An adventure

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT: We had a little adventure last Friday. I decided to take us up over a mountain out of Koosharem, UT (I love these names) going to Monroe, UT - it looked like a short-cut on the map that would save us time. First off, the road quickly turned to gravel - something the map did not indicate. Do we keep going? We decided, yes. Then the road got pretty rough, rutted and rocky. The Corolla was being put to the test (remember - it has 330,000+ miles on it!). But then just as we thought, this is too much, the road would smooth out again. We kept going up and up. The view got pretty great, but the road was not so great. The map said seven miles to Monroe. We went almost seven miles and came to an intersection, with sign posts pointing to various places - none of which said, "Monroe." They were all places that were not on our map at all. Where were we? We decided to go just a little farther. The road turned into something more like a trail. Finally, a pickup truck came along and I stopped it, and asked the driver, "Could we get to Monroe on this road?" "Nope! I wouldn't advise it. Not in a car!" Oh dear! So, we turned around and went all the way back to where we started. That little caper cost us an hour and a half! HOWEVER, it was beautiful. My dear Ellen didn't complain. She was glad we dd it! And there were rewards for sure. We got this beautiful view:

We went by this lovely grove of aspens:

We saw this beautiful wildflower which we think is the Cardinal Flower:

We saw prickly-pear cactus in bloom:

And we had a long stretch where we didn't see another human being.