Isn’t That Your Wife’s Car?

The other side may have been worse…here is a blown-out fix from many years ago on the rear passenger side: non-matching black paint, no topcoat, hard tape line, rumply body fill, rusted out from the back. I have already redone the driver side, and had a learning curve over there on blending the body work (no skin coat, so still lumpy) and painting (too thin on my layers, so there is crackle).

In May, while waiting to install the Ibis, I decided it was past time for the Subaru to get a do-over for my old attempts at rust fixes. She turned 20 this year, meaning she is now a “Classic Car”. She is the same age as the Mustang was when I was in High School, which seemed old to me then, but now 20 seems pretty dang new as the pony car is an “Antique” at 54. E is the car’s second owner as of 2006, the car’s first owner drove it up and down Parley’s Canyon (I-80 to Park City) daily, and she has driven it to work in Kansas and here for 12 years. So it is peppered with rock chips and well salted, plus it was not garaged and tree sap and bird-poo took a toll. I did quite a bit of online diy tutorials, and each car panel that I dealt with improved. By my last fix I wanted to go back and redo my first fix, but there are still more fixes to go…

Doing it right requires removing the wheels and grinding out the dead metal inside the wheel well and out, then sandblasting, then rebuilding the surface. I decided to go with the POR-15 system to seal and rebuild. POR-15 requires chemically etching the metal to cure the surface and allow the polymer coating to adhere to a chemically altered steel surface. This is the best method for keeping rust from returning, and the rather lengthy and problematic process dovetailed with my patina work on bronze- the logic behind it is much stronger than other systems. The polymer surface can be painted with other matching polymers from the POR-15 catalogue, and recently they added a primer coat that allows body paint. So I ordered in the matching Subaru pearl black and clearcoat.

Look for a daily-driver Suby from the 90’s, and you’ll probably see this wheel-well issue.

This little spot at the front of the panel goes under the trim, and well back into the wheel well. Still a learning curve on this side, but much improved from the driver’s side. I have all the finished pictures at the end of the post…

 

This is my first run at the whole system, the finished drivers side, an embarrassment aesthetically, but solid on the rust triage. The entire inside of the wheel well is now POR-15 to metal, with their rubberized coating as an over-layer. All the body work is done with a polymer putty that does not absorb moisture like a paste i.e. Bondo. Figuring all that out is part of the bad surfacing, and the rest is just gaining experience.

Other than the lumpy triage, the paint line shows because I did not go heavy enough with my color layers and should have done more clear coat layers. Sanding and buffing thin paint exposed all these issues and more (crackle), and I had no choice but to leave it alone or make it worse. I found better instructors online, and tried to trouble-shoot and change things up. (see the little spot of rust below the tail light? got that seamlessly on the next round.)

After I thought I’d fixed the area, this original paint shattered off of the car due to my use of wood shims to hold the rubber trim out from the panel. I used foam shims from then on- a suggestion of Elizabeth’s!

The windshield is to the L, and had a lot of rust along and under the rubber seal to the windshield (yellow tape marks the worst of them). Many rock chips had blossomed much more widely than it seemed from the dimples in the paint. Once I started grinding them out, I saw that the triage was going to be vast. The marks along the rest of the roof and sunroof are from bird poops. Bird poo is like Alien blood, it etches in and burns through to the metal.

Another view of the windshield roof line, the pink and black area under the yellow tape has been etched and is turning the metal peacock and the rust to black.

This was a dimple of damage from bird poo that erupted under the paint. Now etched and ready for polymer.

The rubber windshield barrier is lifted with foam shims made from our work-out mat. This will take a few days of curing the polymer, and moving the shims for new polymer. All the black is the polymer, and the white rings around it is the car’s primer coat.

The polymer is a brush-on, and needs a bit of sanding after it cures. It cures nearly as hard as metal, and much harder than the auto-paint, which makes sanding it a problem.

These are nearly all of the bird poos. I thought I’d do them first. Taped off and the car bagged out in plastic.

I had this idea…direct the spray paint in a smaller area. It worked well at first, but loaded up with runny paint and had to be tossed. While it worked it was pretty trick- but burned through the paint as well.

Three layers of POR-15 primer coat, with some soft and hard edges to blend out.

This is what the tube allowed- focused spray layer out to a dusting allowing a hard tape line thin enough to sand out after peeling back the tape.

