June '18
We had to get to the Wolcott Sage Ranch by 9:30 via mostly interstate, but once of I70, a few turns marked by mile sticks and then onto Horse Ranch Trail, one of the dirts that is surrounded by sage brush and then more sage brush in every immediate direction. Part of the hillside was charred and still smoldering from a wildfire that started the day before by the hand of a few fellows who thought, despite the drought, it was a good day to target shoot explosives. Sometimes you are left to really wonder to what lengths some will go for a very brief entertainment and what I've always called ego-flare. Emergency vehicles from more counties than we could count lined a turnoff along the road and men were either driving or walking back and forth up into the approachable crevices of the dry and burned out hillside. Later, throughout our horseback ride, two helicopters passed overhead in one direction to scoop water from a small nearby lake, then back over the smoke to do what they could to counter a fairly stiff breeze that had begun to stir up just in the past few hours. This was a relatively brief and small introduction for us to this rugged terrain, the kind of stuff that is usually seen in the distance at about 70 miles per hour on I70, but never understood. We could see that this was quite a recreational area previous to the wildfire, with one old RV laying a tilt along the roadside with no one in it. To the other side, a group of trailers had descended with dirt bikes and I could out of the rear view mirror a snake of trails rise up through the dust along the lobes of other foothills. A grouse station stood along the way as well, with words that said 'grouse wings here,' I suspect as precaution against hunters taking big birds and simply letting the feathers fly along with the tumbleweed. We were heading to the horse ranch for a two hour horseback ride, but there was also side by ATV available, some camping, and now a wild fire. Off the beaten track, that was for sure....
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