Spring Alive and Well in the Uintah Basin

With the snow all but gone, the Uintah Mountain club is gearing up to cure the cabin fever that so easily sets in on us during the long and cold Uintah Basin winters. Below is an excerpt from a recent early-Spring outdoor adventure that UMC member Linda West embarked on. This is taken from the March UMC Newsletter. See the March 2011 Newsletter on the Newsletter page for the full article.

"Even so, this morning has begun (as it often seems to) by standing the old 'comes like a lion, goes like a lamb' saying on its head. March 1st was sunny and mild, the sky deep blue with not a cloud in sight. The winter haze that's now being so closely monitored had been flushed out by the last storm, and it was too nice a day to sit at a computer, even for a noble cause lie the UMC News.

Granted, I did take along an overcoat, knit hat, and gloves for a birding-and-photography junket around the Jensen back roads and into Dinosaur National Monument, and was glad to have them as I stood beside the Green River and listened to the murmur of scattered ice chunks brushing past the still-snowbound banks. Though the river was no longer frozen solid, the landscape still looked like winter.

But along Ashley Creek south of Jensen was a sure sign of seasons in transistion: a big flock of Bohemian waxwings. These birds are sporadically abundant here in the winter, but breed farther north, so their presence showed it's early yet. However their behavior--darting out from the trees, swooping up and down, almost hovering in place like oversized hummingbirds--was clearly that of catching insects on the wing."

So, what recent Spring adventures have you been on?

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The Fate of Old Dinosaur Gardens
Thursday April 14, 7:00 p.m.
Vernal Golden Age Center, 155 S 100 W

As you all should know by now, the Old Dinosaur Gardens may be severely impacted by the movement of the library from its current position to where the jail existed up until a couple weeks ago. Or not; it depends on what the Uintah
County Commission decides to do. We will live with the decision for a long time. Tom will show in photographs what is at stake, and what different alternatives have been discussed.