Sanded smooth and ready for new tape.

The black under the clear-coat is the POR-15 bulge- and the trouble I had sanding it flat before the primer coat. Anything you don’t get perfect always shows up on the next layer, or the next.

I use a thin frog tape to minimize my paint lines. I’ll be wetsanding the entire roof, as it is in pretty rough shape, and hope I can blend it all.

Tape removed and the topcoat will cure for two days at least before wet sanding. I’m getting braver about sanding the car and will sand the entire band between the windshield and the sunroof, and paint and clear coat the entire portion.

After rough-sanding with 600 grit, I have to primer coat the POR-15 so it can accept auto paint.

I include the worst corner of the sunroof as well, and spray it on in three layers creating fairly heavy tape lines.

The heavier primer layer allows me to smooth out bumpy issues with the POR-15 with more wet-sanding.

4 layers of color coat and 5 layers of clear coat. Set to cure.

This run of door panel was a mess, and I included it as well.

With sanding, the matte finish of the clear coat will go shiny and I hope it will blend.

While I’m waiting for the roof to cure, I fix deep scratches on each panel bordering the trunk. I think the original owners put a tie-down ski rack on the car. This side came out flawlessly (it was in line with the blue reflection).

This side was my first attempt, and still shows some damage. However the mirror-level reflection of the wet sanding corrected the slight permutations in the original paint.

Here is the area between the windshield and the sunroof, sanded and buffed out.

I pulled a dent out of the front quarter panel that had popped off the orange running light, then did a little skin coat to correct. Could have done a few more skin layers, but it blends…

This is the rear panel I started with, that has the issues. From a step away they blend in.

This is the improved technique on the passenger side rear wheel well- from a step away.

Here is the much better body work- this angle gives a clear unblemished line over the fender. The paint is layered much better and blended nicely compared to the other side.

The windshield is to the R, the clouds reflect on the roofline. You can see a few areas of the POR-15 near the rubber border that I could not sand down perfectly without ruining the rubber (or removing the windshield).

Here is the rest of the roof. Some areas blended in perfectly, and others remained a bit hazy- this is from my spray paint having a bit of orange-peel, and not wanting to strip through the original clear-coat. So I backed off on perfection and accepted it as markedly better.

This is a bird poo on the trunk that spanned the seam line. I wet sanded on the L side of the seam and just buffed on the R side. The wet sand removed it. The original clear coat is not at all consistent across panels and pillars, I burned through in one small spot on a pillar and so take a lot of “fixables” as fixed problems to allow.

This is the drivers rear wheel panel again, showing that the earlier image discussing how bad it is may not be quite as bad- as that image captured it at its very worst angle.

Inside the trunk is also all new. There was an issue with the drain plug under the spare tire that led to a long triage with POR-15, rubber coating, and creating a new cover panel for the spare to match the old water damaged one, new carpet, and a sound baffle. And now you can open it with the key again. Plus new speakers.

Black Paint is the hardest to work with, of course, but there were other issues as well. LIke the strip-down & re-seam of the bottom area of  the passenger door with POR-15, and repaint. Two dings in the windshield are also fixed, along with a hole in each foglight. I sanded and repainted the SUBARU lettering on the rear panel, all silver again. Fixed a cracked headlight. Used glass compounding with the buffer to remove most of the skids from the power window on the driver’s side. Used a special liquid to renew the rubber seals and hood scoop. Wet sanded some panels with my buffer, and used a “deep cut” pad and cutting gel to remove 20 years of swirls and dings, then moved to a less aggressive shining gel, then wax and polish. From here you can’t even see all the work I still have to do on the hood.          A week later I thought I’d clean and lube the sunroof, as it can be a bit sticky and slow. It had rust along the rail seam to the inside of the headliner on both sides, and along the front wall. All this was ground out and POR-15ed, plus I had to rebuild some of the worst rust rotted areas with fiberglass and POR15.  As long as I was at it I ground down the bottom of the driver side door, which had rusted a bit, and POR15ed it as well. Then I ground down the peeling paint on the rear window’s aluminum stripping, and POR15, then painted a POR15 rubber coating to blend the bracketing seals and the AL stripping. Also stripped and repainted the windshield wiper arms. All the metal dust and rust dust meant washing the car and detailing the interior again. At some point I’ll get on to basic rock-chip repair… 

 

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Thundershirt

The storm rolled in while we were in town for a late afternoon hardware store / grocery run. 4-wheel slip-n-slide back up to the house. In a lull the next morning I put in this new gutter drainpipe. The house and I came to a modified agreement of how this might be possible, still needs adjusting, but the rain soaked me off the ladder.

