically if they are the hollow kind (which is what you want)
This is where I got sunburned, in the shade even! Grant was in the sun and got nothing worse then a seriously sweaty back. I found 4 good geods, Grant found more but broke them open and ruined most of them.

My family is just like every other family, fun, loving, supportive, and totaly obsessed with Geo Caching. Geo Caching is basically Treasure Hunting with a GSP and coordiantes to the Caches! So while we were out here we went in search for as many as we can, there were only a couple out by the Geod Beds, but we got 'em! Got 'em good too.

Back at camp Grant and I wanted to go Four wheeling, but when your camp is swarmed with littles (kids) its hard to go by yourself aka have FUN! Instead of flying off jumps, cruising threw sage brush and cows, I ended up four wheeling all night long, at 10 mph.

Early SundayNews: We can see Dugway from our camp, we can see the dust clouds, we can hear the BOOMS! and feel the shocks, of all the bombs that are exploding all morning long.
With the rise of the sun the rest of our party shows up; including my little sister who was supposed to take care of our dogs. She spent the night at our house, but as the conversation continued we found out she hadn't fed them. Nice.

So our big Geo Cache Hunt begins, its in the shape of a Baseball diamond A cache at each plate, the pitchers mound AND 3 to 4 caches between plates. The size of the thing we estimated is about 6 miles, in the middle of a field of nothing (just like everywhere else, oh expect sheep)This is were i got the Horse Fly bite, it freaking HURT, hurts still *cry* This fun activity took us 5 hours, lots of lizards, caches, GPS's, potty breaks, and sheep.

OUR GROUP

THE FIELD

THIS ABOUT SUMS UP JOEYS (BROTHER IN-LAW)

FOR THE ENTIRE HUNT (ITS A LIZARD)

Grant and I departed from the rest of the group as soon as we got back to camp, mainly because we had dogs who hadn't eaten since friday night. The drive home was oddly faster then the drive out. Odd because we got lost, ended up in Vernon and not Toole, which is farther southwest then Toole.

Next time we want to drive 3 hours to go camping we're going to Flaming Gorge.