Offroad: Parashant - Savannic Mine

Little did we know that this snowbird riding season the Parashant Grand Canyon area would be the most interesting rides we would take… several times. And we would go again in a heartbeat.

We've seen it on our maps, and we've always intended to "run over to Arizona and see the mines"; but, it's a long way over there from Whitney Pockets, our usual staging area of choice. Just to Tassi Springs, which we wrote about last year, and back takes a very full day. The Savannic Mine - and others - are farther than that.

However… there is only one other ride on "The Butte" which rivals it for sheer grandeur! The ride over through Pierson Gap and down into Cottonwood Wash looks over the "Hell's Kitchen" area and is Magnificent. The ride along the shelf road, past Pigeon Canyon, is truly breathtaking, in more ways than one.

Of course there's the "breathtaking" grandeur of a Kodak-worthy photograph which even Photoshop cannot improve; then, there's the strangling-tightness which slowly creeps into your chest and makes your heart race for anyone even the least vertiginously challenged!

Press to Read The Rest ...

GEO-tography: Forced Perspective

In our continual quest to make the photographs we take look more like the places we've actually been, I thought we might take a peek at something called "Forced Perspective."

We all (at least those of us who haven't been living under a basket) have seen the technique at work; but, may not recognize the accurate name. Forced perspective is the technique Peter Jackson (I guess we have to call him "Sir Peter Jackson" now) uses to make his Hobbit's look realistically small next to Gandalf.

Basically, it's using your camera's settings to obtain the great depth of field and focus necessary; then, aligning two subjects precisely - one closer to the camera than the other. (huh?) Look, take one subject and put it closer to the camera. Then, align a second object further away from the camera so that it looks like what you want in the view finder. Then do what you need to bring them BOTH crisply into focus at once.

Objects can appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than they actually are, and you don't need to use Photoshop or Gimp to do it. It just takes a little creativity with the placement of the subjects in the shot and the camera angle.

Still don't get it - well a picture is worth a thousand words. Twenty-eight of them to be exact.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Pinyon Nuts

As kids, much more so than now, we used to enjoy going "pine cone hunting" in the fall. Not every fall; because, as it turns out, the little fellows are a capricious lot – not un-similar to those Joshua Trees. They don't seed (or bloom) every year – and they pretty much keep their intentions and motivations close to the vest.

Once in awhile you might hear an old timer say out loud: "'S lookin' like it'll be a good yar fer pine nuts!" But just let those trees not produce a crop this year, and that same codger is just as likely as not to give you a disgusted look like: "you must be nuts" when you remind him about telling you that later on if it doesn't happen.

Of course, even though most call them "Pine Nuts," it's only the specific Pinyon Pine which produces the nuts we are talking about. As nutrition goes, they are full of it. No wonder they were the dietary staple of the Paiute tribe as well as most other Native American groups throughout the southwest.

Indigenous peoples ate them both raw and roasted, and they often made Pemmican by mixing ground pinyon nuts with animal fat to make a calorie rich, nourishing and easy to carry "trail mix."   [See other information and photos at: Offroading Home - Resources.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroad: Gold Butte - Jumbo Mine, Historic Baylor

This was the fourth ride for the Kokopelli ATV club in the 2010-11 riding season. It seemed like there were more new faces each time we rode and that everyone was getting side-by-sides. Some who rode single rigs last year were trading them in for "double wide" and bringing their wives along.

And this ride was a great place to be. It finished a previous club ride around the lower Gold Butte-Treasure Hawk Mine area which was cut short, due to some mechanical failures that required a bit of towing – yet one more reason not to go alone out on "The Butte." Especially on such a seldom used trail as this.

Almost directly on the other side of the mountain from the historic town of Gold Butte (east), is the historic town site of Baylor. Now only a dusty wide spot in the trail, people once lived there while working the area's mines in. Who knows, for a vacation they might have gone to the "big city," Gold Butte, of a weekend.

Press to Read The Rest ...

