The plan today was to head up into the mountains on the western side of SLC – the Oquirrks. Allen had rung the DOT to confirm the road up through Butterfield Canyon was open and of course when we got there, large concrete barriers confirmed the road was closed contrary to the DOT information. It was probably closed later in the afternoon yesterday due to the expected snowfall later in the day.

 

Plan B was to head south and around the mountains. Along the way we spotted a Golden Eagle on a fence post and grabbed some in flight photos.

 

First stop was Fairfield which was the site of Camp Floyd – a government army fort when there was some conflict between the Mormons and the Government in the 1800’s. I managed to grab my first Utah geocache finds here.

We continued around the mountains taking the various canyon roads to see how far we could get up to the various old mine sites.

 

One of the more interesting roads took us into the town of Ophir which was old gold and silver mines but is now some expensive homes as well as weekenders. They have embraced their heritage and have put together a old historic mining town. We even spotted herd of deer wandering through.

 

The trip took us through Stockton, Tooele and Magna before getting back home to Draper.

 

It was starting to cool down and the clouds were rolling in. It looked like it was finally going to snow, even if it was a month late. As it had been so warm ove the last few weeks, any snow was not expected to accumulate but the snow kept coming down. We were using the BBQ as a grill-o-meter and the snow was stacking up. After the storm headed into Colorado, it had left 4 inches of snow.