Here
there be Dragons! . . . . A short photo essay of Utah's Burr
Trail.Here
there be Dragons! . . . . A short photo essay of Utah's Burr
Trail.
Ever since Lake Powell was born
we've been there. In fact, we were there at its inception looking
down from the high observation area to gaze on ant workers and
tiny, monster trucks and bulldozers building the massive dam.
When the lake formed, Wahweap was its only port, but later, when
the probing, growing fingers of the blue lake reached Hall's
creek and the Bull-frog basin, BullFrog became our access point
of choice.
In the beginning the road to BullFrog was only a dusty, gravel road and the dust clouds would billow up from our family's 'rig' for what seemed like miles. Then came pavement and the way was easier and a little shorter. But always, just before we wound down into BullFrog, or climbed back out on the way back, a road beckoned to the west. At first it was just a jeep trail - for a long time it remained so. Then it seemed to be graveled and later part of it was paved. Dad would nod knowingly when we'd pass that road - "There's the road to Notum and the Burr Trail, and out there, somewhere, is the way through 'The Swell' and on to Boulder Mountain" - and we'd all nod knowingly back.
"Someday," we thought, "we're going to take that road and see where it leads."
But we never did . . . until just a little while ago.
Four of us - three generations - squeezed into Dad's embarrassingly little-used Jeep and headed south and west. Our destination: The Burr Trail . . . before it was all used up, before it was totally tamed, before . . . well, before the chance was gone forever to make a memory. For up ahead, a winter snow storm bore down on us, each in his own time, whose hoary breath sought to silence such ramblings as ours and to freeze such 'memory making' until the coming of a brighter, gentler dawn . . .
Dawn, that morning, at Lake Powell's Bull-Frog basin.
Next: Long Canyon . . .
