In Search of Eagles

We took a four hour drive searching for eagles this weekend. Our friends found a nesting pair on the west side of Utah Lake so we went out to see them ourselves. In all, we drove about 150 miles around the west desert through Vernon and into Saratoga Springs. We saw one eagle soaring through the skies just before entering the small town of Eureka. Sadly we didn't find the nesting pair, but we did find their nest in the tree our friends sent us coordinates to. It was a clear day and the mountains were beautiful in the distance. While we didn't get any pictures of eagles, we did snag a photo of large hawk on a power pole. The hawk didn't like us. He kept flying down the road from pole to pole and he'd fly away just when we were about to snap photos. I took this photo from a long distance- an entire power pole away from where we had last stopped. I zoomed in the best I could, but I wasn't able to get the picture as clear as I would have liked.

 Hawk On A Pole

 The Power & The Sun

 View from the West Side of Utah Lake

 Utah Lake View

 Utah Lake View

Eagle Nest

A Ghost Town Kind of Day

We headed to the west desert in search of bald eagles on Saturday (2/5/2017) and decided to check out this little town in Tooele County called Ophir.  It's a little ghost town about 54 miles west of Salt Lake City. The town is nestled in a canyon. Not much there, really. While it looked to have some full-time residents (only three homes looked to be shoveled after the last snow storm), the only road through this little town was noticeably empty. In fact, we tried making our way up the canyon road, but they stopped plowing the road after a stretch making it difficult to continue in the slushy snow. While some of the buildings have been torn down and replaced with new homes, it looked like some of the older buildings were being restored. And I believe you can schedule tours at a mining museum, too, during the spring and summer. Something I would like to do another weekend.

Ophir is pretty. And quiet. Perhaps a little creepy. But I would love it if they turned some of the older little one room shacks into rentals where people could spend the weekend ghost hunting. That would be pretty cool.

Sadly we didn't see any bald eagles. 

 Ophir, Utah - Population 40 as of 2013

 View on our way down the canyon

 The cemetery sits on a steep hill on your way into town

This was taken at the edge of the cemetery overlooking a cliff