Camping Simpson Springs

So Eric and I set out to go camping, doesn't he look good behind the wheel. Ok so I didn't let him drive there, however I did surprise him by turning over the truck to him for a 10 mile jaunt on a dirt road inthe middle of nowhere. I think he had fun. We went to Simpson Springs, out inthe west desert, south of Dugway, where I lived in my early years. It is part of the Pony Express. We went with some friends from work, Brad Franke and his family and his parents.

And who said that the desert isn't pretty. If you look closely you can see the sleeping aligator in the mountain.

And yes I made Eric cook. He did a prettygood job too. Actually he and I shared the duties and we ate pretty darn good.

Brad's parent brought the Razor, that red buggy just behind Eric. It was a lot of fun to drive. Some day I wouldn't mind owning one of those, when I am too old to ride a real bike.

Yep I can still get up the hills. It is steeper than it looks. We all pounded these sand hills. They are fun.

And so can Eric. He is now riding the TTR 230 that I bought for Mike. Little bugger is growing up and he is a great rider. Keeps up with his dad pretty well. He didn't even crash this year which is good I had to do a bit of repair work on this bike from our trip out here last fall.

Look at the rooster. That's the dirt being thrown by the rear wheel for you lay people.

Eric and Braden Franke, Brad's son, age 17, did a lot of hiking around. I think Eric had fun with that older brother figure. I think he misses his older brother. Eric and Braden got along very well. He's a nice kid.

Look I fit. We only went into a couple of mines, ones that looked very stable and we didn't go into far. Besides over the winter a woman in West Valley was murdered by her husband and it is believed that he dumped her body in the Simpson Springs area. Since Brad and I are both cops we thought we should check some of these areas out. Unfortunately we didn't find her body. They did an organized search for her body on Saturday with a bunch of professional searches, they had dogs, wheelers, ultralights but they did not find the body either. Sad deal...

We determined that the miners had some pretty rough lifes. Most of these mines are from the late 1800's and early 1900's. It was amazing what they did.

Yep we found snow. The weather was actually very nice. We wore light jackets and mostly sun. Not bad for early April.

Eric thought he was king of the mountain. He was all over the place.

And for those that can remeber this place. This is White Rock in Skull Valley. I remember climbing all over this rock as a kid. I went to a Father and somn outing here once. It was fun to see this again and to show it Eric. We didn't spend much time here, more just took a looksy.