Westwater Trip April 2013

Mom, Dad and I decided to go to Westwater again to see if we could see the Elk again and to see if we could locate the memorial spot of Uncle Wayne's Crash Site.  Only problem was that Grand Junction got 6 to 8 inches of snow that morning that I was headed over and they were going to meet me at Westwater.  We decided that I would just head to Grand Junction and we would reevaluate what we were going to do.  As I traveled home I noticed that the desert was pretty dry.  So we loaded up Thursday and headed out.  Worse thing we dealt with was the wind and very cold temperatures.  BRRRRR!

 Even though it was cold there was still signs of Spring with flowers and calves.  We enjoyed watching the calves as they ran around and played.

 It seemed like we would always find the same grouping of deer and elk each day so I started to give them names.  The group above was the orphans.  

 I took the picture close up so you could actually see that they are actually elk but from a difference they looked like tree stumps.  I called this group the big group because they never seemed to split up.

 We saw this big group in several different locations.

 The group below was called the Welfare group because they were always on the ranch waiting for a free meal :)

 The day we went to Uncle Wayne's crash site you can see the difference what it looked like at the bottom of the canyon at the ranch vs the higher we got up. It was fun to play in the snow but it was cold, cold, cold!!!

In the picture below I am several feet lower on the ridge than Dad.  From the information we had from pictures and GPS Dad is standing near the memorial.  We looked around to see if we could find any pieces left but with the snow and mud it was really difficult.