Temple and picnic

 Friday evening Lou and family came down to do some baptisms at the temple and then go to a play at Tuacahn.  Bryan's folks came with them.  It was fun to go to the temple with them and then have dinner.  After the play they spent the night because it ends so late.  We had fun visiting with them for breakfast.  

In the afternoon we wanted to get out, so we took Bean and went for a picnic at Duck Creek and then enjoyed a short hike and a beautiful drive down the mountain.  We listened to an interesting book too!  We got quite a bit of rain this week finally!  It has been wonderful!

Grands, genealogy and getting out!

 It was fun to see some fun things happening with the grands this week!  Brenden and Kai and family went up north for some soccer tournaments where they got Champion and Runner-up medals for the first time medaling in this tournament in 5 years!  Yea boys!  It was fun to get some text pics from Joel (Lou) and Madi and Afton from their Lagoon trip!  I had told them not to go on this one airplane ride that made me turn absolutely green...so they did and reported that there was no green there!  

After that great soccer game, Brenden came home and got his wisdom teeth out!  Not nearly as much fun as playing soccer!  

Also this week I dug into some genealogy papers that I seem to be finding all over the house.  I got a letter a few weeks ago for my birthday.  It was from an high school best friend.  She sent me  some old letters and pictures that I had sent her years ago.  She was cleaning out her basement and found them.  A few years ago she had sent me several others.  I decided they were pretty great history and wondered where to stash them.  I ended up adding them the the Friends section of my Treasures of Truth book that I started putting together long ago when I was in Young Women.  It was something they encouraged back them.  Then I started on lots of things that are stowed all over the house and got many things organized and put into proper places for genealogical saving.  There is still a ton more to do with so many things that my mom sent me over the years, but I will have to take it a bite at a time or this elephant will be too much for me to swallow.  I have enjoyed making progress though.  

By the end of the week I was beginning to feel very cooped up with paperwork, so we took off on Saturday afternoon and drove up to Cedar Breaks where it was 77 degrees instead of 114!  We had a great picnic and visited the little Ranger Station/Visitor's Center at Duck Creek.  It has recently been remodeled and is now a nice picnic spot/bathroom stop/ and little store.  It was fun to go in and to discover the new things there!  We also  sadly saw that a little stream we love is nearly dry this year.  We need rain so badly!  

Pine Valley Picnic and erosion

It was a last minute thing.  It looked like it was raining up in Pine Valley, so we changed our plans, grabbed our stuff and food and drove up to have a picnic.  It had rained, but was done which was good so we could eat outside at the Heritage Center.  Then we went down and got ice cream.  After that we decided to walk up the road a ways into the valley and see how they were coming on digging out the lake.  The rain from that day had been doing more erosion damage.  Until some plants start growing over on the burned areas, it just keeps on washing down and causing so much damage.  So very sad to see this beautiful place in  such bad shape.  The dam is washed out, the lake is just a place full of sludge right now that they are trying to clear out, but it keeps filling up.  Rocks keep getting washed down the hills from above.  It's going to take several years to restore it to something like it was before.  There are still a lot of trees that survived at least.  It was still a lovely picnic with the fresh rain washed air.  

Rain on Cedar Mountain...Grafton!

 Thursday we got the get out of the house bug.  It was looking like rain on Cedar Mountain so we made a picnic lunch, picked up Bean and headed up there.  We stopped off at the Bristle Cone hike and Paul did his first, after surgery hike!  It was only a half a mile, but it was wonderfully fresh from the recent rains up there!  It felt so cool and clean!  We ate lunch at Cedar Breaks picnic area.  We felt a few raindrops while we ate, but got all done and on our way before it started raining pretty hard here and there along the way!  So wonderful to see the rain!  We next drove over past Panguitch Lake and then on over to come down through Zion.  It was not raining there, but the skies were beautiful.  After Zion we drove out to Grafton, an old ghost town from the Pioneer days.  They have done a lot of restoration work there and it was pretty amazing to think how hard those people worked to make a "subsistence" living.  They finally left and moved down to Hurricane when times got better down there than where they were.  Flash floods were constantly taking out their irrigation systems and making life very hard.  The fear of Indian attacks was also a reason people finally left.  

