The ride that almost was

Well we woke to the pitter patter or rain drops on the camper roof. I checked the radar and didnt seem like it had rained too much and it looked like it didnt rain to the east at all. So we kinda hung out, howie made pancakes with unsolicited input by pooh bear, as we waited to see what was gonna happen and let things dry out a bit. Pooh managed to fix up howie's brakes, big kudos there. Since it had not rained to the east and nothing was showing up on the radar we decided to do the Bench Creek trail ride. Pooh Bear made the right choice and just went fishing on the Provo river, right across the street from the campground, supposedly world class trout fishing. He got all dressed up, looked like a model straight out of the Cabelas or Orvis catalog. Howie and took the 20 minute drive or so, got parked and headed down the road toward the trailhead. The weather was not looking healthy on the horizon but we kept going. Lack of any kind of signage for the road up to the trailhead cost a couple miles of paved road but we made our way back and up to where the single track took off up the creek valley. At that point it was looking REALLY ugly up on the ridge that we were heading to. We waited a couple minutes to see how things were blowing but it started raining and everything that was blowing over the ridge was still really ugly so for only the second time in all our trips, we let the weather keep us off the dirt. It started raining a bit more on the road ride back and thunder was echoing around the valley big time. We got everything packed up in the truck and by the time we were a mile back down the road it was POURING cats and dogs, wind howling, we made the right decision. Instead of heading back to camp we decided to explore some of the area that our new friend from the bike shop told us about yesterday. Although we didnt have the detailed map, we had the GPS and the Utah state atlas so up we went from Midway. It was a bit of a crap shoot to start but turns out we headed up the right road. It quickly turned to dirt, but a nice dirt road, at least as good as those in Rothrock. Right after I commented (and jinxed us) on that fact they turned less than passenger vehicle passable. The Big Tire Jeep would have made things a little less nerve wracking at points, but the Beast, captained by Howie, ended up doing just fine
We were passed by a handful of throttle twisting dirt bikers and a couple of jeeps while we were parked taking pictures.
An educated guess at a four way intersection, some more rough dirt road and we finally made it back onto pavement headed towards the Sundance ski area. We saw some some really sweet single track trailheads that we plan to hit tomorrow. Up until just this moment we had Pooh believing that we did some monster 50 mile plus gravel road ride on the bikes. He just started to catch on, and is not sure what to believe at this point. Anyways, we arrived back at camp just after Pooh got back from fishing. He claims to have caught a bunch but had nothing to show for it. We threw the hot italian sausage on the grill and howie made up another batch of potatoes. The Def Lepord CD that we have been listening to EVERY night during meal prep finally seems to have bit the dust so I managed to make my Ipod broadcaster work with the trailer's sound system so we have some new music in the camper tonight.