We brought the bikes and I had 'googled' mountain biking trails near our campsite. There was a nice long one called Heber Mountain and it was 17 miles round trip from the reservoir to the top of Heber Mountain. James was smart and drove us up the dirt roads until we were only about 3 miles from the top and then we rode the rest of the way.
Well, James rode the whole way.
My bike got tired, so I had to push it the last half-mile or so to the top. But I made it!
There isn't a fancy sign to say you're at the top, but the road ends and we did find this little post-thing that says there is a $250 penalty for removing the little post-thing.
The view was really beautiful and once I recovered from pushing the bike up a mountain, the ride down was hilarious fun!
Video - Jessi mountain biking
Video - James mountain biking
We had lots of time to scout out our next campsite, so we went exploring. And even though it had a really, really pretty campsite along the river bank, we decided not to spend the night in Hades.
Instead, we drove a crazy dirt road called "Blind Creek Road" along Granddaddy Mountain and some really spectacular switchbacks. We discovered that navigating by road atlas is almost navigating blind. We had no idea how steep and twisty the road would be, or that it would be a dirt road most of the way. And when we got close to the campground we were looking for - we discovered this beautiful dam:
And the atlas didn't show a body of water there at all! I checked the date of the dam construction against the copyright date of the atlas and the dam was built before the atlas was printed. It was a very good surprise to find the Upper Stillwater Reservoir and even better, the road from then on was paved. We picked a campsite with a view and James grilled up some burgers and corn on the cob. Yum!
In the morning, the water level was lower, or there were more logs blocking the spillway because the water patterns were different.
We also drove past Strawberry Reservoir and Deer Creek Reservoir. I think maybe Utah has more reservoirs than Idaho based on the number we passed this weekend. And we ended our drive by going over the Guardsmans Road from Midway to Brighton to check on the snow levels and play some Frisbee in the Solitude parking lot.
I do like that Frisbee.
