Our trip to Scofield

Ron and Judy invited us to Scofield for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  We were excited to go and opted to come home Saturday night.  I had obligations on Sunday, as did Neal, plus the choir is pretty slim and counts on Neal and I to help.  We are the few in number who can actually read the notes.  Also, Annie was teaching her RS lesson today and I wanted to hear her lesson.  We left Thursday morning stopping at the golf course for Neal and Ron to play 18 holes of golf while Judy and I went on to the cabin.  Neal hurt his shoulder and couldn't play golf the rest of the week.  Ron thought he was having some issues with his breathing (he's had a heart attack) so neither one of them wanted to push things.  We spent Thursday evening just relaxing and playing bridge.

Friday morning we got up, played some bridge and then decided to go for a ride to see some of the history of Scofield.  We came to a road that would take us up to what was called Winter Quarters.  This was a part of Scofield that housed one of the working mines back in the late 1800's and early 1900s. On May 1, 1900 there was a mine explosion killing 200 men and boys.  Leaving 175 widows and 265 children without fathers.  If you are interested you should go to the internet and read about the disaster.  Of course, the mine was permanently closed and this area of Scofield became a ghost town.

We could see the old hotel (what's left of it) way up this dirt road.  Judy had always wanted to go up there so we drove part way and came to an area that is usually gate locked.  But because of the deer hunt the gate was open and so we proceeded to drive further up the road.  We past some hunters on 4 wheelers coming down and they said the gate would not be lock and that we could drive up to the next locked gate and then walk from there to the hotel.

What an incredible outing we had.  We walked through the "No Trespassing" signs climbing through the fence and on up the road about a mile.  These are some of the pictures I took.  The first one is Neal and Judy walking just ahead.  The second one of totally an optical allusion.  It looks as if the hotel if leaning forward and the trees are growing out of the roof.  But as you look at the close up pictures you will see it is exactly opposite!

 The picture below shows you that what appeared to be the front wall is actually the back wall!  We were all surprised when we got up there.  There are only two walls left standing.

 This picture below is looking down on the hotel.

 I hiked up the road further than the rest to discover this left over building.  I have no idea what it was used for.  But, I thought it was very interesting and apparently was part of the buildings of Winter Quarters.

A few more pictures as we were walking back down to the car.

 Neal loved the tree below because it looked like a Quacking Aspen trunk was the trunk of a pine tree!

This is the fence we climbed through ignoring the No trespassing sign.  We just hoped we would't get caught and thank goodness we didn't.  The walk up the road was so worth to see all we saw.

Saturday we just took it easy at the cabin.  We cleaned and help Ron and Judy get some things done to winterize the cabin.  They will have to make one more trip down Halloween weekend to drain the pipes and officially close it for the winter months.  Judy and Ron have said that they would love to have me bring some of the family down next summer.  We will have to plan something.