Timm gone for 5 days

Timm left at 4:55am for a men's retreat from church on Cedar Mountain. It's called Wild At Heart. Some 55 God loving men will rejoice in the Lord, be manly men, ride ATVs and some will get baptized in the frigid waters of Meadow Lake. Timm will be leading half of the guys on an ATV ride Saturday thru the beautiful Utah mountains. There are so many guys this year they are splitting the ride and running half of it in reverse. Getting everything ready at the cabin is the chore for today. Tomorrow they will pre-ride, Friday all the guys start coming in. They will have a busy weekend. Enjoy, my love and let the grace of God shine down on you.

Memorial Day...part 3

Thank to Alan for sending over some pictures so y'all can see.

Here are some of the burros we saw almost daily. This group actually had 7 in it at the time. Never could get very close to them. They run pretty quick too...not like the lazy ones you see in Red Rock waiting for food by the roadside.

Taking a break on the trail.

No place to turn around up here guys...stay on the lower level.

Another old mine structure...how did they decide where to look for gold anyway. Did they say "This place looks good I guess, let's try here."?

This is the Carrera Marble Quarry. Each tier is about 10-12 feet tall (I know, it looks so tiny in the picture). So gold isn't the only thing they looked for around here. We even found the fountain in the middle of the Carrera town sight. Awesome! They ran wood piping from Rhyolite for the town. You can still see some of the remains from it. Apparently, Carrera was a busy place.

Memorial Day...part 2

Yes, it's a desert...watch out for snakes! Please don't remind me. Fortunately, I didn't see any. Keith ran over ones rattler on the trail...does that still make him a rattlesnake...hmmmm. Well, he's a sneaky snake now so watch out for him!

This radio tower must be fairly new...there was no conduit running from the tower to the building. The Nevada Test Site isn't too far from Beatty...I wonder what it will be for? Tracking aliens? lol

We had to run through Rhoylite everyday to get to one destination or another via the back roads, can't ride ATV's on designated streets in Beatty...yet. Nevada really needs to look at Utah and how much of a boost to the economy ATVs are to small towns...but I will get off me soap box now. :o)

The Beatty RV Park was the spot to be each evening. Yummy potlucks with way too much food, campfires for everyone to gather around, and lots of fun conversations. It was so nice to come back to the RV's with the air conditioners running to keep them cool, and endless water for showers. That's quite a treat for us dry camping, gravel pit staying ATV group. There was cell phone service and WiFi there too. Some of the girls even drug their laptops out to the campfire to check up on and add friends to their Facebooks. It was nice to have a few more of the comforts of home for a change. We look forward to the upgrades they will be doing to the RV park for the next time we stay there.

Memorial Day Vacation...part 1

We took a couple of extra days for Memorial Day and headed to Beatty, NV. What is in Beatty you ask? Most of us only stop there for gas and potty break (and some candy from Eddie's World) on trips between Reno and Vegas; but, for those that like to explore and wonder there is lots to see in the desert around Beatty. Well, that's us and a few of our friends (14 joined in for the adventures). Each day we took off from the RV park on our ATV's to explore and find interesting stuff...and we weren't dissapointed.

Rhyolite is a ghost town just a few miles outside of Beatty that was a hopping place in it's hayday. Banks, bars, brothels, hotel, and a school among the bunch of buildings that remain in this once thriving mining town. If I remember correctly, the volunteer at the bottle house (yes, someone used bottles to build his house) said there were 53 bars in town. No wonder that guy had plenty of bottles to build with...a great recycler! That's my hubby, Timm and my BFF, Liz in front of the Mercantile in Rhyolite. I'm in the picture with my hubby that overlooks the town and the valley beyond.

Out in that valley roads wonder off the highway up to the mountains to many mining ruins. This is one of them. It's hard to believe that folks could and would drag such heavy materials up the mountain side to construct these pieces so they could mine for gold and other minerals. We found more than a hand full of these structures. They are kind of a hopper where the ore would be dumped into then it would slide down thru the shoots to fill trucks, ore carts on train tracks, etc so it could be hauled off and be processed. What a hard life that must have been.

Here are some old buildings still remaining from another day's adventures. They are for some sort of storage I think...to small for people. They were next to a larger building that had collapsed. There were several large structures like the one above as well as several others, but seeing how my camera battery died I can't show them to you. I was so bummed. So I'm waiting for photos from friends to show you the rest.

Look for part 2 of this adventure in a few days...when I get more pictures.

Long weekend trip

We've headed out for the long weekend...a few days early. I'll have pictures to post when we get back. Exploring some ghost towns and mines around the Beatty area.

Enjoy your weekend!

Cleaning up the yard

I know, it's not very exciting...but we did have some fun pulling the sheds down with the truck. I can't get my video to transfer to my computer but you can see both of them come down on my Facebook page if you'd like to view them. Look for Crystal Martin on Facebook, I've attached a link also.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1321249653&ref=name

Pre-ride...part 2

Timm, Alan, and Mark headed back up to Utah on Saturday, April 25 to finish the pre-ride for General Steam next month. I'm still not allowed to ride (post surgery) for another month so I missed out. They all loaded their quads on our trailer and enjoyed the travel together. The weather was nice when they unloaded and took off an a new pre-planned route. They got up the trail 8 miles and hit a severe storm with strong winds that about blew them off their 4-wheelers at the saddles. They encountered rain, sleet, hail, and some snow so they turned around instead of heading into the storm further. They made it back to the truck, soaked and cold...and defeated again. I was shocked when they showed up at home at 1:30pm. After moving the muddy, dirty quads to their own trailers, they enjoyed lunch, complained about the weather, laughed it off and relaxed before heading home for the day. Pre-rides are normally so much easier than this one and now it's the principal of the matter...they will make it to their destination on May 16...one way or another.

P.S. Sorry they didn't take any photos this time around.