OCR Text |
Show Mystery Balloon Found By Forest danger And Party; Origin Of Gadget Stiil In Doubt A Vernal party, consisting of Henry Schaefermeyer, Francis Felch and Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Ken-neth Stringham, and their guide, George Walkup, forest ranger, who was conducting a "Show Me" trip on horseback last Saturday, Sat-urday, are still very puzzled about the parachute and balloon, 53 feet in diameter, which they found about 45 miles from the Whiterocks ranger station in the Farm Creek area. It seems the party was attracted at-tracted to the scene by bright lights attached to the balloon. They left their horses and hiked a quarter of a mile to the upper end of Lake Atwood and to the base of .rugged peaks, where the regular air force nylon parachute para-chute had landed. Above the parachute was a plastic balloon, from which hung a red canvas basket fit snugly with two five gallon cans containing 8 gallons1 of gasoline. From the side of this hung two well padded zipper zip-per bags the size of five gallon gal-lon cans, which contained radio equipment, still buzzing, and to which was attached 150 feet of aerial wire. The lights on the radio were still on. The jagged rocks had apparently appar-ently detached the balloon from the parachute, which had deflated de-flated rapidly from all indications, indica-tions, as a party of men had passed through the same area a short time before, but had seen nothing of the balloon and parachute at that time, Mr. Walkup stated that this was the fifth one he had found, but that the four previous ones had measured only 6 feet in diameter and had contained radio ra-dio equipment operated by dry cell batteries. To the balloon was attached a card which read that the person per-son finding it was to phone General Gen-eral Mills Aeronautical Laboratory, Labor-atory, Minneapolis, Minn. Mr, Walkup followed these instructions, instruc-tions, and although the party at the other end of the line seemed very excited, he found out nothing, noth-ing, except was told to send ev-everything ev-everything he had found by express ex-press to the laboratory and that he would hear from them soon. Mr. Walkup took his findings to Vernal Wednesday to express them to the above address. The crew finding this mysterious myster-ious lay-out are still wondering what it is all about, honing to find the answer soon. |