Air Quality

In the first week of September, we rode twice in Mill Hollow. The trailhead begins about 20 miles south of Duchesne, Utah in Indian Canyon.  On our first ride, the air was still smoky from a fire in a nearby canyon. (When no structures are endangered, the Forest Service does not attempt to extinguish fires begun by natural causes.)
With thunderclouds gathering and visibility poor, we didn’t go farther than the first ridge. On our second ride, the fire was either burned out or blowing its smoke somewhere else.  The sky was blue and almost all of the haze had vanished. 
We ran up on another rider who joined us on the trail, an unusual but welcome occurrence.  (He turned out to be a neighbor to our neighbor’s brother.  It’s a small people world in eastern Utah’s Uinta Basin.)

 We rode to the first ridge, around the side of a mountain, and along another ridge to beautiful viewpoints.   (In the enlarged photo, you can see a ribbon of trail stretching to the farthest ridge.)  Though our people world is small, our Utah land and sky is enormous.
To view skies from all over the world, click here.