Damn, it has been a long time!

 Wow, my last entry was in October and life has been quite interesting since then. My sternum decided to split apart in December and caused me great pain. Such a lovely Christmas gift to myself huh? So, it was time to call the Dr again. Damn it! I called good old Dr Patel and on January 12th I went in and they bolted me together with titanium plates. I went home and waited for the 25th to go back and get this and done with. Surprise, on the 24th I ended up in the ER with a high fever and they shipped me to Salt Lake in an ambulance. The next morning i was diagnosed with a nasty staph infection and i was rushed into surgery and they removed all the titanium they had put in 2 weeks before. Then, they left me open till Wednesday and went back in and finally closed me up. Long story short, after 7 weeks with an I.V. line in my arm for antibiotics 3 times a day I was cleared today as healthy and fit. Knock on wood! So, today we celebrated. I went to Salt Lake and got the picc line removed by 9am and headed out to the Oquirrh mountains to play. We tried Dry Canyon and since it is on the north facing slope we got no where. Then it was up to Ophir to see what was going on there. Snow finally stopped us just after the the top foto.  

 As you can see, there is still some snow left in the mountains, on the north slope. Southern slopes are bare as well as well as the flat ground. We drove up the canyon till the snow blocked our path and we could go no further. The "river" there is hardly flowing at all. It's fed into the water system with extra going down thru the town. As of today it was hardly filling the towns needs. Its gonna be a dry summer I'm afraid. 

 Next we decided to try Soldier Canyon, just above Stockton. There are a few mines up there as well as some charcoal kilns. The refiners of the ore mined out of the mountains used charcoal in the process. 

 There are 3 obvious kilns to be seen as well as maybe a 4th. They are not in very good condition, but I blame that on age. These kilns were built by a company called Waterman Coking ovens in 1869 or 1872. There are conflicting reports on the exact date. They built them central to all the mines in the area to make them more efficient. 

 The above kiln is the best of them. These kilns did a ton of work before methods changed and they were phased out. They are built towards the end of the canyon, or end as far as driving the Jeep. The trail narrows to true ATV width just past them and I haven't been up that trail. I am sure there are even more mines up there, since they were centrally built to serve the area. Even though they sit at 6100', the weather there was quite nice today. Just didn't have a lot of sun shine. 

After that, I took a new trail even further north, right above Stockton. It was here we found mud in abundance and we climbed up probably to 7000'. The foto above is looking west over the Rush Valley at the snow on the other mountain range. I've never been over there so that might be another adventure to come. All in all, it was a great day. I am tired but each day I get stronger and hopefully soon I will be back to normal again. Jeep on my friends.