GEO-tography: Infrared

Anyone who has spent any time at all watching television has undoubtedly seen examples of the use of infrared. "Night Scopes" are all the rage, the isles at Home Depot are decked with infrared heaters and many of your home security motion detectors are actually "detecting" infrared.

It's nothing more than a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum of energy with wavelengths just a scosh longer than visible light. Human eyes can't see it but snakes (and Voldemort) can.

However, with a special lens, some cameras can photograph in that spectrum – and what a site it is! All you have to do in order to show up in an Infrared photograph is be warm blooded! (or have some kind of body heat). You put off heat – you show up, it's that simple. And the more you put off, the "whiter" you appear in the picture; the less, the darker.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroading Home: "Thanks"

Offroading Home has dodged another years worth of bullets and will be around into the next riding season. If it's not the nasties who think that the best way to return the unicorns to the fields and phoenix to the skies is to attack and malign senior offroaders who want to visit Gold Butte; it's the web hosting services who bait and switch to improve their bottom lines.

What many of you don't know is that last year at this time our long time web host, ATT, gave notice that it was "getting out of the web hosting business" – at least for us "low yield" accounts; and, it was only through the magnanimous altruism of the Kokopelli ATV club that our hundreds of maps weren't banished to the isolated recesses of computer back-up disks, never to frolic free on the Internet trails to your computer screens again.

It should be obvious that the thousands of trails on our hundreds of maps have taken almost as many hours of programming and editing and are NOT thrown together willy-nilly by computer programs as done on most other sites. Nor do we take user submitted trails and make money off them. So far, we have still been able to keep the maps and sites fully open and free.

Press to Read The Rest ...

BLOOM ALERT: Spring on Gold Butte

Gordon wins the award for spotting this years first cactus bloom on the Butte and letting us know about it. The Joshua Trees usually begin to sprout their fragrant lilac-like fronds skyward about this time; but, the number and amount varies with – who knows. Four years ago there were blooms all over the area. The following two years… not so much. We've just made it through the wettest, coldest winter in four years around here, so we should be in for a great display! If you've never see the Joshua Trees in bloom – you ought to.

Offroad: Gold Butte - Middle Area for Seniors

Absolutely anyone who has been on Gold Butte more than once in the past three years will immediately recognize the devastating effect the "Great BLM Barricade Project of 2009" has had on Seniors ability to visit sites they have been to for years and years.

Add that to the "landscaping" and "corrals" the fiends of Gold Butte have inflicted on the area and people who have lived here for years can't even recognize the place even if they could get to it.

Even though the Great BLM Trail Closure decimated accessibility to seniors, this post describes a full day ride through the Middle Gold Butte riding area, full of great color and things to see (if you can hike)… and to remember (if you can't).   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Middle Gold Butte For Seniors.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

GEO-tography: Reflections

I'll bet not more than one in ten of us actually "see" the topic of this GEOtography post when we are out riding. We can be looking right at a magnificent reflection and still be completely oblivious to it's existence.

We probably see more of them, or at least are more aware of them when we are looking at photographs; but, up close and in person – not so much. Most of our brains have been trained to tune them out as distractions. Until, that is, we take the time to just "stand a spell" and take in the view. If we decide to "really" look at what we are seeing they pop into existence as if by magic!

These photographers have captured "Reflections" to the "umpth" degree! As I think you will soon agree.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroading Home: on Google Earth

Some years ago now Google gobbled up a small upstart company whith a good idea: Panoramio. It was a company which developed software that would allow people with pictures to share – professional and wannabe alike – to geocode their shots with latitude and longitude then upload them to their servers for others to see. Their idea? To cover the earth with photos of actual places to go beyond what you could get with a flat map.

Once the company had succeeded enough to make it obvious that this was a good idea, Google made a couple of developers very rich… and happy! They bought Panoramio and added it to the growing cadre of "add-ons" to their second "cash cow" product – Google Earth.

