Another fun Friday! We took G'ma and went to the St. George Temple Open House. It's gorgeous inside and out! Then we went to see the leaves on Cedar Mountain! Lookin' gorgeous there too! And that night we went to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Tuacahn. It was the best of the 3 we've seen there this year and was awesome! Filled up that day pretty much! (Aspen Mirror Lake area is always one of my favorite Fall spots!)
We've kind of given up on Grand Edventure dates since the kids have mostly gotten to the very busy stage of life and we can't seem to connect anymore, but we did snag Zade and Trigg the other night for dinner and a movie. We like to go to the Banff Movie Festival which used to be part of Desert Rat's gig. Now they have given it over to the Get Outside Youth group. Most of the time the movies are very exciting outdoor adventure types that we all love. This year was a little disappointing in some of the movies being rants about environmental problems that were very long. I hope they will be better next time or we will be giving it up. But it was fun to hang out with these two. Derek just ended his latest marriage and we hope to be able to spend a bit more time with these boys. Tasia and Kaebri have both left the nest now and these boys are going to feel the pain of this divorce more than they will I think. So sorry it turned out this way. Kelli was a really great mom to these boys. Trigg hasn't had enough mom time to really even say he's had one that he remembers very much I think. It hasn't been easy for these kids since Lenae passed away. They are nice boys and we hope things will turn out in the end for them. Kaebri and Tasia have both been good examples for their futures. (Picture taken for Be Real that evening.)
Paul's knee is too sore to hike, so Friday we just took a nice drive to get out and see how Fall is starting to show up and to enjoy the great scenery around everywhere! We went through Zion, and around to Panguitch and back down Cedar Mountain. We listened to a book we've been wanting to hear and had our snack at the White Bridge Campground (closed now). It was such a beautiful day. I love having Fridays off and being able to enjoy that day getting out and then being able to be home to do the "chores" on Saturday! Makes the week so nice. I guess this could be called our semi-retirement phase!
I have no idea how old Kelli will be for this birthday! She keeps that to herself. I'm so grateful to her for her love and kindness to my grandkids and to Derek. She's a classy lady in a country package. She loves her kids and supports them in all they do and she loves here cute hometown, Manti, and going there to participate in the fun town activities. Derek and kids seem to love going to those things too. I'm so glad she's in the picture with Derek and kids now. I'm not sure she knows what to do with us bonus in-laws. (Kelli and Derek have since split up...for good this time. We are sorry.)
I love having Fridays off! It was years before it happened, but worth waiting for. Paul is also ok with taking some Fridays off, so that makes it even better. Today we decided to take a drive up to see how things are looking in the Tushars above Beaver. We had thought about camping, but when we checked the weather, it looked like we would be pretty chilly and opted for a nice day/drive instead. We were not disappointed - we never are up there! We saw fewer people than ever before I think. The place was pretty much empty. I guess the recent heavy rains had driven all the campers and nearly all of the trailer parkers off. It was so wonderful. And it was cold! At the top it was 46 degrees. Lower down it was about 52 and we got caught in a short, but heavy rainstorm. One thing was a little sad. We visited a very favorite camp spot and it has been really trashed in the last few years by people who come and leave their trailers for all summer. They have been cutting down trees to make better parking for those trailers and for firewood and they have been ruining the road into the spot by pulling big trailers through the mud. So sad that some people just have to ruin wonderful places like this was. It's still pretty, but looked very overused after the summer of too many people. We went to the top of the pass and we did see the goats as little white specs very far off. There were snow patches. I'm not sure if they were old ones still not melted, or new ones from recent storms. It was lovely and green everywhere with flowers still out. It was a cloudy, beautiful day up there. We drove home through Panquitch and stopped to eat a snack there. We had stopped in Beaver on the way up and had some delicious cheese to add to our snack from there. It was a great day. We finished a good book on the way up and just enjoyed all of the wonderful scenery for the rest of the day. Glad we didn't camp...too cold even at noon.
We were so ready for this campout. With all of our time in Oregon and then Family Camp and then lots of wonderful rain, we hadn't even been out to camp on our own this year. Finally, after a week of rains, it stopped and we went! We found a great place of road #425 on the way to the Timp Point. It was just a little off the main road and very flat and wonderful. It's probably someone's favorite deer camp, but thankfully hunting season hasn't started yet. There was a nice pile of firewood which we enjoyed during the evening with a good book we were listening to. Paul made us a SO DELICIOUS pork chop, mashed potatoes, beans dinner and we had Jacob Lake cookies for dessert. We went out to Timp Point earlier in the day and hiked to the end where we could see Thunder River coming out with lots of green around it. All of the recent rains had made the whole area green and covered in flowers which isn't the usual thing at this time of year. It got pretty cold in the evening, but we had such a nice level spot that once we got warmed up, we had a really good night's sleep. We woke at sun up and broke camp and made it over to the North Rim pretty early and didn't see much traffic. We took the road to Imperial Point and then did the little hike to Cliff Spring and enjoyed the pullouts along the way and got to wish Juge a happy birthday from Roosevelt Point. Then we continued on to Angel's Window and to Imperial Point. Then it was time to head home. We took the backway (after picking up more cookies at Jacob Lake) on road #22 and then home through Fredonia. We continued to enjoyed the good book on the way home. It was such a lovely time in a beautiful place. We felt much revived!
It was a rainy road trip day for us. It started out to be and exciting trip to Grand Junction, CO, to see and hopefully buy a great little Casita camp trailer. We saw it on FB Marketplace and got hold of the people and set up a time to see it. We got up and left early and arrived early for what was to be a 5 pm appointment to see it. We got there by about 2:25 and let them know. They had a 2:30 appointment with someone else and they bought it without us ever even getting to see it. I was so disappointed. It seemed like the perfect thing for us, but not to be unfortunately. I was a little worried about spending that much money, but it must have been a good deal for someone to snap it up like that. Oh well. It was a very rainy day and we enjoyed the drive mostly. We tried to stop in at Goblin Valley on the way back, but they've upped there day passes so much that it wasn't worth it to just pop in for a short time for what they wanted us to pay. We did drive down another road and saw some cool pictographs. There were lots of great rocks to see along the way. Since we didn't buy the trailer and got done early we just made a long day of it and drove home. We had thought about spending the night, but didn't really need to. Feeling a little discouraged with the last two weekends when I had extra time off from work turning into kind of rainy weekends. We had hoped to go camping sometime before it gets to busy with hunters, but our monsoons are rather late or it's just the leftovers from some hurricanes elsewhere right now.
