Kevin – Wednesday. It’s moving day again. Because it’s supposed to be another hot day, we decided to move early and do our trail work in the evening when it “should” be a little cooler. The desert regions cool quickly after the sun gets lower in the sky. But there was the small matter of some bike repairs. Denny had a flat (easy fix) and my chain was wrapped around the rear gear assembly and wedged between that and the spokes (less easy without the correct tools). By 9 the repairs were done and Denny had the RV wrapped up and ready to roll.
However, before we left Farson, there was one more set of photos we really needed to take. Farson is a community strong into farming and ranching. The town has its own rodeo arena. It’s also on the border of the oil fields and a fair number of residents work in the petroleum industry. The local gas station combined those facts into an interesting photo opportunity.
We routed south through Rock Springs to do some shopping, something the pioneers rarely had the chance to do. After being in a very small town with limited resources, it’s almost unnerving to walk into a big-box chain store with the wide variety of items. We take such things for granted. It’s not like that everywhere or everytime.
In the early 1990’s, we were acquainted with a family that had escaped from Communist Romania. Shortly after the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1989), our friend’s father was finally able to reunite with his daughter. ‘Grandpa Nic’ (not the dictator) had lived under Communist rule since shortly after the end of WW2. Rationing of materials and food were facts of everyday life. State Security and informants were everywhere. Think Orwell’s ‘1984.’ That’s they way they described their lives under Communist rule.
Grandpa Nic and Denny both spoke broken French and got along famously. Denny related that one day she and Grandpa Nic were in a local hardware store. He walked over to the many bins of nails and screws lying open for people to walk up and select out what they needed; no salespeople ‘helping’; no security guards; a wide selection of materials at cheap prices; grab what you need. Denny said Nic reached into a bin and scooped up a handful of nails. He just held them, looked around to see who was watching and realized no one was. He got all teary eyed, put them back in the bin and wept some more. He had pretty much the same experience at the fruits and vegetables section of the grocery store. We just don’t appreciate what we have.
By mid-afternoon the RV was parked at the new site, leveled, connected, and we had just enough time for a nap before we started our bike hike for the day. The nap was a welcome opportunity – one we don’t often get.
One thing we realized on our first trek was that the Battalion men and accompanying women and children rarely had the opportunity for shade. There just aren’t trees out here except in a few locations. Sagebrush isn’t tall enough to provide shade. The sun is relentless from sunup to sundown. A mid-day siesta would be wonderful – if you had shade. If you were lucky you could hide under a wagon. No one wrote about this as far as I know.
After the nap, we drove back up to Granger, but before we started biking, we wanted to see the trail’s wagon crossing area of Ham’s Fork. What is Ham’s Fork a fork of? Well, Ham’s Fork flows into Black’s Fork which flows into the Green River which flows into the Colorado River. That’s a lot of forking. And, along a 10-mile stretch on Ham’s Fork is where the 1834 mountain-man ‘rendezvous’ was held. My source for this is found at: http://www.mtmen.org/
Brigham Young’s group arrived at Ham’s crossing mid-morning of July 6, 1847. Clayton described it as “a rapid stream about three rods (48 feet) wide and two feet deep” with lots of bunch grass bordering the stream. The crossing is near the west end of Rendezvous Road there in Granger.
Going south out of town we crossed the bridge then proceeded south and west onto County Road 2. It’s an oiled gravel/dirt road the oil a by-product of the oil refining in the area. In fact, after a few miles we pass what may be the world’s largest butane lighter.
Since we’d started late in the afternoon, we got to see the fading light on the mountains, very different than the stark, bright daylight we usually experience. To the southeast of us, we got this view:
After the sun set, we loaded up the bikes and returned to our RV park. We are so sad to report that the historically cheap ice-cream cones at this place are being raised to $1 per cone. Still, a cheap date.
