We have taken some beautiful morning/afternoon walks the last week. You can see the effects of all of the rain we've had recently with rain puddles, greenery and flowers blooming! So beautiful. And one night we went out back and enjoyed roasting marshmallows for s'mores!
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.
We saw the sign for Oak Springs Trilobites a few weeks ago coming back from the Pahranagat NWR and I'd been wanting to make the trip out to try and find some. We took Bean and went out there on Saturday to try our luck. We didn't really have any luck, but we had a really nice drive out in the boonies and ate a picnic there and enjoyed poking around and beating on some slate rocks trying to find some. We did find some pretty dendrites. Here's what they are:
Dendrites in geology are tree-like, branching mineral formations, typically composed of manganese or iron oxides, that grow on rock surfaces or within fractures. Often mistaken for fossils, they are actually inorganic, non-equilibrium crystals that form as rapid, fractal growth patterns when mineral-rich water flows through narrow spaces. They are pretty, and we were glad that we at least found those!
