From Desert Heat to Torrential Rains

Arches at twilight — amazing.

What made the Mormon pioneers decide the Salt Lake Valley was the promised land?  I mean, it’s a great place to ski but not really all that welcoming.  If they crossed land like that which lies between Moab and Salt Lake, then I now get it.  This has to be some of the most formidable terrain in the U.S. 

Leaving Moab, you pass by Arches National Park, which we explored at twilight.  I’d been to Arches in the 1990s and remember thinking it was much ado about nothing.  Not this time.  Something about seeing those amazing rock formation as the sunsets and the moon rises really is special.

Past Arches,  you climb back up to a high plain.  This one, however, isn’t red rock or rolling sage.  It’s grey like concrete and almost utterly devoid of plant life.  And, it’s big – you’re driving through this moonscape for over an hour before you see some faint signs of life clinging to the edges of man-made canals.  I was very happy for the 30-gallon tank of water in the trailer.  This is no place to be without water, even if its just on the side of the road even for a few hours.

Our route wasn’t taking us directly to SLC but rather to the Heber Valley.  Heber is known as a riding Mecca.  It is also on the way toward Bear Lake, an area I’d really wanted to see from horseback.  Unfortunately, Kurt will need to be back in Washington earlier than expected so, we’d had to cut a number of days from our itinerary.  We’d shed a night camping at Fish Lake and we were losing our day on Bear Lake.  Heber City was still a stop, but now it was just an overnight before a long haul to Idaho.

I called Brenda of KB Horses to let her know we were coming a day early and she was very agreeable.  The address she gave us was to her home.  When we arrived, she had us put the boys in a pen next to three of her own yearlings (one expected to sell for $100k in a year).  Neither pen had cover but it was cool and breezy so I didn’t think too much of it.  We fed the horses, went to dinner and to bed at our motel in town.  And, that’s when it started to rain.  I worried about the boys for a few minutes but then thought – it’s August in Utah, it can’t last.

I woke later in the night.  It was still raining.  It had been raining for hours and the boys would have just been standing in it.  Horses instinctively turn their backs to the wind in a rainstorm to keep their core dry, but that only works for awhile.  I was out of bed by 5:00 and driving through the dark streets of Heber City, hoping I’d find my way from memory. When I got there, I climbed in the bed of the truck and ripped through our camping gear for our lantern.  What it showed me was my very wet boys pressed to the paddock fence shared with the yearlings.  The five horses were trying to share body heat.  There wasn’t any way to dry them, but I fed them grain and hay so they’d have calories to burn then guiltily slunk back to my dry motel room.

Kurt and I were back at Brenda’s by 8:00.  It was still raining.  Brenda was out with the horses, as she’d apparently been three times during the night.  Kurt hitched up the trailer.  I pulled beach towels from our bags and we rubbed the boys down.  They were shivering and very eager to load. Brenda felt terrible.  She didn’t want to take our money, but I insisted.  She’d accommodated our changed schedule.  She couldn’t control the rain.  Her own valuable animals had been out in the same.  Driving the steep climbs and descents out of the Heber Valley, there was standing water on the highway and I wasn’t the only one taking it slow.

It was a major drive day thanks to our abbreviated schedule.  We stopped a number of times to check on the boys.  We’d closed down much of the airflow in the trailer to allow them to dry without too much wind.  But we didn’t want the trailer to get steamy.  Our approach seemed to work.  The boys quickly dried and we opened more ventilation as the rain petered out as we crossed into Idaho.

Arriving at River Sage Stables in Bellevue, at the base of Idaho’s Sun Valley, was like pulling into heaven.  The ‘stalls’ we were given were more like covered, matted corrals.  We let the boys rest for a few hours, then saddled up and took them for a short ride to stretch them out.  All seems good.  We’ll know for sure that they weathered the storm truly unharmed when we get back to River Sage today.