Nora gets me up at 3am and I dozily take her outside for piddles. There is a little lightning from a far valley over the high hills. Nora is terrified of thunder and has had a rough time during the days of storm- her Thundershirt has taken the edge off, but when the lightning thunders she shakes so hard her teeth chatter. I sleepily wonder if she awoke me because of the storm when a flash blinds the night, and Nora manically races a tight circle around my feet. The thunderclap sends her like a shot out into the night, straight toward the forest, and untold miles of nowhere. I run to the house for my headlamp, and call for her swinging the dim beacon into the rainy ink. I jump back inside and grab the truck keys, jumbling the key fob to chirp the locks: she loves the truck and always races to it when it chirps. I can feel the next lightning bolt building in a dead pressure, and Nora flashes out of the wet night appearing at the door and bolts inside. There is a large metal roofing panel affixed to the house outside the door, where my dad’s dog frantically ate away the house panelling in a mad terror during a pounding storm; and that dog wasn’t afraid of storms.

Grass seed for the new berm before the rain really soaks us.

Porch fix is my rainy day outside project. I rebuilt the floor and ceiling of the porch back in 2008 while I was helping my dad through chemo. The brittle synthetic quarter-round trim I’d dressed it with didn’t make it through one winter, and has bugged me since. I backfilled all the gaps with expanding foam and/or silicon caulk, put in all the new quarter-round and caulked the seams. The porch beehive is empty, save for a bumblebee who flies in and out even in a heavy downpour.

The Kennedy Rocker I restored last fall keeps me company while I pop off all remaining old trim and finish nails. I get it all done just after dark, and finish by the glow of the old yellow porch light.

Morning is misted and still. And soaking wet.

The woods fade gently into the clouds.

The lilacs are weighed down with rain, and have stalled their bloom.

E & Nora escape the house during a break in the rain.

I work between the raindrops to move a bed of lilacs I’d temporarily planted in a fairy-ring in the grass of the back yard two seasons ago, mixing with iris split from the front corner.

Expanding the bed pulled out these border stones (added just a few years ago), so I reset them as a decorative border to help with the roof runoff.

I split open old salt feed bags to block off the new bed ’til we return in July. 

Look up at the ceiling for a view of the new quarter-round and fixed seams of the ceiling panel. The blue bench was another yard sale resurrection from last fall.

After a few more bouts of rain E places newspaper around all the newly split Iris along the corner and I gather and spread pine needles/cones as mulch. We also weed and bailer-band-line the big garden out in the yard- we’ll move many volunteer poppies from the back yard there in July (they are just about to bloom now).

I place old roofing tiles at the foot of the retaining wall as weed barrier.

The little waterfall we added to the creek at the footbridge is churning away with high rain water.

So many wet greens- the rain pressed down the high grasses on the steep hillside.

I used the pick-axe to needle around and find most of the remaining sandstone deposited along the creek from years back. I moved them up to cover the roofing tiles and define the iris bed.

Next I cut open and lay out a big tyvek grain bag found in the old machine garage.

Then stake it in place. This area has issues with stinging nettle, wild carrot, sows ears, and every other kind of weed.

The storm breaks apart in the later evening, and we have a cotton-candy sunset. Tomorrow is the cattle-drive. 

Pet Rock Walkies

Mid-morning; stone hefting time. The space from the Iris to the stream is backfilled with a variety of sandstone rocks, put in 5 years ago when I had bobcat help for a project that never happened.

One wagon load at a time, the stones pile on. 

One last section to trench and grade. This concrete boulder was an unwelcome find.

Drainage trench is added.

Belarus is a Balkan state of the old USSR; in the late 1980’s they entered the U.S. tractor market with a great 4×4 unit at the half the price of other tractors. My dad, who only bought ancient used farm equipment at estate sales, bought a brand new Belarus tractor and it outlasted him. This old inner tube was lying in a corner of the big garage.

I fillet the tube.

Trusty Russian rubber will line the new grade.

Another early morning trip to the shale seam.

E picks a nice bundle of limestone.

