Who Left The Damn Gate Open

Today was a two part plan. The first leg was to check out Panther Creek, off Panther Creek Rd, off Highway 88 just up the street from Cooks Station (after coffee of course). Turned off the highway and wandered down a fairly good paved road. Somewhere in the area of about 2 miles in, I came across the group below.

Temporary Road block

Which brings us to the title. There wasn't any "Open Range Cattle" signs anywhere. The only thing I saw was a cattle guard across the road, but a lot of the roads have them. I eased through them and continued on my way.

Hide behind the tree, nobody can see you.

I drove the eight miles to the T in the road and a turn toward Salt Flat Reservoir (14 miles), I still hadn't found anything that looked like a creek so I kept going. Just after the turn, the fairly good paved road turned into a rutted dirt road. Now I like a good dirt road as well as anybody, but 28 miles (round trip) on a rutted dirt road that was worse than the first half mile of the road to my house (which is in terrible shape) was not something I was interested in this morning. So I made a u-turn and headed back out. The group of cattle above was still there, still in the road, and had been joined by several more when I got there. This time I had to wait a while for the cows to move their posteriors out of the way.

There was a fire in this area a few years back (with them naming fires, it's hard to find a particular one on the web and I couldn't find when this one was) and the recovery has been slow, but it is happening. So those of you in Colorado, be brave the forest will come back. 

Lot of dead standing from a fire

With only one deer (in the middle of the road of course) to dodge, I made it back out to the highway and turned East toward Bear River Reservoir. Got to the dam, parked, and carried my gear to the lake. Low and behold, I ran into one of the members of the Amador Flyfishers, but I wasn't surprised because I've run into Barbara before fishing at Bear. We fished, we talked about last Saturdays picnic, and talked about Tenkara (give her a chance and I think she'll be a believer). About an hour into the fishing, she asked if I wanted to go over to the cove and fish there. The cove turned out to be the same cove that my friend Glenn parks his motor home at and where I picked him up back on the 10th. Only difference was there was a lot less water today.

Barbara fished dries and I alternately fished lures and Tenkara. The only fish I saw was a drive by from a little (Rainbow maybe) that was this [-----------------------] long. At Noon I said my good bys and headed back down the highway into town to run a couple of errands. 

So today I payed the skunkman. That's OK because they call this insanity fishing not catching.

I'm planning on spending tomorrow and Friday cutting up two of the six the trees that I showed you on the July 12th post. Once I get done with the two trees I've been working on for four days already, I'll take a couple of pictures of the pile of rounds. You'll be surprised how big a pile two trees makes. Wait until you see the pile from six.

Till then.

Mark