Challis Hot Springs

Rainy day excursion to Challis Hot Springs. My kind of place - quaint, old fashioned, calm and uncrowded! Family owned for 5 generations, we were lucky to finally make it so far north this year, as the hot spring will soon change hands. The owners want it preserved and open to all and to that end it may become a state facility in the fall. I imagine there will be changes, so I am glad we got to visit while it is still such a quaint lovely place.

 

Lunar Eclipse

We buzzed up to Fossil Butte in hopes of catching a glimpse of some elk with our new spotting scope and the highroad was still closed. No luck with elk but a nice little hike and some burd watching. As we were leaving we spied a Red Tailed Hawk in the beautiful sunset light so we stopped to try out our scope and the camera system we bought to go with it.

As we were watching the hawk on the pole have dinner this and fussed with the scope and camera a crazy big moon started peeking up over the horizon. That's when we remembered that there was to be an eclipse. Surprised I'd forgotten, as I'm kind of into eclipses because my son surprised us by coming into this world 5 weeks early during a lunar eclipse. (aside, I always wondered if the lunar event was the cause of his early birth... that is until I had my baby girl, who popped out 5 and a half weeks early, with no lunar involvment at all. Perhaps I have a microwave womb?)

Lucky us to be in the right place at the right time to watch the moon rise! As we drove home we continued to have great views as the moon darkened, turned red and and became white again. It was so cool to watch, my best eclipse viewing ever! So thankful that the Red Tailed Hawk beckoned us to stop!

Evolution of a Ghost Town - Sort of

Evolution of a ghost town. OK, not really a ghost town, but Carter, Wyoming sure seems like it's well on the way to becoming one. Apparently it was once a major agricultural shipping point on on the Union Pacific Rail Line, but now has just 3 or 4 occupied homes, population of about 10, and two very friendly dogs that accompanied us on my photowalk. I sure wonder about the history of these places, and what they were like during more prosperous times.

Ghost Town - Black's Fork Commisary

A ghosttown out in the Uinta moutains, Black's Fork Commisary. A logging town founded n 1870, it became a ghost town in 1930. Likely supplying logs to the charcoal kilns at Piedmont, where they made fuel for the railroad steam engines. It's hard to image what a hard life it had to be living there back in the day, and I read somewhere the work was easier in the winter when you could pull logs on sleds. Brrrr!

Another Airplane Arrow

Another airplane arrow. Funny thing about this one is that we've ridden right by it many times and didn't even know it. It's right along the road to Timpie Springs, a favorite birding spot of ours. There's actually a fence separating it from the road, but you'd never know it was there, unless you knew it was there to look for it.

Evolution of a Ghost Town

Evolution of a ghost town. Back in 2016 while out on a Northern Utah birding and ghost towning adventure with my friend April, Shin noticed the word "Ghost town" on the map just over the border in Idaho. Two ghost towns in a day sounded really rad so we after visiting Kelton headed up north to the once town of Strevell Idaho to check it out. Not much was left of Strevell, just a few foundations and the upright remains of a one building, which my research indicates was likely Mary's Cafe. Once a busy Idaho port of entry town, the construction of I-84 a few miles north essentially put Strevell out of business. This past Sunday's adventure took us by Strevell again, and now the ghost town had become even more of an apparitions left as that last building standing, stands no more. Sometime between the end of June and now the building toppled, I know this because my friend Judi, had posted a picture when she traveled past in June. Soon no one will ever have any idea this town ever existed...

Another interesting thing about Strevell, Idaho. It is home to an airplane arrow. Back in the 1920's when "AirMail" began, the US created this system of giant arrows and beacons that could be seen from the sky to help the pre-navigation system postal aircraft find their way across the country. I was bummed when I found out, after visiting Strevell in 2016, that the town was host to one of these giants arrows and we missed. Well, this time we made it a point to find the arrow.