We head back up and fill all three buckets with limestone.

wait for it…

Limestone over shale, with a border of sandstone. Some day I’ll make sandstone steps to continue the big slabs by the storm door.

Now the basement will be much drier, and the original concrete slab from the 1800’s should remain intact til’ the end of civilization- so another decade or so…

All the dirt from the grading made great backfill for this new retaining wall of rail road ties, leveling out the yard as it drops off into the creek.

My plan for this little bit of yard and stream from 5 years ago is beginning to take shape.

I added in bailer banding to edge the garden along the ice house, just above the new retaining wall.

While I was at it, I put in edging for this flower bed. Its mirror bed on the other side of the path is lined with brick, done four years ago, and holds 30 purple iris- all about to bloom.

Blue-Birding gives way to Blue-Shaling

We are up early with the sun, and hear the Ruffed Grouse make his whumping ramp-in of booming thumps quickening to a whirr; his mate lives in the yard and she flew onto a perch in the willow trees yesterday with a big thwack. This is the second year she has been with us, but the first time we have heard the male. We also were entertained by a yard battle between Bullock Oriels, a yellow juvenile male and a mature orange Oriel. The first we’ve ever seen them here. The mature orange would drive upstart yellow into the stream and hold him in the water on his back, and when not crashing him to the water, he would trounce him in the willow brush pile. Their flying display and chatter went on all afternoon. This image is part way up to the highlands, just below where our blue bird houses begin. We aren’t here for blue birding, but another blue.

Blue Shale is the blue we are after. A Killdeer is nesting nearby and runs about faking a broken wing, or fully lying on the ground making her best death throes; no one buys it. I have two big red feed buckets that blew into the valley last fall, and an old steel one as well. I will fill these with stone that I snap from their fault lines with a pickaxe. This will be my drainage fill for the runoff zones down at the house.

In the late 1970’s the county got permission from my dad to dig here for road surfacing on our county road. It seemed like a great idea, but once broken down to a pumice after years of traffic the shale becomes the slickest & gooiest surface ever imagined. The old seam snaps easily enough with persistent pops from the pick, and all three buckets are full in about 40 minutes. 

E and Nora find this nursery tree of woodpeckers and bluebirds.

Low range 4 wheel takes us slowly down the fields and back to the house. I dig a trench out into the yard to disperse the roof runoff, away from the bricks I laid in last night.

Bucket number one ready to drop.

Bucket number two, twice the volume of bucket #1, is slid into position. 

The holes are filling up.

Should have dumped this one first, as it has the big clean shale shards. I toss them in to bring down the weight before dumping the rest.

Some backfill dirt and the sod is replaced over the dispersal drainage.

Rain is in the forecast, so we’ll see how well this works!

I use the dirt to backfill an ever-dropping zone where the outhouse had been (one of two locations for the outhouse- back before indoor plumbing and a septic field- which is directly under the wagon…)

The grade rolls down against the house- aarg. Even the concrete under the storm door grades steeply toward the house. I’ll have to dig out the entire area and regrade it.

Nora offers that the lilac bush needs to be completely removed at the root. I begin cutting it back to a large rootball with my sharp spade shovel.

In the far back yard, across the stream I find the headless remains of our nesting yard grouse.

A few steps away I find her head. Just a half hour earlier I thought I’d heard her bang onto her perch in the willows and laughed to Elizabeth. Her murder is more likely what I heard.

We asked our local lady falconer what would have knocked her head off and left her, and she thought it was most likely our yard weasel. They are like cats, kill switch always on.

I buried her in the yard, and when I put the sod over her it pressed out her last warbling chirp from under the ground. This gave Memorial Day an added sorrow. 

A tough old rootball goes after another tough old rootball. 

Swinging a pick axe next to a fragile old house takes some doing.

The old tough old rootball is finally bested by the younger tough old rootball, just before the sun takes away my shadow. The wire mesh is an old triage for a packrat entrance. That will get fixed with concrete on our next trip.

My shadow is long gone, but the work kept going- so hot to finish all the digging, but I found the shadow again.

Dug out beside the house, and a long trench drops into the yard. Now I just have to grade the whole area by the house.

The sod roll at the end of the trench- chocolate lime sweet roll. In the shade of the willows, beyond Lyle rock, is a growing mountain of soil.

