Fishing or playing on Bear Lake, or along the Bear River...Camping in one of 19 forest camp grounds or four state parks...A turn or two through town-Logan or Lewiston or Laketown, among them - Going on all fours over a rugged canyon road . . . Or, simply walking along the banks of the easy-flowing Logan River.
These are some of the things Bridgerland offers. Also there are birds. Thousands of them. Big ones, like the pelican and the great blue heron, and small ones, like the sparrow. Ducks in the fall, doves in the summer, and geese most any time. Birds of brown, blue, black, white, shades of yellow and accented in red. Birds that glide and birds that flutter.
The marshes and farmlands to the west of Logan are a bird's retreat and a bird watchers gold mine. Last count shows over 250 different species make visits to the area over the course of a year. The most popular are, of course, the bigger birds - sandhill cranes, especially since the recent decision to hunt the birds this fall, the pelicans, great blue herons, ibis and black cormorant.
There's canoeing on the marshes, too.
Five miles east of Logan on US-89, on a sidehill of trees and broken rock, just below the pronounced "China Wall" formation that guards the canyon on both sides, is a fortress of rocks on which wind, rain and ice have cut arches and caverns into a penthouse of caves. Along the half-mile trail are areas where, with a little looking, fossil-bearing rock can be found.
There's a monument to "Old Ephraim," the great grizzly of the Cache Forest. "Old Ephraim," the plaque reads, was the biggest, smartest, fastest and strongest bear of them all. It ruled the forest from 1911 to 1923. So special was the bear that when killed its skull, as big as a bushel basket, was given to science - the Smithsonian Institute first, then USU - and its body buried. The monument at the burial site is about six miles off U.S.-89 at the Temple Fork turnoff. The road can sometimes be rough.
There are a number of interesting hikes. The Audubon Society has mapped one along the Logan River; the Wellsville hike takes people through a dense maple forest with chest-deep foliage; and the Hawk Point hike is one that is popular with locals in the fall when the raptors migrate out of the canyons. As many as 100 hawks can be seen circling about in a single moment. A Cache Valley hiking guide offers detailed directions.
There's also biking - mountain and road riding. Beside the large number of trails, over 200 miles worth in the high mountain country, there are hundreds more miles of quite and picturesque country riding on paved, almost deserted roadway in the region.