The Road to Lake City - Part 1 (8-20-22)

 I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes, trying to organize my thoughts into blog posts that at least somewhat make sense.  I have changed the name of the post 3 times.  Here is my dilemma-  when Paul and I charted a course, so to speak, back to Lake City CO, we made sure there were things to see and do along the way.  In the middle of our trek we stopped for several days at a place I have wanted to go for a long time- Colorado National Monument.  But it needs it’s own post as far as I am concerned.  So, here we are with Part 1 of the Road to Lake City:

From the Dixie National Forest, we headed straight into Manti-La Sal National Forest.  And as I found out recently, if you want to sound like a local, you say “Man-Tie” not “Man-tee”.  Who knew?

We drove up into the national forest from the small town of Ephraim Utah, headed to a very small national forest campground.  We perhaps should have checked ahead to see whether the truck camper would make it down the entrance road.  It did, but not without some anxiety on our part.

 

The one car we encountered had no choice but to bury his car in the bushes, or back up (when we were leaving, I went ahead in the Jeep to make sure the coast was clear). It took some work but we fit the camper into one of the larger sites. The perk was that the deer would feed on the bushes under our slide- pretty cool.

We had one day to explore, so we drove the Jeep in a 36 mile loop around the top of the mountains.  We were surprised to see informational plaques along the way.

In 1912, the Great Basin (research) Station was established atop this hill with the purpose of studying the national forest watershed, including the effects of grazing and climate on the forest. The station has lodging, laboratories, and greenhouses.  The families of the scientists would move up here with them for the summers, making it essentially a small town.

It is still in use today, and more than 47 scientists have published papers with their findings. and supposedly you can tour it, but the gate was locked when we were there.

Of course, much of the research involves water- and the information discovered here has had a positive impact on ranching and water usage.  One favorite bit was that they discovered that the day of snowmelt varies from year to year, but knowing when it takes place helps a rancher figure out when to plant seeds, and when they will ripen into feed.

We stopped at the top where we had a view of the town, and ate our picnic lunch before moving on.

The second half of the loop was completely different.  There were no plaques, and the road was not quite as nice. In fact, we almost turned back at one point, but managed to persevere.

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We came across a sign  that said “Ephraim tunnel” and pointed to a side road.  Well, Paul never wants to miss a chance to see a tunnel, so off we went.  It turns out it was one of many tunnels that funneled the water from the mountain down to the town of Ephraim.

One of the cool things we realized is that Paul’s great grandparents were from the nearby town of Manti, Utah.

After our short visit there, we headed to the small town of Helper Utah, to visit our friends Dave and Nancy, who are there for the summer.  We stopped at a farmers market and grabbed some fruit and veggies that were literally being walked in from the fields while we were there.

Dave and Nancy have made a lot of friends in this small town, and we were introduced to several of them as we walked around town.  After eating dinner at a local pizza place we headed to this gas station.

Now, obviously most people head to a gas station to get fuel. Not us, not this time.  We came here for the carrot cake. Yep, this place has the best carrot cake Paul has ever had- excepting his own (my aunt Tish’s) recipe of course.

It didn’t hurt that you could buy extra frosting- which he did.

We took our cake back and ate it at the RV park.

It wasn’t long before we were back on the road, headed to Lake City- next stop: Colorado National Monument.