Of Roads And Clouds.

Having got the BMW RT running for the recent Capitol Reef Classic bicycle races it was time to stretch its legs. I decided to follow Janet north to her place near Logan which is 300 miles north of Torrey up near the Idaho border. Well, it's 300 miles if you take the freeway, I had other plans, the mountains called. The question was 'what will the weather do?', we've been having some violent afternoon thunderstorms and more were forecast. I left Torrey only 2 hours later than planned at about 10:30am, not bad for me. Immediately I was slowed by discovering UDOT oiling Sweeper Madness, should be in great shape soon but smelled bad and had a 10mph pace car today for several miles. Never mind, from there on it was the open road.

As I approached Price on UT10 I began to see some interesting clouds on the Uintas to the north

but my route jogged me west on UT191 which had a few sprinkles and fabulous views of the boiling madness to the northeast.

Just past the summit I came across an ironically amusing scene, a pickup pulling a trailer had overheated and the driver was standing in front of it pouring water somewhere. The radiator had a sheet metal decoration obscuring probably half of its surface area - red and orange cutout flames!

As I approached Duchesne (that's 'Due Shane' for non Utes) the clouds again looked menacing - there's a mountain range behind there somewhere.

As I got further west it looked inevitable

but then the road entered the National Forest (where the road was delightfully sweepy) and just over Wolf Creek Summit (9500') everything changed, it got about 10 degrees cooler and the clouds lightened up.

The wonderful UT35 took me to Francis and Kamas where I picked up the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway - UT150

I had lunch by the Provo River

After lunch I reached the lakes and spotted something on the far shore of Lilly Lake

A moose with its calf in the reeds on the shoreline

From there it was upwards eventually cresting at Bald Mountain Pass (10,600')