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| Morning Sky |
We began the day with a grand breakfast prepared by Mark
& Greg. Then we were off on the side-by-sides (Susan, Bob & Lena in
their rig; Greg & I with Mark & Judy in theirs). Susan’s neighborhood
lies next to the ghost town of Silver Reef, a bustling mining hub in the late 1800’s. We did a quick tour of the mining museum, then headed out into the hills past the now-grated mines. We stopped at what remains of the (separate) Catholic & Protestant cemeteries and then had fun just exploring the territory.
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| Lena (yawning, not threatening 😃) |
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| Catholic Cemetery... restored by Lions Club in 1998 (wooden crosses placed at unknown graves) |
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| One of 15 headstones in Protestant Cemetery... |
In 2016, a group of teens working with Habitat for Humanity restored the Protestant Cemetery. They chose white crosses to represent each of the unmarked graves.
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| Rebar grates cover open shafts. |
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| There are also grates inside these entrances. |
After the cemeteries, we tooled around the actual mining areas. Not really too much to see, but it's fun riding the trails. Lunch at Papa Gus's BBQ in Leeds (perhaps the only restaurant in Leeds), then off to the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve - site of the long gone town of Babylon and the remains of a late-20th century retirement home that burned before completion.
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| Virgin River (small here, but still significant) |
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| Lots of hiding places. |
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| Lots of striation (from millenia of uplift) |
This is just a portion of the burned home's foundation - it would have been huge. The remains were also a puzzlement - none of the 6 of us felt we could accurately visualize the total layout or define functions for existing portions. There's some (interesting) graffiti on what appear to be basement or garage walls, and legend has it that hippies hung out here for awhile. The owner lived out of state and never returned to the site when he learned of the fire. (He supposedly had $250K into construction, and we figured a good chunk of that was transport & delivery of materials. Just getting that beam into the site would have been a challenge.)
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| Greg got a couple turns in the driver's seat. |
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After showers and dinner, we drove into Washington (UT) and enjoyed She Loves Me (a musical comedy unfamiliar to me, but created by the Bock/Harnick team responsible for Fiddler on the Roof). Tiny venue, and not all the performers were ready for Broadway, but the show was lots of fun. Greg & I have become great fans of local theater. (And I'll be buying tickets for Village Theatre's Newsies very soon. 😃)
PartingShot...
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| This isn't a great shot (e.g. no sky), but the rest of the coloring reminds me of a piece of petrified wood in my desk drawer at home. (Virgin River at Red Cliffs) |
Postscript... We were definitely "off road," but always on trails. That way all the natural elements are preserved.
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