#6: [26-Sep-21]

#5: [11-May-16]

#4: [14-Jun-12]

#3: [10-May-09]

#1: [18-Mar-01]

21-Apr-2001 -- April 21, 2001. Saturday. Yard-work day. The day dawned cloudy, rainy, cold and gray. Hooray! No yard-work today! We decided to take a ride.

We first searched for 39N 111W, which is near Molen, Emery County, Utah. The young lady at the gas station said, "There’s only about seven houses there. Who are you looking for?" "Well, we’re not looking for a ‘who’ but for a place." "Oh. Good luck!"

First we followed the road and then we followed the GPS and soon found ourselves in an area called Dutch Flat Desert. The road conditions deteriorated into two tracks running through low-growing vegetation. At 38 57.0 N and 110 59.1 W the rain clouds were approaching. We didn’t want to attempt a 3-minute-of-arc hike through unknown territory in bad weather. We left this confluence for another day.

We still had hours of daylight left so we headed further east. I was driving and Diane was sleeping. The GPS approached 39N 110W. We left the freeway at Exit 173 which is east of Green River, Utah. We had to backtrack. Old US Highway 50 ran roughly parallel to I-70. We headed west. We tried one side road but it was extremely rough and slow going. We returned to Old US 50 for more backtracking. Perhaps we would have to leave this confluence for another day.

Surprise! A much better side road presented itself. We jumped at the chance. We passed through two gates but were careful to close each one behind us. The fences protect the railroad right-of-way. Luckily, this road provided a railroad underpass; otherwise, the tracks would have been a significant barrier and would have added greatly to the hiking time.

When the GPS reached 110W we stopped. We were at 38 58.3N. We figured we could make a 1.7 minute-of-arc hike in the remaining two hours of daylight. The hike was easy but longer than we expected. When all the zeroes came up on the GPS we were within about 10 meters of a small pile of rocks. Perhaps it was the work of Kent Oldham. We took photographs and left. The clouds were lowering and daylight was fading. We followed our own tire tracks back to Old US 50. No one else had been on the road.

This is extremely remote and barren country. We saw a few cattle but wondered at how they survive. There was no water and precious little grass for feed. We saw no wildlife, but did see many, many holes in the ground, evidence of small burrowing animals. Our thanks to the confluence.org website for this opportunity to explore!