Offroading Home has been using the service for years – it's a good place to "hang" your trip photos for others to see and the background is the actual earth instead of a wall.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Geo-tography: Time Exposure

In this series of posts about examples of "geo" related photography we are trying to get acquainted with some of the examples and techniques from the "pros" (either intentional or otherwise) which might give us ideas for our own photographs. Ideas which, perhaps, might subconsciously sink into our brain and down into our camera arm and make the photographs we take a bit more representative of where we've been – so we can show them to our friends too and not just our family (who have to endure us.)

A post or two back we took a look at some photos people had taken in the "dark" and used time exposures in order to just get enough light to make a photo show up. And you remember that it was really fairly easy. All you had to do was set your camera for a longer exposure and/or "open" the lens up (increase the aperture number) a little more. The big caveat was, and it was a BIG one, that you needed to use a tripod in order to prevent the "shakes" from blurring the picture.

Press to Read The Rest ...

BLM CLOSURE ALERT: Update (UPDATE)

Within minutes of posting our last post about the defective BLMs closure maps - Offroading Home received a copy of the response from "Chuck" Patterson about a reader's request for extension. His response and it's inadequacy is below:

Press to Read The Rest ...

BLM CLOSURE ALERT: Bear Lake TMP (Update)

Thanks to a vigilant reader who actually read a previous post and acted upon it - the BLM has released, on an individual basis, a Google Earth based map of the trails in the Bear Lake Travel Managment Plan under consideration for closure. A mere two weeks before final deadline for comment unless an extension is demanded and granted!

It's a victory, but a small one. I'm not sure how many of you recognized that the Pocatello BLM Field Office, under the direction of Dave Pacioretty [dpacioretty@blm.gov - (208)478-6340], has chosen to do their maps completely different than any other BLM field office has done in the past - and not in a good way! Charles (chuck) Patterson, the Recreation Planner [cpatterson@blm.gov (208)478-6362] is the person managing the TMP.

Instead of giving us a file of the routes they INTEND TO CLOSE under each of the "proposals," their maps try to obfuscate the issue and "spin" it into "these are the trails which will be left open" under two different scenarios. That means that in order to even make sense of what the BLM is trying to do it is UP TO YOU to look at one map and TRY AND GUESS WHAT'S MISSING!!

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroad: Gold Butte - Virgin Mountains South

Probably one of the "best kept secrets" on Gold Butte (and there are many) are the trails north of Whitney Junction into the south side of the Virgin Mountains and toward the "Natural Area."

It is completely understandable, given the many things to see and do on the Butte, that people would go whizzing by "the Junction" without even looking up at the moutains. But if you are looking for a different kind of ride, sticking in the Whitney Pockets area may be a good deal for a change of pace.

First of all, the view is grand. You can see all of the upper Butte riding area clear down to the lake. And there are the red Aztec Formation sandstone rock cliffs, similar to those down at Valley of Fire. And, you can get at least an overview or "grand scheme" mental map of where else you've been. Also, the area has "adventures" in its own right.

Press to Read The Rest ...

BLM CLOSURE ALERT! Bear Lake Travel Managment Plan

For some months Offroading Home has been preparing a post comparing the various citizen unfriendly, if not intentionally deceptive, tactics the BLM uses against offroaders in general and senior riders in particular. It's not quite ready yet but an urgent matter requires this short post about yet another BLM "Travel Management Plan" which is underway. This time it's for the massively popular Bear Lake offroad riding area.   [A more in depth discussion of this TMP is available at: Offroading Home Forum.]

The "Travel Management Plan" – you remember, that is what has nearly universally become the BLMs euphemism for their Democrat-Harry-Reid-backed closure of all offroad trails in America. Legally they are required to do it with full disclosure and include citizen feedback; however, BLM offices have gotten "spin doctoring" and subterfuge to the level of an art form.

We will have more to say about it in the future; but for now, all offroaders, especially those in the area, need to know that:

1- The Pocatello Field office, under the direction of Dave Pacioretty [dpacioretty@blm.gov (208)478-6340] has set a comment deadline one month away – MARCH 24, 2011.

Press to Read The Rest ...