Among the many "projects" my Grandpa Weiler currently is working to complete is the challenge of finding all the monuments that mark the six corners of the state of Utah.
Word on the street (it's a very quiet street) is that the southwest corner monument is the toughest to find.
After spending a half day searching for said monument with said Grandpa, I'd have to agree.
Because our search still continues.
Sure, we could have entered the coordinates into a GPS system and let technology do the rest, but where's the adventure in that? We had maps. We had two sets of directions. We had a picture of the monument. This was possible.
In hindsight, what we needed was one set of detailed and accurate directions, a little more time, and possibly a compass for further confirmation.
With that bit of background, here's what happened:
Our primary set of directions - obtained from a 1998 Desert News article in which the reporter is relaying someone else's directions - said to drive about 20 miles on a BLM road until we reached a maze of trails all heading east. After 20 miles we saw no maze, but had reached a stretch of electric lines which had been mentioned in our second set of directions, a 2003 DesNews story about the same reporter's own journeys.
Whether by maze or electric lines, the next marker to find was a barbed-wire fence running in an east-west direction. With no fence in sight, we backtracked to a fork in the road that led to a different section of electric lines. Along the way we drove through a fence that ran north-south, reached the electric lines and determined this was not what we wanted. We turned around and went back to the original electric lines to drive another mile or so in search of the fence.
The extra mile provided no such luck. At this point we made a crucial discovery for which I'm embarrassed to admit not having caught sooner. After carefully reading both sets of directions, we figured out that the second set of directions were actually directions to finding Utah's lowest point - located 2.5 miles away from the southwest corner monument. (It's not often that television has failed me, but after eight years of watching "The Amazing Race" and laughing at all the teams who failed to pay attention to their instructions, apparently I'm just as dumb).
With that nugget of info, we backtracked again and concentrated our efforts on finding the maze of trails of which we were supposed to choose one and "through a series of trial and error" follow for a mile until reaching the fence line. The closest "maze" we could find branched out into just three trails that all stopped at the same barbed-wire fence no more than 1/4 mile away that connected to the fence we had crossed earlier but was now pointed more east-west.
This is where Grandpa and I began the real guessing game. Since we'd only gone 1/4 mile and were staring at a water tower never mentioned in the directions, we drove east along the fence line for another 3/4 mile. We found one or two more possible maze sections, but nothing that led to our next marker, a point where we'd be forced to get out of the truck and walk.
(Another look at the directions and the picture of the monument also caused further confusion. 1) The directions said to follow the fence east for a mile, then look left to see the monument, with the word "south" in parentheses at the end. To the best of me and my Grandpa's knowledge, it's impossible to walk east, looking left, and be pointed south at the same time. 2) The black and white picture of the monument in the newspaper appears to have a fence to the right and left of it, but the fence posts in the picture are made from scrap wood and the fence we had found was made with metal stakes.)
At this point, we chose to backtrack to where we found the fence from the first maze, cross the fence, drive by a water tower nearby and see if we could find another fence. Once we'd traveled 3/4 mile beyond the fence, found nothing, and knew time was running out before we had to head back, Grandpa decided we should get out and start searching by foot until we reached the fence. (Yes, we disagreed on this move. I was with him on every other twist, turn and backtrack before and after. I had no problem getting out of the car and walking. I just didn't understand getting out and walking unless it was along the fence line). We split up to cover as much territory as possible, reached the far end of the fence line we had previously driven to, and still found nothing.
Once back in the truck, we each played a hunch and drove down two more paths, then disappointingly called off the search. We ended our adventure exiting the barren desert through the even-less traveled Beaver Dam Wash, and that was that.
The day wasn't a total loss. I'll always be up for anything that involves an afternoon with my Grandpa. And now that I've spent the better part of six hours combing the desert for a hidden treasure, I'm now personally invested in at least one-sixth of his project and committed to returning and eventually finding this lousy 3x6-foot marker.
With a GPS navigator, obviously.