Thank Goodness for Cedar Mountain/Lava Point

 We are so thankful that we have Cedar Mountain to get away to.  Pine Valley is pretty much on hold for the next year or more while the figure out how to put the campgrounds, picnic areas and lake/dam back together after the fire and then, even worse, the erosion it caused afterwards.  So, when we need to get away, we head for Cedar Mountain.  Today was one of those days.  After we got our morning stuff done, we picked up Bean and with a stop in Cedar for a KFC meal we drove up to 5-Mile Picnic area just out of Parowan and had a great lunch.  Paul and I did a little exploring around the site and found some sort of old stone oven. We also drove up to see Yankee Meadow Reservoir.  It's really low, but still very beautiful.  It made me want to go kayaking.  After that we drove over the mountain and enjoyed the beautiful display of meadows of purple flowers in Cedar Breaks.  We stopped there at the picnic area for our candy bar dessert.  We also stopped in at the Visitor's Center.  We saw lots of other flowers along the road, at the picnic spot and also at the Visitor's Center.  Their annual Wildflower Festival is going on right now!  After that we drove down the mountain and back home.  It was good to get to the mountains!  I kind of nodded in and out on the drive home.  

On Friday we went on another picnic...this time at Lava Point which is up by Kolob Reservoir.  It's actually a part of Zion National Park.  There's a beautiful overlook, a picnic area and a campground.  It was a nice day for it being a little cooler than here and especially in the shade where our table was. Afterwards we drove over to Kolob Lake but only as far as the road was paved since we were in our rental car.  Out truck is STILL in the shop.  Paul's foot has graduated to where he can now wear a regular shoe for part of the day.  It's making good progress, but we between the foot and the truck we are feeling like we are sort of wasting the summer away a bit with not any very exciting adventures.  I think it's time to take a trip...somewhere!   (The sunrise shot was on my morning walk on the Red Hill today!) 

Getting out on Cedar Mountain - Paul still has his boot on!

 I'd rather be camping...but the check up only gave Paul another two weeks in his boot.  So, Friday we were ready for a day away.  Cedar Mountain is close and cooler, so we opted to go there for a drive and a picnic.  We first drove over to check on Navajo Lake.  It is lower than I think I've ever seen it, but still beautiful!  We saw lots of flowers blooming and found out there is a little lodge/general store and little rental cabins.  Who knew?  Not us!  We checked them out and enjoyed the find.  

Next we drove around the the mountain and stopped off to see the stream by Aspen Mirror Lake.  I love that spot.  Then we continued on over to a great little picnic spot near some ginormous lava piles.  It was a peaceful, unhurried picnic...so nice.  More beautiful flowers there.

 Next we drove on around and to Cedar Breaks.  I always love to go there.  They have the best store and it is just so beautiful and awesome!  Paul took a little nap in the Chessman Overlook parking lot, and Bean and I took a little hike along the ridge trail there.  Then we went to the Visitor's Center. I got a Jr. Ranger book this time.  We walked a tiny trail and saw lots more flowers!  

Then it was time to head down the hill.  We took the Brian Head way.  We drove some side roads and discovered a historic steam engine from Brian Head's past.  It was used to power lumber mills at several sites around the area from 1903-1939.  Very interesting to see it sitting there among today's giant "cabins".  Then we went down the hill to Parowan and stopped in for shakes/root beer float at the Dairy Freeze.  Then we headed home.  It did us the good we needed to be up there in the cool mountain air and among the forest beauty!  And, it made me want to go camping.  

Fire Tower and Elbow Canyon ATV road -BLESSED!

