Water in Skull Valley

HORSESHOE SPRING
A reader commented about a spring of water close to the colony of Iosepa. Although the valley only recieves an inch and a half of water a year, there is an underground spring of Horseshoe Spring several miles north of Iosepa. The spring feeds a few small ponds, with water temperature staying 72 degrees during the winter.

The Hawaiians raised carp in those ponds.

It's a strange place. The desert goes straight into the blue and green pond, with no trees or shrubs. So summers must be really harsh here. A local guy told me that the trench that feeds the spring water into the ponds largely dries up during the summer months.

In the past few decades, the spring was made into a national protection area in order to block the transportation of used plutonium for storage in the Indian reservation.

DEAD CATTLE WARNING
There was an occasional bloated cattle carcass about 100 yards off the road. Such death just outside Dugway's biological and nerve gas testing area was rather nerve racking. I realize that a reason the cattle are dead by the side of the road is because they were hit on the road by vehicles during the night. But you can see from the photo I took, there aren't any signs of being hit by a car -- no blood, broken bones, bruises, indentations or other signs of trauma.

This cattle and others I saw looked in good shape, considering they were dead. Whatever killed them, killed them quickly.

Was I trodding around in a land hiding nerve gas or atomic radiation? But radiation poisoning should emaciate cattle. Bovine hair should be falling off in clumps. Having not seen a bald cow, I was comforted with that thought. But after looking at that tumescent carcass, a feeling of unease returned.

LDS lessons learned in an LSD World:

1. Despite the hot spring, Skull Valley is still very dry
2. Be wary of the federal government, especially when it works in secrecy
   
3. Dead cows in a biological testing ground tell me it's time to drive home immediately