This map has the two parts of the Saturday ride on it, first I did the yellow road out and back then the red loop counter clockwise. This ride was to the north of the other 3 days, just south of Manila as you can see from the map.

I started out by taking the Sheep Creek Geological Trail in the truck with the CRF in the back of course.

The idea of the trail is to display all the various layers and formations as you go up the very steep sided canyon, I took pictures of each sign with the appropriate formation but it wasn't very interesting looking at it again. Highway 191 which heads north and uphill from Vernal also has signs for each layer with little snippets of information about the layer, things like "coal found here", "dinosaurs roamed", "fossilized giant squid found", and so on. The canyon is very pretty, the loop is mostly paved with very short stretches of gravel and lots of big pot holes!

The Morgan Formation was at an interesting angle up a side creek.

It's quite a twisted piece of geology.

Right at the top of the loop I found a place to leave the truck and set out on the CRF, my intention was to ride out to Spirit Lake but within a mile I saw a sign to the The Utah Lookout and had to go see

Attached to the bottom of the tower was a plaque which read as follows "Ute Mountain Fire Tower. The Ute Mountain fire lookout tower was built by the CCC in 1937. It is unique as the only structure in the entire state of Utah operated for the purpose of fire detection and supporting observation and living quarters on an elevated tower". Surely that isn't trying to say its the only fire tower? Just the only one with living quarters on the platform, however it's true that I haven't come across any other fire towers in my Utah wanderings.

Unfortunately the tower was closed and didn't look as though anybody had been up there for a while, it was actually quite rickety. I climbed the steps to just below the platform which was locked shut

The road to Spirit Lake was quite civilised.

Looking back at the fire tower from the west

Nothing eventful happened on the way to Spirit Lake, it was a well used and maintained dirt road.

Spirit Lake (10,166ft) - Spirit Lake was really beautiful, this picture does it no justice at all

At the far end of the lake there is a rustic lodge with a small restaurant and cabins available, it would be a great place to spend a weekend away from it all. At the end where the picture was taken there is a spillway where a couple of people were fishing for trout, when they had gone I walked along the bank and could see the fish swimming in the stream. I took a whole load of pictures of the stream and spillway, I really want to go back with the SLR.

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