The first time I went fishing this year we were in Uinta Canyon. We drove up to the end of the road, and near the trail head parking lot was a road closed sign in the ditch. We read the first couple lines and it made you think that the road was only closed from sunset to sunrise due to the mud slides they had in August 2007. It was May 17, 2008. Long after the mud slides of last fall. We spent the day fishing and came back to tickets on our trucks. I had one on my truck, another guy in the ward had one, and my brother Clark had one on his. The ticket was for "driving a motor vehicle on the portion of the Uinta Canyon road that is closed to motor vehicles."
The fine for the ticket was $150 plus a $25 processing fee. Stupid federal government. All the road closure is is a back door way to close public land. Still to this day the road is closed.
Today I had a court appearance to fight the ticket and the poorly worded notice on the road closed sign. Dave, the guy from the ward, was there also. Clark paid the ticket long ago. After hearing the other people had their turn for their various tickets, the Judge asked if there were others in the courtroom who had tickets. Three of us raised our hands.
The first guy gets up to the podium, states his name, and the Judge says that his ticket was dismissed. So it was Dave's turn. He gets to the podium and they say his is dismissed. I state my name as soon as I stand up and didn't even walk through the little double saloon doors to get to the podium before they tell me mine is dismissed. SWEET!
I called Clark to tell him what happened. He wasn't too happy since he had paid his ticket, but what else could he do?
If we would have plead not guilty we would have had to come back in November for a trial. Dave had pictures of the new sign they have up there now. It now states in big letters: NO MOTOR VEHICLES, WALKING ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. or something to that effect.
It was quite the relief to not have to pay or even fight the ticket. Now if the government were to do the right thing (ha ha yeah right) they'd send Clark and everyone else that paid their money back.
