A Drive to the Ghost Town of Hamilton

A drearily cloudy, windy and chilly day today with infrequent sightings of the Sun.

In the afternoon I took the Honda CRV out and decided to drive the 10 mi or so along Forest Road 401 to the ghost town of Hamilton. 

The Forest Road was in pretty good condition so traveling was fine, though the weather looked worse and worse as I approached the town's location. 

It started raining/hailing soon after I got there but I got these pics before I made it out of there just in case the road conditions got bad. 

Yeah the big shed building isn't of the same era.  Not sure what it was put up, perhaps later mining efforts?

As you can see I didn't spend a lot of time in the town, as I was leaving to get ahead of the worsening weather. 

Some more info:  Wikipedia 

Made it back to the campsite with no issues, though I did get hailed on as I drove along. I'm glad I did not take the TW! 

Spent the rest of the afternoon inside the RV out of the steadily cooling weather. It's supposed to get to 32° tonight as a low. I'll be moving out tomorrow towards the Fallon, Nevada area.  Not finding Nevada very scenic in terms of leading me to spend more time in between stops.

I'll probably be in the SF Bay area Tuesday evening.

Boondocking through the Weekend at Illipah Reservoir

Now in Nevada.

I woke early, and noted the ground was moist looking at the campsite. A brief walk around showed it to be slightly yielding but not muddy, yet. The forecast is for some more rain over the weekend so I decided to move on. 

I drove through the first significant town along US Highway 50, Ely, and found it to be meh.  I stopped only for a picture of the US 50 sign noted in the Mindtrip.AI route.

US 50, this portion of it anyways, starting from perhaps 20 miles east of the Utah/Nevada border is indeed light in terms of other vehicles.

Lots of hilly/mountainous terrain as well.  Uma, the VRRV did OK though slowly up the inclines at times.  I kept the engine at around 4000 rpm so as not to strain it too much.

The couple of BLM sites I checked out near the town of Ely proved to be quite small and not great. So, I kept on going to the Illipah Reservoir campground run by the BLM, which is also free to use. 

Much better, this will be a good spot to spend a couple of days.

Pics of the reservoir from my camper:

There was a small herd of cows being wrangled by three cowboys as I was setting up my campsite: 

The sites are quite large, I guess to provide plenty of turnaround room. There's only one roofed picnic bench and wind barrier per site so hopefully no one gets the idea to share with me. 

Later in the afternoon, with temperatures in the high 60s those still quite windy, I went out on Yagi my TW200 to take a look around. 

Found a trail that led up a hill that overlooks the entire campground and reservoir: 

I then came off the hill and went out along a trail to the hilltop on the other side of the reservoir: 

There's a trail that leads away from the reservoir and into the hills and valleys where Illipah Creek feeds the reservoir. I only went maybe a couple of miles and then I turned around. 

Here is Yagi on the spit of land near the actual dam where fishermen like to try to look apparently: 

I was shooting into the sun in the above picture so I will try to get a better one tomorrow morning when the light comes is at the right angle.

Altitude: 6834 ft.

It was very windy 

Boondocking near Sevier Dry Lake Bed, Utah

Making my way closer to Nevada, short of 3:00 p.m. I was close to the border but not quite so I decided to stop for the night at this BLM site on US 50. 

It's a site depicted on allstays.com, but really the site itself is just a small parking lot with a pit toilet and a picnic table, it's all there for a nearby trailhead to Notch Peak. 

I decided instead to backtrack a little bit closer to the highway to this wide open parking area: 

Sevier Lake has apparently been a dry lake bed for most of it's known history since it's recording by the Spanish as Lago Meria.  It is apparently Utah's second largest dry lake. 

I am not sure whether I will stay more than one night or spend the rest of the weekend here. It is the Columbus Day weekend after all, so some folks will be taking Monday off to do some camping I think. 

Here's some pics that I took this morning since I was up before dawn:

All this space in the area, and this guy decided to set up his camera next to my site for pictures of Factory Butte as the sun came up: 

I'll Make a decision in the morning as to whether or not to stay here the weekend.

The sunset wasn't too bad...

Very windy here today.  Altitude: 4777 ft.  Hot when sunny, comfortable in the shade or when cloudy.

T-Dub'ing the Factory Butte Special Recreation Area

Today's sunrise light on the butte:

I rode Yagi, my '87 Yamaha TW200 (Tdub), exploring more of the area to the E/NE of Factory Butte this morning.

Found another candidate campsite for the next time perhaps, with a side view of the butte.  It's also where a trail junctions Factory Butte Road, the main access road into this recreation area.  This trail proved best for getting one pretty close to the base of the butte!

The back side of the nameless rock formation near camp.

Can you see Uma?  The view of my campsite from the rock formation above.

I also went back to the cool rock formation that seems to draw every touring cager group to it.  I wanted to get some different angles:

Other exploration riding was NE of the butte, into the Middle Wildhorse Mesa Wilderness.  You can ride a pretty good way into the wilderness but since I was alone I stopped at Muddy Creek.

Do you see what looks like a field full of broken glass reflecting the sunlight? 

Turn out to be some kind of quartz material, very thin, shape very much like thin broken glass. 

Returning from the wildhorse wilderness, it was time for a late lunch and and afternoon the resting by the RV. Temperatures were nice, especially in the shade. The sun was quite bright and strong as well which seems to have brought some strong gusting winds to the area. 

Rode out again after 5:00 p.m.  I headed to the nearby OHV called Swingarm City.  There's a rock formation called The Castle:

Returning to the entrance to Factory Butte Rec Area, a quick ride up a small Mesa to get this view:

I stop that the rock formation near the campsite for a couple of artsy shots:

 Tonight's cloudless sunset:

Boondocking near Factory Butte, Utah

It's been almost 6 years since I was last here, back in late October of 2019. 

I changed my mind about staying another night at the Rabbit Valley campsite of yesterday. I wanted a little more scenic a location, what do you think? 

I am camping in the OHV open area a couple miles north of the campsite I use the last time, that is closer to the highway.

Presently at 4843 feet, down from 5430 of yesterday's campsite.

Only one other camping rig so far, a Class A with a bunch of OHV toys around it, they are about half a mile away.

Tourists keep driving up to this unnamed rock formation next to Factory Butte; luckily they're using a different access trail.

Near 3PM, sunny and warm with a temperature of 80° but nice and cool in the shade. 

At 4:30 p.m. I went riding to catch the sunlit side of Factory Butte. 

Trouble was the route I took ended up being bordered by a long, long, ridge wall that while interesting blocked sight of the butte. 

I ended up riding this road all the way to Cainesville on State Highway 24.  At that point it was just pavement back to the turn off for Factory Butte Road.

Here's the sunlit view that I had been shooting for: 

As Sunset approached, there were a couple of paragliders? flying about nearby.

A cloudless sunset ensued: