More from Utah

Well, I’ll continue tricking out more pictures from the recent Utah Trip. This post will focus on Gold Creek landing strip which was situated at the base of the Henry Mountains. Farther up the mountains was an ill conceived development that had 2 houses in it, and down below the airstrip was an old, abandoned ranch.

First things first, the runway at Gold Creek was soft, and after landing the plane got stuck when it sunk into the surface a little bit. Given that a similar situation in a dry lake bed had led to a prop-strike less than a year ago, Dad was understandably concerned, but with two of us, and some digging and pushing we were able to turn the plane around and point it downhill for a take off.

Here is a panorama of  the airstrip and plane, with the Henry Mountains in the background.

After situating the plane we walked down to the ranch that was about 1/2 mile down the hill from the airstrip we spent sometime exploring the old ranch, which consisted of 2 outhouses, a 2 bedroom shack with large porch, some fences and several rusted out cars.

This panorama shows a fence and a car with the old shack in the background, just to the right of the Henry Mountains:

Here we have one of the outhouses in HDR:

And here is the view through one of the old cars:

After the ranch we walked back past the airstrip, up hill to a development, creatively named “Gold Creek”, where things hadn’t quite gone as well as the developer expected. First off, lets clarify that this “development” was at least 3 hours drive (mostly on gravel roads) from a town of any significant size, and the airstrip was definitely “rough”… nonetheless, someone had put in roads, and lots and a water system and a centrally located pool.  The picture below shows the pool with the mountains in the background… I wish it was full… I’ve always wanted to swim in a gold pool…

Against strong odds, 2 lots at Gold Creek had been purchased and built upon. We had a snack on the deck of one (the nicer one) and it wasn’t hard to see why this place might appeal to some (solitude and views).

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