Trip #2 to the shale seam for 40 minutes of pickaxe for me: accompanied by the vaudevillian theater of the Killdeer. Meanwhile E has found another seam on top of the shale, a seam of limestone rocks all neatly breaking into similar fist size shards. She collects these and piles them into the truck bed.

The trench is deepened, cleaned, and the grade set from the house and the storm door and the yard. Then lined with roofing tar paper- found in the old garage.

The entire load of shale is gobbled up by the huge void. I toss E’s limestone into the trench, even though they are so pretty, they lay a perfect bed.

Trip #3 to the shale seam. Nora is using her management skills (see shadow to R) to ensure a maximum of 40 minutes of pickaxe & shovel for me, with limestone rock collecting for E (I promise not to throw them into the hole this time).

Blue Shale drainage grade.

E’s limestone is at the foot of the storm door. I try out a big sandstone rock that tapers nicely with the grade.

8pm. at it since 6am. done for the day…

The Distance to Montana is shrinking…

We took a new scenic route heading to the West Gate of Yellowstone from Idaho Falls, then on Hwy 191 along the Gallatin River. The river was swollen and roaring with the winter’s 200% of normal snowpack. The river leads us down to Bozeman. We had two mountain passes to choose from at Bozeman, and the heavy traffic and intersecting roads turned us about and we wound up heading for the more remote pass. The tarmac turned to gravel, and the gravel turned to dirt, and the dirt ended. We were a long way out in the hinterlands, just us and this brewing storm. We turned back and asked directions from a teacher closing up her one-room schoolhouse. She gamely explained that the pass we were looking for is only possible in late July, a real 4×4 exploration. We had lost a lot of daylight by the time we made Bozeman again, so we jumped back on the interstate and linked to our little blue highway- figuring we would find where the scenic mountain passes emptied onto their far end, rather than their starting point in Bozeman, and take the open pass on our return trip (which we did, and it was worth the persistence). 

Day one at the ranch is spent the usual way; opening the house and mowing the vast yard. Day two began with this was-an-Iris garden. Last fall moles ate 250 Iris. The moles were so thorough that it seemed someone had dug all the Iris up and stolen them. We brought a plot of rangy and tough sunflowers from our Utah garden and planted them along the steep L side to help block the wild carrot and rangy weeds. Then we weeded the entire plot, revealing the few Iris remaining, and put down a barrier of newspaper covered with pine needles/cones. The flat end across from the bridge got a thick ground cover of an old pond liner from Utah.

The lilac bushes throughout the yard were still ramping in to high gear.

Pine Beetles killed our smallest pine tree last summer and I cut it down in a comedy of errors. Our three remaining pines received med kits to help them fight off the grubs. I drill into the living cambium at 4 inch intervals, insert a plastic needle in the little hole, then tap the plastic jar of insecticide onto the but-end of the plastic needle, then give it a few more taps to secure it within the tree. The rising sap of spring draws out the meds and disperses it through the tree. When all the meds are drawn into the tree I pull out the needles.

A job in the shade after a long morning on the hillside Iris bed. 

These two pines (with three heads) are next, if we can get past the massive Iris bush…

The perfume reaches far beyond the yard. 

This Sapsucker woodpecker watches me drill into the trees.

Nora has counted the med kits, and thinks I should put a few remainders on the little yard tree, just to give it a boost.

She offers her suggestions and mathematic reasoning, knowing I need her help more often than not.

The string wraps the circumference of the tree, with 4 inch increments marked out so worker-Dan knows where to run his drill. The bit is marked with tape at the plunge depth so the holes don’t punch too deep. All Nora’s suggestions.

I fixed a little wooden mallet a few years back, and now it comes in handy.

In real life the lilac’s color seems like a gateway from another dimension- a dimension not visible to the camera.

The other dimension smells pretty spectacular as well.

Finishing up. It will take a day or so for the trees to empty the med kits.

The old Iris garden at the front porch needs a wider plot, and a liner to keep the sod from taking over. I use an old spool of rubber banding discarded from a long-ago bailing rig as the liner wall.

Most of the time Nora just lets me work along, offering no comment. “Supervising from a mental distance”, or some such is how she explains it.

Nora checks in with Elizabeth to confirm that I can be left to figure this part out on my own.

In expanding  the bed on the other side of the footpath, I come across a lot of tree roots from the big pines. The runoff from two pitches of the roof combine at this corner. The tree roots scramble out from under the old slab foundation. The corner of the house needs triage because of all the water- but that will be a different project. Right now I’ll focus on draining the water away from the house. 

