9/20/24 The Pando Tree DAY 11

 Jones High Country RV Park, Nephi UT

Travel Day! Breakfast and then a walk through the new looking neighborhood adjacent to the campground - good sized homes w/lots of toys & equip (ride on mower, Bobcat, off road buggy, boats, toy haulers, RVs).  Also kids motorized or foot powered cars parked in their  driveway!







One place even had a small train set up!




9:16 AM departure from Jones High Country RV Park (great for just an overnight, very quiet).

From Nephi UT we headed out to find Pando!  More on Pando later…   




We use the app RV Life for a few things, one that helps find the route that is best for your type of recreation vehicle.  As directed by the app to find Pando, we took UT State Highways 28, then 24 and a turnoff onto what turned out to be a dirt Forest Road and then we were unintentionally off-roading with the trailer!  We finally reached the end of the forest road,  turned the app off and selected our own route!  Whew, we were happy to escape the forest road with no damage to the trailer and not getting stuck on a remote dirt road. 


from Bill...

Wow, what a mistake... I mean Adventure! This road would have been a bit of an adventure with just our 4x4 pickup WITHOUT  the trailer... With the trailer it was pretty nerve wracking. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures.

As it turns out, there was a perfectly good, nicely paved road, right to the tree and a beautiful lake and marina.

Another Roadside America find was the Pando Tree. It’s one of the world’s largest organisms.

Approximately 8,000-13,000 years ago in what is now the Fishlake National Forest at about 9,600 ft elevation at the south end of Fish Lake, an Aspen seed sprouted.  Over time this seed has developed into an aspen clone made up of over 40,000 branches which appear to us as separate trees.  However, they are genetically identical parts of a single tree covering 106 acre expanse.  Pando is so big it was not discovered until 1976.  It was named Pando, Latin for “I Spread”.  The identical genetics was confirmed in 2008. Aspens are beautiful trees with distinctive white bark and roundish leaves that tremble - or quake - in the breeze.  It was wonderful walking amongst the trees.

Pando is one of the world’s largest organisms weighing nearly 13 million pounds!.

Here's more info on this incredible organism and the challenge it's facing: 

https://www.sciencealert.com/earths-largest-organism-is-slowly-being-eaten-scientist-says

 






This is the gated access to the protected area








  Fish Lake Marina
                                              


   Fish Lake
                                                         






A beautiful lunch stop!














Great Clouds!


From there we continued on to Singletree Campground in the Dixie National Forest, UT (near Torrey UT).   It took a while to get into our reserved site as someone else was already in it!  We talked to the Campground Host and he worked out a new site for the other person and after a couple hours we were in.  We also discovered we had a arrived a day late! (that's on me... they other guy just took an empty spot even though it said reserved... he complained a bit about moving saying that he was "pretty dug-in"... in his van...musta had a rug out or something to be so dug-in *snark*:BH) We spent some time reviewing the itinerary and made sure we had reservations for each night through the end of Sept. Singletree is a very nice forest campground and it rained during the night.  I like hearing the rain fall on the roof of the trailer.














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