The High Uintas

So as Kathryn mentioned in a previous post I headed out to Utah with my friend and manager Joe Konen for our annual backpacking trip. While we usually have others join us, this year everyone had things to do. We fly into Salt Lake City on Saturday and after picking up our rental car headed to Evanston WY. I had called ahead and made sure there was a good sporting goods store by checking with the park rangers. When we arrived the men working knew nothing of what flys to use in the area where we were heading or, more importantly, they did not have fuel for our stove. We bought an assortment of flys that paid off but more on that later. We headed to Walmart and they also didn't have fuel. We loaded up in the car and called the next Wally World that also didn't have fuel. At this point I was wondering if these folks were preparing for something I wasn't aware of. We headed back to the Evanston Walmart thinking we would just buy a Coleman stove but they were out of those also except the ones that look like brief cases. At this point the other Sports store was close. We settled on buying a Sterno stove but they were out of fuel. However, at this point we were forming a bond with the staff and they found 3 sternos in the back (No regular fuel in the back). We asked for a good place to eat and these exceptionally friendly folks sent us to J.B.s which is essentially Shoneys. After all this and a couple beers we headed to the Howard Johnson which was pretty close to camping in itself. The next morning we spend 2.5 hours getting to the trailhead. We started off and it was straight up. 1100 ft in 2.5 miles but the more troubling thing was we never saw 50 degrees and it rained. We had another 1.5 miles and 1000 feet to get over Mt Bald but it was still raining and there was thunder and lightning. We set up the tent to get out of the rain which was 2 degrees from ice (do the math) and waited it out the rest of the day. There was a break at 7PM and we cooked but it was so cold we got back in the tent. I went to bed hoping for a beautiful day tomorrow. I awoke to thunder. Awesome. At 11 we packed up in the gusting wind (forgot to mention that) and headed down the mountain. We loaded up and headed to the desert, tired of the rain. Specifically Dinosaur National Park. There I touched a real bone and we camped and bathed by the Green River. More to come as we packed up the next day and headed to Canyonlands National Park.