GEO-tography: Lakes

More and more these days a criterion we look at when we decide where to go for a ride into the back roads, is: "Oh look, it goes right by Lake Whatchamacallit."

If rivers and streams are the noisy adolescents, lakes have got to be the wizened old grand dad whose porch you'd like to sit a spell on. They've got a whole different feeling to them, and it's a rare one indeed that doesn't make you wish you had your fishing pole with you… and your folding lounge chair… and a cold drink.

Snapping a photograph or two to bring back and show the family can even make your ride through the desert seem ten degrees cooler. And getting a good one shouldn't be too difficult as most body's of water are quite photogenic.

However, there are a couple of points that you need to watch for when you point your camera in their direction. They are most often characterized by their quiet beauty or reflective charm.

Reflections

While you are trying to focus on the water, actually take a moment to LOOK at it; what do you see IN it? I mean besides the ducks. Often it's the reflections in the water that make a photograph stand out.

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Lakeview Mine Loop

What I'm calling the "RZR Gang" – Hugh, Vicki, Jerry and Gordon – took their latest offroading adventure down to Lake Mead, only this time onto the "back porch."

The western edge of the Gold Butte peninsula is probably close to being the most remote area within 500 miles. (How remote is it?) It's so remote that even Harry Reid doesn't think he needs to include it in his "let's block off Nevada" wilderness bills.

Of course there is the fact that the Park Service pretty much already owns between three and ten miles depth of shoreline all around the lake under the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (NRA).

There used to be many people down that-a-way working in the several mines along the shore – including the one that they visited on this trip; but now about the only warm blooded things there now are the wild burrows.

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Offroad: Mesquite to Overton Nevada

We've posted before about the offroad trip from Mesquite to Overton touching both the Virgin River and the historic Old Spanish Trail, but the trip is such a yearly tradition it deserves re-gifting.

The first of this month (Jan 2013) Hugh took Gordon and Mary, Jerry and Chellen and Craig and Vicki on the trip and stopped at Sugar's for lunch. Often, because the trail is so dusty and filled with "whoop-de-do's", the wives don't go; but, after the recent rains everyone got out on the rigs.

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GEO-tography: Nat Geo

Where better to go for photos of our "Geo" than Nat-GEO? National Geographic has been and is still the premier magazine for photo essays about anything on the planet.

What you may not know is that photographers from all over the world submit photographs to them, hoping to jumpstart careers, get noticed, show off or just share a truly unique moment captured fortuitously. And they regularly make selected photos available for people to download as wallpapers.

Here is a selection of the best of the best of National Geographic desktop wallpapers, including some from the National Geographic photography team and some submitted by their site readers. The photographers’ comments are also included here.

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A Good Year For RZR 900's - Scanlon Ferry Road

Being very unhappy with the way his last rig was designed and thereby performed, Gordon determined to buy the new RZR 900 this year – and he did. Apparently, at the same time, Hugh became enamored with the machine and replaced his old rock-climber as well.

Arriving at their favorite riding spot for the winter season (Beaver Dam/Mesquite Nevada), they found that Steve had also made the same decision. Hugh and Gordon took their rigs on a "shake-down" ride up to East Canyon (which we already told you about) and then all three of them went down to Scanlon Ferry road – to test out their brakes!

They wrote that the trip, which normally takes merely a full day's ride, became a tad eventful – well I'll let Hugh tell you about it…

"Steve, Gordon and I went for a ride yesterday (Dec. 20th, 2012). We all have 900's and it was Steve's first trip out with his.

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East Pass - "Officially" Closed

It's one thing to have the BLM put up a sign and close a trail; but, quite another still to have God do it. One of Hugh's - and I suppose mine as well - favorite rides from the Mesquite Nevada area is to run up Beaver Dam Wash, through the Tule Desert past Sam's Camp and over what people call East Pass back into Nevada.

Well he and Gordon just attempted their annual ride and he's just sent in a report that "As of Dec. 17, 2012 East Pass is now officially closed. See attached pictures for documentation."

I've posted a previous article and map of the East Pass route. Thanks for the photos Hugh.

101 Places To Go Things To See In Utah

This is a post about what to do and where to go that is interesting in Utah. It didn't start out that way. I was actually looking for some information about deserts.

I peeked into a site called Desert USA and stumbled upon several lists of places to go – things to see in the desert countries and realized there were a lot of those things in Utah (and the surrounding states of the west); and many of them I have seen.

Actually there were lists of things in a lot of states but, for now, I just limited my search to Utah and found 101 of 'em! (That is if I count correctly)

For your holiday perusal I've sort of cleaned up the list, categorized them a bit and added some links. See how many you've been to and I'm sure you'll add a few to your to-do lists.

Can you add any others to the list? If so, add them in the comment section below.

