Eureka!

Well, wanderlust struck early today. Around 11:30 am, to be precise. I decided to just go for it. Had it in my mind for a while now to head back out to the Eureka, UT area, and decided that today's temps were far too perfect for me to not go. (Especially since the weekend weather will be adequately crummy yet again.)

Took surface streets and a bit of interstate until I was near West Mountain. At that point, I noticed some ATV trails heading up into the foothills, and decided to see if I could cross to the other side on dirt instead of by road. I did. It was a little bit hairy in a couple spots, though.

Top o' the Hill
This was the top of the first fun stuff. A lot steeper than it looks, but certainly doable. I was a bit nervous, though, riding on the stock Trailwings. I just got it well into first gear, then grunted my way to the top. Once I got there, I stopped long enough to take this pic and calm my pulse.

Going Doooown
After farting around on a few hilltops, I finally spied this route down the other side. It didn't look that bad from above, it looked pretty much like a road. The "road" quickly shrunk to ATV size, and almost a bit smaller in places. I wouldn't want to do it on an ATV for fear of wedging myself in there somewheres. (On the GPS files, this is marked as "Eeep.") What's the antenna on my bike, you ask? It's a 2m ham radio antenna, that's currently not attached to anything. I need to get a SMA-BNC connector so I can use it with a hand-held. Either that or I'll wire up a waterproof mobile radio to it.

Still going down.
My motorcycle is actually parked in the same place as the last pic. I walked a bit down the trail to make sure it wasn't going to do anything fancy like dead-end for me. Would not have liked to try to turn that thing around in those cramped quarters. A note: at the bottom of this goat trail, you'll come out at a canal. I rode up and down the canal, and there was only one easy exit, marked as "Cross Here" on the GPS file. From there you just follow south-east until you hit pavement.

No idea.
I really hate Blogspot's WYSIWYG editor, FYI. Anyway, I've seen this many times on different rides/drives out to Eureka. Not sure what it is. The only road that it looks like might head out there is marked as No Trespassing. Shame, it looks very interesting. Someone has obviously been out there as there is graffiti on the buildings.

Fire House
Next to the Fire House in Eureka is this old rail car. There's another car used to maintain the railway sitting near here. Dunno why I didn't get a pic of that. *bonk* Eureka has a lot of little things like this, tributes to a more active time.

"City Hall"
I don't think it still is. I'm pretty sure it isn't. There's a mannequin in the top right window, keeping an eye on the town. The large bay to the left of the door is a fire truck bay. That's probably not in use any more, either.

Back of City Hall

Jailhouse Rock
This is attached to the back of City Hall, as you can see in the previous photo. The door was ajar, but I didn't really look in. The wind was so bad that I was more interested in getting back to my bike before the wind knocked it over.

Silver City Cemetery
This cemetery is the biggest tribute left to the mining downs that ran dry, dried up, and blew away. Going between the headstones, it was pretty easy to see a pattern of the lives claimed in the area. The vast majority of them were children.

Twins
These twins died only about a month after being born.

Four of them.
This was the saddest thing. There were 4 of these slabs, side by side. They said the following: "Baby Girl Steele 1916", "Baby Girl Steele 1917", "Lily Steele June 8 - June 16, 1919", "Albert Steele Feb. 28 - Mar. 14, 1920". I have a friend that lost a baby. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose 4 over the course of 4-5 years.

Silver Pass Road - Behind
This is a great dirt road running form the Silver City area, back to the highway east of Eureka. There a a LOT of little mines dotted all over the landscape, trailings litter much of the hillsides. I'd imagine most of them were just test mines to see what was there.

Silver Pass Road - Ahead

Mine Elevator
This one was pretty close to the road, but there are "NO TRESPASSING" signs everywhere. So, I didn't ever get off the road to get a closer look. No sense chancing it. I like that this one had the cage intact that the miners would have used to travel up and down the mine shaft. You've gotta have nerves of steel to hop in that thing and descend into the cold & dark.

West of Utah Lake
After running around the Eureka area, I decided to head back in. The wind was just too strong for me to want to stay out much more. There seem to be some reasonable riding places on the west side of the lake, but there have been so many shooters there the past couple times I've been, that I don't really feel up to riding around in the hills and hearing guns booming off in every direction.

That about wraps that up. Today was a fun ride. Would have ventured around a lot more if the wind weren't howling so much. There are so many dirt roads in the Eureka area that I constantly want to go back and see what I've missed. If you go, pay attention to your maps. Garmin Topo shows just tons of mines in the area. Make sure to watch out for No Trespassing signs, too. Curiosity isn't worth getting fined or arrested for. If you're into it, there are a lot of geocaches in the area of Silver City and Eureka. I only went to one, but there's plenty to look around at, if you're so inclined. GPS files, as usual, follow:

GPX File
Google Earth File