I didn’t go on that drive yesterday–at least, not to where I wanted. We passed through the gate and approached a creek crossing, and Traci and I decided we didn’t like the looks of the road and the weather, so we turned back. Instead of going home, however, we drove further up Price Canyon, and took the turnoff to Ford Ridge. The road wasn’t as good as I expected–there was a lot of exposed bedrock along the way that was really rough on my car. We got to the top, and it was just beautiful up there. There was a benchmark among the radio towers, so I took a picture of that, and I took quite a few pictures looking back towards the highway and looking south towards Consumers.
After that, we headed east along Ford Ridge to another peak that was supposed have a benchmark at its top. That road wasn’t as well maintained as the main road, and I really beat my car up on that one–one of my mud flaps got knocked off by a rock, so I need to re-attach that when I get a chance. I went as far as the road would take me, then hiked the rest of the way while Traci and Michael stayed in the car. The hike looked deceptively easy from the car, but as I hiked up, the place that appeared to be the top turned out to be a knoll that was only a quarter of the way up. When I finally got to the top, I couldn’t even see the car, and our FRS radios could barely reach each other. The benchmark was supposed to be a triangle chiseled on a rock embedded in the ground, but at the summit was just a huge pile of rocks (wide, not tall). I spent 45 minutes looking around the area, then digging through the pile of rocks, but I never found the benchmark. I was freaked out for a second as I first started digging through the rock pile. I picked up a rock, and there were hundreds of ladybugs crawling all over each other in a huge mass. Under nearly every rock I picked up was a similar crawling mass of ladybugs, there were probably hundreds of thousands of them within a 20 foot radius. It was quite strange. I’ll post some pictures of my trip soon.