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GEO-tography: Moon

It's that time of year again when, thanks to our wonderful congress, we get to see the moon rise when we are driving home from work. In fact, depending upon where you live, the dang thing may have already been out for hours.

That got me to thinkin'. I've never done a GEOtography post about the moon. The thing is, for photographers, it's a difficult shot. And once you get all the camera setting down pat, the kind of photographs you can take are a bit limited.

However, the photos you can take come out quite stunning. One does quickly discover however that its just as much about what else is in the photo as it is the moon. In fact that's what gives variety of these things and sets your shot apart from those everyone else has already taken.

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GEO-tography: Halloween 2 - Ghosts

It has almost become a tradition to do a Halloween post here on Offroading Home. We haven't done much riding this summer, and the posts have gotten a tad sparse, but we cannot go against tradition and disappoint Tevia. For, without tradition, what are we?

You remember that last year we highlighted photos relating to "Devil" of some sort: Devil's Cove, Devil Mountain, Devil's Fire – and so forth. This year we simply turn to Flicker and are inundated with photos relating to: "Ghost."

Not simply just Casper, but a whole host of photos documenting how often plants, trees, snakes, towns and ships are named after the specter.

We sorted through a thousand or so photos and selected the most interesting for your seasonal perusal – with preference given to those representing a location, geography, flora or fauna.

Clicking on the photo will take you to the original photo where there often can be found a more complete description.

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GEO-tography: Manipulations

I ran across a professional photographer and retoucher from Sweden named Erik Johansson in my surfing of the web the other day. The guy has an amazing talent for producing incredibly realistic and creative photo manipulations.

Of course he uses Photoshop, or some such photo editing program, but he starts with real photos then massages their little 'pixels' into some quirk of his bizarre imagination that surprises, if not outright stuns, an unsuspecting viewer.

Now, I know that they don't all have a direct relation to the "Geo" which is what these posts are all about; but, once you see them I think you'll agree that it's just too tough to break up the set.

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Utah Arapeen Tail System Map Update

It's one of the reasons that the economies of the small central Utah towns are still solvent – the extensive offroad trail system that they have learned to promote.

The Utah Arapeen Trail System is in the Manti-LaSal forest and the city fathers of the many little towns (with a bunch of coaxing from both local businesses as well as offroaders) have come to learn just what a valuable asset the trails in the surrounding hills are to their local economy.

Anyone traveling in central and southern Utah will quickly come to realize that the towns are all spaced a day's journey by horse and wagon apart, a legacy of simpler times.

All of the towns have local ordinances which welcome offroad vehicles to traverse their roads with almost none of the hysteria or inordinate rules that accompanied similar considerations in Mesquite a couple of years ago.

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GEO-tography: Oceans

There is nothing quite like living next to, or near, an ocean. From the temperate temperatures, to the wild weather; from the (mostly) free swimming to the "magnetic" sand; from the great growing-seasons to the constantly limp and damp bed-sheets; from the… well, you get the picture.

The one thing they all have in common however, is: Grandeur – and terrific places to take pictures because of it; especially if you go a little off-road.

Just about every category of photo we've highlighted here in GEO-tography is amplified at least double near the ocean. The crags are craggier; the colors more vibrant, and more subdued; the clouds more widely varied; water more in-your-face; and the sunsets, well, let's just say that you've never seen one until you've seen one across the watery horizon.

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Offroad: Mormon Mesa-St. Thomas

This ride was a good days outing from Mesquite Nevada in a mini-van around the historic Mormon Mesa and St. Thomas overlook. The ride was 125 miles around some breath-taking overlooks and red rocks with a thousand feet change in altitude. At the time of the ride the dirt roads were dry and fairly well maintained. Lake Mead was still below the historic town of St. Thomas and hiking trails were being well used.

Seeing the Virgin River Valley from the top of Mormon Mesa with Gordon and Hugh wasn't enough for me. Even though they were dirt, the roads seem to look like they'd been scraped in the not to distant past so we decided to try to get the family van up the mesa from the Overton side so Mom and Dad could see it too.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Offroading Home.]

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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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Offroad: Five Canyons Trail

Forty-three miles and a full day will get you out of Mesquite and into the mountains for a great loop around the five major canyons in the Bunkerville Range of the Virgin Mountains; plus a picturesque valley thrown in for good measure.

This is a ride which can easily be done without trailering from Mesquite. It loops from Water Tower Lane in Bunkerville to North Valley before running into the Parashant via the 4,900 ft Lime Kiln Canyon and returning via White Rock Road. It also happens to be what we think is the very best get-acquainted "sampler" ride one can your visitors on.

Although there are roads and trails going up all the canyons which can be navigated by 4-WD vehicles, the trail as shown in the free map accompanying this post is best taken on ATVs, side-by-sides and single tracks due to width, camber and turns. None-the-less, it really is considered beginner level (well, one part is a "strong" beginner level due to incline). [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Offroading Home.]

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