So one might ask, if this is a silent story then why are you writing?  I don’t know, it’s just what I do.  If I mentioned this in a previous post, some of which feel like are way in the past, then I apologize for repeating myself.

Somewhere in a box I have quite a few pictures that are similar to these.  All over the mountain west are abandoned homesteads.  I stopped, and wandered, and shot many of them in my travels during the 80s.  They never failed to fascinate me in that, “if these walls could talk” sort of way.  In my head I started to think of all of them as silent stories.

On my first trip up to Bryce Canyon I saw this place back from the road in the Sevier River Valley.  I stopped, and with my little Gorilla tripod on the hood, I seriously zoomed this first shot.  That day I was never as close as this looks.  While I had the iPhone on the tripod I thought about taking my third ever selfie, but thankfully the moment passed unviolated. 🙂

The day I drove up to the Cedar Breaks, (more on that later), I returned to this site and wandered up an old overgrown drive.  I was very thankful it was not posted.  Although I sometimes fail, I try not to be one of those people who think that signs are everyone else.

The evidence suggests that this was once a small cattle ranch.  Whoever lived here had a spectacular view of the valley.  The tire was one of those narrow ones from early vehicles.

Exploring these old homesteads has always made me feel like part historian, part speculator, and part trespasser.  But I’ll always continue to take a closer look where I can.  It’s what I do.