Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)'s photos with the keyword: Salt Lake

Roughly halfway into the Pony Express Trail, one comes to an area of swamps and lakes surrounded by very dry desert and mountains, the Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge. Just visiting it is worth the drive -- the contrast of desert mountains and swamp, and the variety of birds, were a moving reminder of the need to preserve the fragile ecosystem that we call home.

The west end of the Great Salt Lake Desert abuts a mountain range, the peaks of which were still snow-covered in mid-June. Behind me in this picture is Callalo, a farming area of about 20 farms that dates back to the late 1800's. I took no pictures of Callalo since it seemed to be a fairly private remote area and it seemed that pictures would be an invasion of their privacy.

Further west on the Pony Express Trail, it became very dry, very sparse in terms of evidence of human habitation, and some road signs were missing. In such areas I tend to get anxious about 'what if my car broke down'. At one point, as I was getting increasingly anxious, I noticed a cloud of dust in the distance and then saw a truck coming towards me -- it turned out to be a UPS delivery truck! The driver told me that there was a collection of farms just west of where I was -- and remarked on the antelopes that she'd seen out that day.

Looking back east, as the terrain gets drier.

These and nearby pictures are from exploring the BLM backway called the "Pony Express Trail". My main reason for wanting to explore this route was that it covered a large part of very remote mountain and desert area in the Great Salt Lake Desert that was relatively easily accessible over well-marked graded gravel and dirt roads (which wasn't entirely true, see nearby pictures). I wasn't particularly interested in the actual "Pony Express" dynamics of the route, though it was interesting to read that something that is an ingrained part of our imagery of the West really represented a short-lived financial failure. There are many good descriptions of the Pony Express available over the web, including one on a site operated by the state of Utah. The route is a 100+ mile graded dirt road with no services, so driving it is something that one should spend some time preparing for. But, in good weather it is easily driven in a standard passenger car (in good mechanical shape, with plenty of water and gas), and is well worth the effort just in terms of the expanse of scenery viewed. There are multiple places for starting the route -- I chose a turnoff from Utah 36 that is a few miles north of Vernon.

Up to the Simpson Springs area, the terrain stays relatively green.