Utah Wins Best State Website

Hey… I've got some news for you. As part of running a blog for the past five years, I've had to become fairly acquainted with the issues and techniques of web development. And, as such, find myself frequenting the blogs of "opinion leaders" in the area of web design and development.

One site that I visit fairly regularly is: Design Shack run by Josh Johnson, Joel Bankhead and David Appleyard. In addition to writing articles about how to blog effectively, they occasionally scour the web themselves and give ratings and rankings to sites they find in some particular category – and they are very well thought of.

One of their recent articles was a ranking of the websites run by each of the 50 U.S. states. Now these sites are government web sites, published by the state as their "official" presence on the web – not only to represent the state but to be the "gateway" for it's citizens to contact and obtain services from the state. Just take a guess which state won the very top honor.

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GEO-tography: Mountains

Black, white, red, blue, brown, rocky, smokey or superstitious – the one thing they all have in common is: they're mountains!

Continuing our series of posts about GEOtography, today we have a collection of photographs that we found on the web about mountains of all sizes, shapes and colors.

Despite their ubiquity around the globe, these photos pretty much tell the tale that: mountains are usually, really off-road.
[Remember, like always, these are full photographs so be patient while they load.]

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Lake Bonneville and the Great Salt Lake

A Google Earth Map of Lake Bonneville is Available

Since the advent of computers I must admit that one of my former favorite hobbies (reading books) has gotten the short end of the stick. I mean, once Wozniak came of age I began finding myself more and more often startled by the 2 am hour while sitting at the keyboard than in the recliner with books like "Hawaii," "Space," "Alaska" and "Mexico."

Ahhh… Michner…   now there was an obsessive/compulsive after my own heart.  When he would write a book about an area he would begin with one asteroid hitting another and forming, what else… the earth.   Then, he would touch on nearly everything in-between like a part of that collision eventually making its way to the gaping maw of a super-giant black hole and succumbing to its gravity; but, not before giving up a tiny gamma ray particle, blasting back in the direction it had come at the moment it was being torn asunder.   Me… I just want to tell you about a female trout in labor far up an isolated arm of a world which seemed to consist mostly of water.

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Autumn Leaf Loop - East Canyon

Our "Autumn Leaf" tour around the Wasatch Range concludes this post as we reach East Canyon after having traveled from I-215 in Immigration Canyon, around through Mirror Lake in the High Uintas and out through Evanston Wyoming before going over Monte Cristo past Causey Reservoir. Backroads all the way, it none-the-less is easy for our offroad-challenged street vehicle and covers nine counties in Utah and Wyoming.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Autumn Leaf Loop]

We're now looking at the leaves going out of Huntsville over Trappers Loop on our way to Weber Canyon where we'll head to the Morgan exit.   It's been a slightly grander "Sunday Drive" to see the leaves than we originally bargained for; but, hey, these are the the autumn colors we're seeing and this is the mountains!   And besides, we remember all these places back from the time when we were less chronologically challenged (or at least tell ourselves we do) and the government was less extensively exclusionary of seniors.

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Autumn Leaf Loop - Mirror Lake

Recently, we took a grand-loop tour up Immigration canyon, through the Uinta Mountains by Mirror Lake, around through Woodruff and down Monte Cristo, by Causey Dam, into Huntsville and over Trappers Loop, up Weber Canyon to Morgan then over East Canyon until… finally, reaching Immigration Canyon again.   [Those of you who have never heard of these places, trust me, it's a long way for a day-trip.]

A bit more than one deliberately sets out to take in one fell-swoop; but, once you get going, it's hard to stop… until you can't, and it's just plain "shorter" to go around than go back.   Especially when you think you remember all the places you're seeing – and even more especially when you're talking about the Uinta Mountains where most of us had spent many a summer.

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Autumn Leaf Loop - Causey

If you live in Utah between Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo [and almost who doesn't in Utah] then you may be one of the thousands who are looking for a good "Sunday Drive" to see the leaves. Most likely, the rest of you can see the leaves out your window.

