Down the Road to Joseph, Utah

Our next stop was another hour south to Joseph, Utah.  Mark just happened to read about a biking trail called "Big Rock Candy Express" that is over 20 miles long, so we headed to Joseph to try it out.  Bonus! The trail runs directly in front of our next camping spot at Flying U Campground.  So right after we got the motor home set up, we were on our bikes heading toward the mountains.

The good news is that this trail is relatively flat.  It uses the old rail bed of a rail road that is no longer used.  Just like locomotives, Denisa likes nice flat trails.

The only time that we deviated from the rail bed was going through this tunnel.  It seems that repairing the tunnel to today's safety standards was too expensive, so our trail just curved around that mountain.  (Note:  To get this picture Mark had to cross a fence that said, "Dangerous!  Keep Out!"  I think he thought his bicycle helmet would protect him from all these dangers.)

The other nice thing about this trail was the great scenery.  We were biking beside rock walls that were beautiful.  A geologist would probably explain these angled color and texture changes based on uplifts of the earth's surface millions of years ago when plates deep within the earth . . .  We feel completely comfortable with explaining it as another one of God's wonders.






Most of the time we pedaled along the Sevier River.  We have now found out that word is pronounced like the word "severe."  One person explained it as the hick pronunciation of a French word gone wrong.  When we found out that there are rafting trips down this section of the Sevier River, we were checking out our options for putting in our kayak.  But we were told that too little rain, and too little snow meant the rafting season was very short this spring.  We had to agree that there were too many rocks showing to get a kayak down the river now.

After ten miles, we got to the end of the bike trail.  It was the wrong time of the day for the lighting to show off all the wonderful colors and textures of the mountain at the end.  But the name of the mountain is the same as the resort--Big Rock Candy Mountain.  In 1939, the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" peaked at #1 on the Billboard country music charts with its reference to cigarette trees and streams of alcohol.  In 1949, Burl Ives recorded a sanitized version of the song that changed some of the references to peppermint trees and lemonade springs.  We didn't taste any of the above mentioned scenery from either version of the song.

It was a beautiful blue-sky day, and a great time for a 21-mile bike ride.  Except for the fact that much of the trail parallels the highway, we thought it was a great place to ride.

The next day we headed to Fremont Indian State Park and Museum, just 7 miles from our camping spot.  We're still trying to make good use of that annual Utah state park pass we purchased, so going to state parks is now free entertainment to us.  This state park was opened when the excavations from routing I-70 through these mountains unearthed thousands of Indian artifacts.  They all landed in this museum, and the surrounding area is also famous for the pictographs and petroglyphs of these same Fremont Indians.  There are also nice hikes that connect all the rock art panels in the state park.

Here is just one of the rock panels that was filled with Indian art, probably describing the great hunting expeditions held in these hills many years ago.

 Mark is standing beside some alien-looking art.  He is the one on the right.

We also visited the "Cave of a Hundred Hands."  We didn't count them, but we think the name of the cave might have exaggerated the number of hand prints on the wall.

We hiked several miles into the hills around the visitor center.  This particular mountain cliff was not named, but we have unofficially dubbed it as "Cliff-that-looks-like-toasted-marshmallows."

Can't you just see that big stone right behind Denisa, fresh off a camp-fire skewer?  Based on the blackened edges, we think this giant marshmallow got a little too close to the fire.

This trail wound its way into the national forest, where we saw lots of pinyon pines.  It's finally late enough in the year to find pine cones opening up with pinyon seeds inside.  Check out Mark's sticky thumb, evidence that harvesting pinyon nuts is a sappy job.  He would smell like a pine air freshener the rest of the day.

We were hoping for enough nuts to make a batch of pinyon-nut-something.  But we found that many of these dark brown shells were empty.  Could that be a result of the dry weather this part of the state has endured?

After wandering several miles through the high desert, we found our way back to the area close to the visitor's center.  Our trail ended with a giant white mountain--just the color of marshmallow.

Back at the visitor center, we went through the museum inside.  Then we investigated the outside exhibits like the granary and the pit house.  Mark is climbing out of the pit house, smiling because his hands are still so sticky he might be stuck to that ladder for the rest of the day.

We are finding that peach season is almost over, so we bought another box of peaches--O'Henry peaches grown in Utah.  We see more peach deserts in our future!  Buying regional fruit is our favorite souvenir, and we are glad to see that apples will soon be ripening.  In fact, the green apples on this tree at the state park were delicious!  We are enjoying Utah!