I dig below the slab foundation of the house and shear away all the tree roots. I’ll use the bailer banding to seal the ground line, then go the brick hump with the pickaxe and tease out some bricks to make a low lateral wall to hold the banding tight up against the foundation. 

The bricks are squeezed into place, with banding against the flower bed as well. More steps to go, but this part is done and it is 7pm- I’ll pick it up again in the morning.

A tree root, cut at the foundation line, pulling up through the length of the garden. All those Iris need split and replanted, but that will happen in late July after they have bloomed.

Bovine Seasonal Migration

Elizabeth could hear the herd coming over the hill from her respite on the porch, so she walked up the road a piece and spotted them a’ comin’. 

I got up bright and early to make the cattle drive, with frost on the windshield and heavy mud on the road from days of rain. A breeze turned to a wind as the sun came up, and gusted through the chill alpine day. The drive assembled 6 cowpokes on horseback, a slew of 4 wheelers, and a lead truck & trailer outfit, quickly setting about moving the 180 cow/calf pairs 17 miles from their low winter pasture at our lessee’s ranch up to the high summer pasture on my family spread. (Pressing our start was the neighbor’s big cattle drive of 400 head of red angus, a giant red swarm on the high green hills.) It takes 7 or 8 hours to make the distance, with a few little rodeos along the way, but moving a herd of new calves and their mothers always keeps the day interesting. (and it was my 50th birthday)

This is a zoomed view from the center of the first photo: herd on hill.

Soon enough the herd was at the bottom of the hill and it was time for her to hightail it back to the house.

Zoomed view from previous image: a trickle of cows lead the masses.

An oasis from the herd. The road had been thick soupy mud in the frost covered morning, now dry.

Bellowing & squealing moos punctuate the low thunder of hooves announcing the arrival of bovine seasonal migration.

Will last year’s fence repair be convincing enough to moooove the herd along?

The brave leaders give Nora (inside the yard fence) long looks and a wide berth.

The herd eases past the house in single-file at first.

A ranking cow reports that Nora is a harmless glamour-coyote, and the herd beefs up.

This moving bovine wall streams along, tired out and mellow after 17 miles. 

The best grass is always on the verge.

Along comes a horseless cowboy.

He rolls up to the gate with the herd continuing along.

Still smilin’ so things must be good.

 

That spoiled horse had tried all the Barn-Sour Nag tricks over the 7 hour ride; rearing & kicking & screaming & falling over when saddled up; trying to swipe me off with tree branches; freezing and screaming when asked to move; suffering horribly any time her gal-pal pasture-mate was out of view or next to another horse; and finally giving up and trying to lie down near bottom of the hill.  I got off and she was led for the last quarter mile- and even that ended in an ordeal of shrieking. She helped me appreciate my dad’s good old horse Rudy even more, and his good saddle as well.

The annual spring migration settles in to the lower hayfields.

Wetlands Ibis

This is the view to the South East. There are water fowl and song birds everywhere, just not anywhere in the picture.

From the front the Ibis is just a vertical bronze line (flanked by a circle), along the dry stream.

At some point the line gives way to a curiosity of birdness.

Just walking up from the marsh…

I put the turn wheel in place and secured it’s tightening screw with locktight glue: ready for action.

 

The corten steel wall and raw wood beam window complement the Ibis nicely. I took this shot from underneath a truck. The concrete drive was packed with vehicles and construction workers, as this is supposed to be the last week for construction.

I hefted some boulders from a pile out in the parking lot and piled pebbles till the concrete base blinked out.

He has tall orange stakes around him, taken out for the pictures- lets hope he stays out of traffic.

He is at just a little angle to the concrete, which swings his wheel out just enough to discourage casual spinning, while allowing the magic vertical line view from the front as people descend down between the buildings. I’ll head back out when the site is finished and take more shots.

Just wondering again where that concrete base went.

That structure is a Blue Heron nesting complex, full of Blue Herons. On the water is a flock of White Pelicans.

This marsh opens to Farmington Bay, and out to the Great Salt Lake. Antelope Island is in the distance. This is right along one of E & I’s bikerides- the bike trail comes all the way from Salt Lake City (ending in about a mile at the Lagoon amusement park), and runs along the boundary of the Nature Center. Guess we’ll be saddling up to visit the Ibis!