 In February of 2025 we tried to drive to the Black Rock Fire Tower out on the Arizona Strip.  It ended up being too wet and muddy to make it to the top and turned into a pretty slippery, scary drive down.  Today, we had thought about taking a drive up to Beaver, but realized we may not make it back in time for Bean to be home for his med drop.  We decided to try to make it to the fire tower instead...and it turned into another harrowing adventure, worse than the last time. I was driving since Paul is still in his boot and we made it to the fire tower just fine other than some pretty bumpy parts of the dirt road there.  When we got there a lot of workers were there and said we couldn't come in while they were working.  It was still cool to at least get a look at it and the forest around it and the views from up there were amazing.  It was tricky to turn around on the narrow road to go down, so Paul said he do that part...and then decided he'd just go ahead and drive down.  We drove on a few other little roads up there enjoyed seeing a bit more.  Then we saw a sign saying one of the roads went down to Mesquite.  We thought it would be fun to take a different route home and started down that one...after not too long we found that this road was not as good as it looked like it would be.  We actually got to a  point where steep, slick rocks made it impossible to go further, so we tried backing up and turning around and got into some soft dirt on the roadside and got stuck.  We found the jack and jacked up the stuck tire and put rocks under it and were able to get out and get turned around.  We realized that going back the way we came was probably not going to work.  We didn't think we could make it up some of the steep rocky places.  We came to another fork in the road and could go down either the Cottonwood Canyon road or the Elbow Canyon Road that were heading down the mountain toward Mesquite.  Elbow Canyon looked like the better road.  So we were off again...and pretty soon we saw some markings that let us know this was actually an ATV road...but we couldn't go back, so onward we went.  It soon got very difficult.  The road had many elbows and it was steep and it was very rocky.  It was so rocky that we had to stop often to get out and figure out how to navigate around or over the rocks.  Sometimes I just walked ahead down the road moving sticking up rocks out of the way ahead of time and also to not watch how they had to drive to get over the rocks.  Lots of praying was happening and lots of stress was being felt.  It was turning into a very slow, harrowing drive.  There were some steep drop offs since it was a canyon.  The dirt and small rocks made it slippery and hard to walk when we needed to.  And then...we got to a place where a stream had washed out one side of the road and the other side had BIG rocks to get over.  We would have to do a lot of building up to and down from them to get over.  We stopped for lunch and then went to work putting in the rocks.  Then we heard an ATV coming down from above.  It was a couple in a pretty fancy ride, and luckily we weren't blocking the road for them.  They stopped and after looking at our situation they said they had room for two of us to ride down if we wanted to.  We didn't really want to do that.  Paul and the guy talked about how we could get over that spot and figured out what might be the best route.  They went over it first to test it out and it worked.  Then we did, and the truck got stuck on top.  The guy said they would pull us a little to get us over that spot.  That worked!  Then he said they would go on down the trail and if they came to a spot that looked like we'd need help they would stop and wait for us.  They did, and ended up giving us another pull to get us unstuck.  Then they went on.  They guy thought that was the last of the really bad places.  There were not more that we got stuck on, but there were still lots of rocks to navigate around and move, but it finally got to be just a mostly dirt road when we finally got down into the foothills and then to Littleton.  We had to stop and get drinks.  We had just finished up all of our water on the way down and it was really hot and we were so thirsty.  We were SO THANKFUL that we didn't have to walk out with no water when it was very hot.  We were SO THANKFUL that we got down at all!  The step rails on the side of the truck got so bent that the doors are hard to close. The air dam under the front bumper came loose and is halfway off. Oh, and we got a flat tire on the way down too from the sidewall getting scraped on rocks.  It would puff air out of the scape every time we went over a bump.  We had a good spare, but the valve cap was old and broke to pieces and it started puffing air out of the valve stem over bumps too.  We took the cap off the flat and put it on and that helped but didn't entirely stop it.  Thankfully, it held out to get us home being just a little low.  After the fact Paul told me the truck had gotten a little stuck on a steep place and he and Bean both pushed it to get it over a rock. Then, even though it was in park, it started sliding down the road driverless! OH NO!  Paul, with his clumsy boot foot and slippery road was still able to open the door and get back in and STOP IT before it careened down a cliff.  I was glad I didn't hear that story until we were out and on our way home!  I am not feeling too excited to do anymore dirt road exploring at this point.  Pavement sounds really good right now!  I took no pictures on the way down.  Just too stressed and busy moving rocks and not in the mood to feel like taking pictures.  Feeling very, very blessed that things fell into place for us to get out. Blessed even though we made a less than wise choice.  Blessed to not have more damage to the truck.  Blessed that no one got hurt. Blessed that people came along to help us out.  BLESSED in those and so many other ways!  Many thanks to the couple who turned out to be our guardian angels yesterday.  They blessed our day!  

