ATV

With so many places to ride in Utah, I don’t usually look for places to ride outside of the state. However, Island Park near West Yellowstone seems to be a popular place among Utah residents. I have friends who have been trying to talk me into riding these trails for years and last summer seemed to be the right time to go.

HYRUM — A Pleasant View woman is trying to identify the occupants of a pickup truck that reportedly contributed to her son’s serious injuries by causing his ATV to plummet into a ravine Saturday night in a Cache County campground.

LOGAN — Authorities are investigating an ATV accident near Mount Logan that left a 24-year-old Tremonton man dead and another person injured.

When I first heard about the Black Dragon ATV Trail, the name alone was enough to put it on my have-to-ride list. I was all about slaying the Black Dragon on an ATV.

JERICHO — An investigation is under way into an ATV accident in Juab County that killed a teenage boy from the Salt Lake City area.

I am not new to hunting for topaz. I know that you can find pieces bleached clear from exposure to the sun in the washes at the base of Topaz Mountain near Delta, Utah. However, I wanted the specimens whose amber color had not been washed out from exposure. That meant getting to unexposed rock.

My son is a mining engineer with access to serious mining "stuff" so I told him of my plan to blow up part of the mountain and that I needed some dynamite. He said I couldn't have any - Rats!

I talked to my friends who got excited about the idea of a hunt for topaz. After doing some research on the Internet they suggested that we look for small trees growing out of rocky areas. We could then use hammer and chisel to get to the booty. That sounded like a plan to me. I loaded my Polaris two-up and with my wife, we picked up our friends and their Rhino in Orem and headed for Delta.

With all of the Moab OHV trails the Northern Utah ATV Trail Riders could have picked to ride, I was comfortable with the Hook and Ladder Trail. It did not sound life threatening like the other choices -- Hell's Revenge, Metal Masher, or Steel Bender.

Traveling south of Moab on Highway 191 past Wilson Arch, we turned east on State Road 179 where we unloaded and started our ride. Traveling north, we soon found ourselves climbing rock benches through scrub juniper. Sandy trails dotted with patches of slick rock took us around sandstone hoodoos and over landscape for which Moab is famous.