The Rocky Mountains, specifically the Wasatch Range, being full of maples and deciduous trees of all kinds, as well as heavy amounts of conifers which act as 'foils,' sports the most grand fall color display of anywhere west of the Appalachian Trail.  [I say that because having lived in New York I remember the blaze the sugar maples make each year.]

They are beginning to turn now that we've had a few cool days to accompany the cooling nights of fall.   Just like in Vermont, however, they don't turn all at once or in all places at once; so, if you make your drive long enough you can avoid being disappointed.

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The Great Basin

The Great Basin is an endorheic watershed, if you know what that means… for that matter, its still one even if you don't know what it means.

In fact, it's the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in all of of North America! And, is particularly notable for both its arid conditions and its widely varied Basin and Range topography.

The North American low-point, at Badwater Basin, is less than 100 miles away from the contiguous United States' highpoint, at Mount Whitney summit.

Endorheic Basin

"Endorheic" is one of those high-falutin' Greek based words (meaning "within" and "to flow"); which, to us normo-falutin' people, translates into: "a closed drainage basin which retains water and allows no outflow to other bodies of water such as rivers or oceans." It may also be called an "internal drainage system."

Normally, water that finds itself in a drainage basin eventually flows out through rivers or streams or permeable rock – ultimately winding up in an ocean.

An endorheic basin… not so much. In such a basin, the center is lower than any possible route to the ocean, and to top it off the rock isn't all that permeable. So any water that gets in pretty much has only two options: evaporation and seepage.

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USGS Map Waypoints: Montana

I bet no one saw this coming: I completed the file with all the USGS Waypoints for Montana. Neither did I.

Why did I do Montana before Arizona or Colorado, Offroading Homes usual group of states with offroad maps? One reason – I haven't heard anything from readers in either of those states for a long time and I had a brand new trail submission from Montana.

Besides, lest we all forget, this is the state with Yellowstone! They even have a county named: Lewis and Clark!

So 54 hand-coded, mind-numbing counties and 65,249 waypoints later – "we've got mappage!"   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Montana USGS Features]

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Offroaders Awake - Endure (Embrace) The Politics

The single most destructive thing a responsible offroader can do is to sit back and do nothing!!!

Seniors are especially vulnerable to the militancy and deceitfulness of the environmental groups who seem (this election year) to have governmental "backdoor passes" due to the likes of Obama, Harry Reid of Nevada and Susan Holecheck of Mesquite.

Those of us who feel like we've "paid our dues," and now are entitled to let the "kids" do all the heavy lifting while we go out and do all the unfinished exploring of our world that we deferred until the kids were raised – we've got a rude awakening!

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Lichen Unto Us - Gold Butte Full Of It

How many of us ever stop to look at Lichen? I do, but I have to confess it's pretty much just in passing - even on Gold Butte.

We mostly think of the tiny, colorful stuff in relation to wet, damp, cool places; but, I'm here to tell you it's all over the desert as well. Naturally, I don't have to convince riders in Utah, Colorado, California, Wyoming or Arizona that their rides are full of rocks with lichen attached.  But, Nevada… well… that's an equine of a different wavelength.

For them I present — DATA! Look at the photo of Ladybug Rock in Cottonwood Wash to the right. Ignore the ladybug if you can and look at the rock. I can see at least three kinds of lichen. Can you?

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Not Gonna' Happen This Year

The one thing that I look most forward to all year has blown up in my face… the annual ride up to Kennecott overlook with my bud Jeff and his kids.

That's what you get, I guess, when you put it off till the fall like we did. The weather turns cold and the kids don't seem to want to go out in it. We've done the ride ever since Herriman became summer snowbird headquarters.

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New Area - New Trail

That's right — an entirely new tab on the website navigation bar! "ALL-ELSE" contains a master Google Earth file for all those submissions which don't fit in the other major offroading areas. [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: OffroadingHome/All-Else]

The first offroad track to populate the new master map was submitted by Bernie Cook who recently rode the Cambell Lake Loop ATV/UTV trail in Wyoming.

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