Carnage, carnage, and more carnage.......maybe?

 Welcome to the annual memorial day blog. Well, I want to think its annual, but I could be wrong. Anyway, today's awesome adventure began at 6 am as we left the fair city of Tremonton and headed south to Vernon, Utah. Vernon is located at the southernmost end of Tooele county. Google says its exactly 145 miles and I believe it. Today, the destination was Harker Canyon. I had never heard of it until it was mentioned to me by my friend, Mr. Kirt Womak. The canyon was named for his great x 3 or 4 grandfather who, during the summer, would take his flock of sheep from the Salt Lake Valley and march them or herd them all the way to this remote canyon.  

 My guess is it would have been a long long trip to get them all the way there. As you can see from the first foto, it is very green and lush towards the top of the canyon and there is a small stream flowing down named, are you ready for this, Harker Creek. The mountains there are surprising, in a way. The drive to mouths of several of them leads you to believe they are plain old desert mountains. As you climb up the canyons, they suddenly begin to turn lush with Pine trees, Willows and Quaking Aspen. They were quite beautiful and we had them all to ourselves. Supposedly there is a ghost town up one of the canyons, but we did not encounter it. We did find a few mines, complete with ore cart tracks that would be fun to explore had they not been blown closed. I am certain that there are ore carts left inside just waiting to be rescued.  

 The third canyon we went up is where the carnage took place. The trail was muddy, steep and way off camber. I must tell you that we went with my niece Holly and her 07 Ford F-150. This was her first time out doing serious off-roading. I had to get on her case to hit the mud-holes and she finally got into it. Her enthusiasm was growing as she followed me up the trail. We got to a spot where a chevy had parked of the road and the driver was no where to be seen. I went on by and headed up the hill to a mine. The trail was narrow and a 4-lo climb crawling over the boulders. We flew on up and sat at the mine and wondered what happened to her. She finally popped out of the trees and stopped where it turned really nasty. We took fotos and crawled back down to where she stopped and were met with damaged Ford. She clipped a rock in the trees and took off part of her passenger side running board. She also managed to remove the truck's antenna at the same time. She said she wasn't mad but I think she was. Of course I used this to try and persuade her to not trade it in on a Honda, but to get a Wrangler Unlimited. I hope she goes with her wise uncles advice and gets a Jeep!  

We came back down the canyon, ate lunch and followed the road where ever it went. We ended up coming out at the Vernon reservoir where we stopped to check it out. Oh, and pee. TMI? Too bad! We will have to return someday to figure out where this so called mining camp is. A second entry on ghosttowns.com place it 2 miles west of Harker Canyon and we had gone east. Oh well, I guess I have an excuse to return. I will also admit I got to a place in the trail and couldn't go on. It was ATV wide and there was a good size rock that had a tendency to throw you into the trees as you tried to climb it. I bounced over on one attempt but the mud was too slippery. Again, another reason to return. As a follow up to the last entry, I got lucky and got into the University of Utah cardiac center on June first instead of July first with IHC. This is good news. Jeep on my friends!