So, this week we did find out that the truck won't be totaled!  Glad about that because we spent a morning looking at what trucks we could afford if we had to replace it, and there weren't many and they weren't too great. The only real nice thing that would have happened was that we could have gotten one with 4-wheel drive, but not to be.  The truck needs $6,000 of repairs! Thankfully the insurance will pay all but our $500 deductible.  That's a relief.  Because the truck is in the shop, it has been kind of a stay at home and wait and not go anywhere unpaved time.  We've had to scrounge up things to do.  Maybe it's a good thing.  We are finding some interesting things to do and I am getting some things done I would probably have put off otherwise.  Here's the week's activities. I take nice morning walks at different places, I defrosted the freezer, I deep cleaned the kitchen stove, we went to a really great patriotic concert at the Tabernacle that one of our ward members sings in.  I just try to enjoy any little excuse to get out.  Paul and went searching for ant killer that we had run out of and enjoyed just looking around at IFA and Cal Ranch.  Just leisurely walking around when we went to pick something up at Costco was another thing.  We were those people you hate to be stuck behind at Costco when you're trying to hurry up and get your shopping done.  We have been acting old is what you'd call it I guess.  I'm happy to get some of these things done and enjoy some new things, but I hope this won't last forever!!! Another thing I  found to do was to clean out my genealogy briefcase and clean out a whole basket of genealogy stuff and get it sorted out.  It was actually kind of  fun to look through so many things that I hadn't seen for a long time.  Good work, if I do say so myself.  

Picnics and morning walks beauty

 Right now I have to take morning walks without Paul.  Sometimes I vary the routes since I have more time since I'm retired.  This week I found some fun things on different versions of my morning walks.  One morning a little bird was enjoying taking a bath in the overspray from a neighbor's sprinklers.  It was so cute!  We also had our first ripe tomato one morning this week!

This collage is a mix of morning walks, a picnic at Oak Grove and a picnic at Pine Valley.  We also got ice cream using up what was left on a gift certificate we had to the Brandin' Iron.  Both picnics were lovely and the walk on the Red Hill this morning was wonderful.  We've been having a little cool snap that has also made it really nice.  Paul and I also walked on some little paths at the hospital the other morning after his cardiology appointment and discovered some fun things there too.  

Memorial Day 2026 - Cedar Mountain Picnic/Cedar Breaks

With the burning down of our regular Memorial Day picnic site at Pine Valley and people having too many other commitments, we decided to postpone to another year our regular visit from Jay, Brynn and family and just get together in a couple of weeks at Family Camp.  That left us to find something else to do with the day.  Paul, Bean and I went up to Cedar Mountain via Parowan for a picnic and visit to Cedar Breaks.  We stopped in at Parowan to add some jalapeno poppers from Smokin' Joe's to our picnic lunch and then drove up to look for a site.  It ended up being really cloudy and cold up by Brian Head/Cedar Breaks, so we drove down lower to Uinta Flat area to find a warmer spot.  Along the way it started to rain pretty good!  It stopped for a bit and we found a nice  spot and had a great picnic with some Earnie's chicken along with chips, cottage cheese, beans, poppers, rootbeer and Oreos.  Then we drove over to Cedar Breaks Visitor's Center, got more rain along the way, and enjoyed seeing the beautiful sites there.  It was about 37 degrees up there at the top!  Our picnic site had been around 59 degrees.  And then back in St. George it was around 85 degrees!  Glad we have Cedar Mountain for a great cooling off get away spot!  It was a beautiful drive up there and so good to see the rain and there were still some snow drifts up there too!  

Get aways in the hard weeks of recovery

 Paul is just about to go nuts with laying around with his foot in the air.  I'm feeling a little bit cooped up along with him.  I have taken advantage of morning walks for a little get out time as well as doing the work to get things finished up at school.  Paul decided he really needed to get out on Friday and said we should go to Pine Valley and have a KFC picnic at the Heritage Center picnic area.  We got things together and took Bean with us and did it!  And it was wonderful!  The food was good, the weather was lovely cool, the scenery was beautiful and the company was great too!  After we ate we took a little drive around to see how the cabins that are being rebuilt after burning in the fire are coming along and stopped off to read the DUP monument sign and see the Oreo cows.  It was a great little outing.  Paul got pretty tired by the time we left, but it was worth it for him and for Bean and me too!  Sadly, a giant old spruce tree at the grounds by the Heritage Center had been chopped down.  It looked like it must have been diseased so they took it down.  

Today I mowed the lawns and blew off the side yard by the trash and blew out the garage along with the patio.  Paul can't be doing that for a while.  I'm not very good at it, but I did my best.  Bean and I took the car and the truck and got them washed too.  Paul made some cookies and I made a blueberry loaf and cleaned the house, shopped and did laundry.  Just keep on keeping on.  Hopefully Paul's foot is healing well and he'll get some more freedom of movement back at his appointment on Tuesday.