Fall Break - Camping in the Kaibab

We left Thursday afternoon and got there in plenty of time to find a great camp spot just off of FR 255.  Someone must have camped there just before us because sadly, for them, they left a neat little Dutch Oven outfit with a bag to go in, a small DO, silicone muffin cups and a metal pan w/lids set and a lid holder.  I feel bad that they left it, but they never came back to look for it, so now we have some new camping gear via the booty find.  It was a wonderfully level spot with a rock fire ring and surrounded by wonderful Ponderosa trees.  The dirt road wasn't bad at all.  And we were only about 20 miles from Jacob Lake.  That was nice, because for our first night's dinner we just ate there.  Always delicious.  We took cookies back to camp and had hot chocolate by the fire when it got dark.  It was so nice to have a fire.  It's been a long time.  

The next morning our plan was to visit as many of the Grand Canyon View Points as we could before we needed to be back to cook dinner in camp that night.  We made it to Sowats (first time ever), Crazy Jug, Monument, Parrisawampitts, Fence, Locust, North Timp and Timp. We put on over a hundred miles doing it.  And we saw lots of beautiful overlook views.  Sowats is off by itself and offers a different view completely, but the others are different focal points of the same area.  The leaves were gloriously beautiful as well as the canyon views.  We ate lunch along the way.

We had a great Paul cooked dinner in camp on Friday.  We had a fire again that night and read a book around the fire until bedtime.  It got cold in the evenings and early mornings, but the days were just right other than a bit of gnattiness at a few of the points.  We saw Kaibab Squirrels 4 times, turkeys and heard coyotes the first night.  A very noisy crow woke us up on Saturday morning!  We cleaned up camp and then headed over to Jacob Lake for one of their great breakfasts and then headed home.  It was a really relaxing trip!  (Note - Monument Point is unmarked and is basically just the trailhead to hike down to Thunder River.)

Happy #95 Aunt Georgia!

I feel bad that we didn't get out to Aunt Georgia's 95th birthday party/reunion.  It was held on conference weekend this year.  We have had SO MANY huge truck repairs and other auto maintenance and auto expenses of late that our credit card had huge bills to pay.  We just couldn't see that we could spend the $500 plus expense that it would have been to go to CA and pay for food and motel, etc. that it would have taken.  So we didn't go.  She's my mom's last living sibling.  It sounds like everyone that went made it nice for her.  Sometimes life gets in the way of things.  

More Fall-lelujah!

We took Grandma to see some lower down Fall-lelujah yesterday.  We drove the Kolob Terrace road and down the mountain to the Cedar section...and it did not disappoint.  The colors were beautiful!  We enjoyed the Zion skyline and rock formations on the first part of the drive through a portion of east Zion with some rain showers, and then a picnic lunch at Lava Point, on to Kolob Reservoir and then over and down the mountain.  She said she enjoyed it so much.  It is good for her to be able to just get out of her house for a day.

During the week Paul and I took some beautiful walks at Pine Valley and at Brookside.  Loving Fall this year...well, every year!

Tavin goes far and fast!!!

Paul and I went for an early walk this morning and saw the beginnings of the of this October 1st St. George Marathon.  There were people coming in from the half while we walked.  Tavin did the full with a bunch of friends down from BYU.  And he did a great job!  Came in in about 3 hours and 20 minutes.  Proud of him for working hard to do this thing and for so many other good things he's doing in his life right now.  

Glorious Fall on Cedar Mountain!

 I love that I get Fridays off!  After years of having to go in for just a little while on Fridays to help with OEK Lunch, I'm glad not to have that interruption now.  It's like I have 2 Saturdays now! I can have one to clean the house and one to get outside!  Yesterday Paul and Bean took Friday off (they had reached a finishing point on the job they are working on) and we drove a loop over Cedar Mountain and saw such beautiful Fall colors, sunny and cloudy and rainy and thunder skies, and the coolness of impending Fall!  These are some places and walks we take every year...and love them every time!

Time with Tasia and Zade - grand edventures

 We love to go to the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour movies every year.  It started years ago as something else - climbing movies - presented by Desert Rat, but now it's this.  We still like it.  It's full of great high adventure outdoor sports movies for the most part.  It's things we would never do, but it's so interesting to see other people's great adventures.  We've taken grandkids in the past and this year we took Tasia and Zade.  It's hard to find things that teenagers like, but they both really enjoyed this.  We wanted to take Koen, Gaige and Brenden too, but they weren't available.  It was fun to hang out with just the Smiths.  Afterwards we did DQ which always sweetens the fun!  Some of our favorite movies this year: 

BEAR-LIKE

Two adventurers engage in close contact with grizzly bears in Alaska experiencing first-hand the struggle for survival and dramatic fighting scenes. Driven by a desire to explore the unknown, the film tells a personal story of wilderness, framed through breathtaking footage of these amazing creatures.

My Midsummer Morning

Inspired by Laurie Lee’s book “As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning”, Alastair Lee sets out on his most terrifying journey yet - walking through Spain, earning money for food by playing his violin, being distinctly unmusical.

We've already taken Trigg on an edventure this year, so we didn't take him, but while we were there he was out having his own edventure - earning his brown belt in Karate!  Way to go Trigg!  Proud of you!

Great Basin camping (and frustration)

 I have been trying to get reservations for Paul's YM group to camp and go to Lehman Cave at Great Basin NP.  Their on-line reservation service leaves much to be desired.  I did get some, but the campsites may not be big enough, as we have found before using this reservation service, so we decided to go over and check them out.  And in the process we had to find a campsite for ourselves.  The online service said nothing was available to reserve.  Some campsites said they were closed.  We did find the last one available in one camp area and then afterwards found that a much nicer area that the site said was closed had many wonderful sites.  Thus, the frustration.  But the park was in the beginning stages of Fall colors and it was cool and beautiful, so that kind of made up for the other.  We checked things out and took a nice little morning hike and then some long drives to look for another possible site and also to drive by for a close up of Notch Peak.  It was a long drive, but in most ways, it was still worth it.  We had good food and beautiful scenery and perfect weather.  

In Search of Anderson Valley Cabin

It was a hard hike, and one that ended up not reaching the goal, but I was glad that I could still do it and the scenery on the way up was magnificent.  We have been wondering ever since the 2020 forest fire on Pine Valley Mountain if the Anderson Valley Cabin survived the fire.  The hike to get there goes from the big sequoia tree at Browse Guard Station on up the mountain and then over to Anderson Valley.  It is a very difficult, straight up hike.  There is one forest section that is really beautiful and the rest is either rocky and up hill, or straight up a very unmaintained and brushy, edgy mountainside.  The elevation gain is very big over a very short area.  Lots of stops to breathe take place.  We got a late start too.  We did make it to the top and then the fire devastation was so great that no trail was there and the landscape was completely changed...and we decided that getting lost and not finding the trail back down was not a great idea, so we ate our lunch and then went back down.  It's slow going down the steepest part because footing is tricky on the decomposed granite and the trail is so hard to find in the brush.  We took some side detours on the way up and a few more on the way down.  It ended up being about 11 miles.  And they were hard miles!  I felt them for the week afterwards.  BUT, the views of the Zion skyline and the Kolob Fingers section of Zion were so beautiful, that it did make up for some of the hard about this hike.  I finally found a blog post that said the old cabin had burned down and only the foundation is left.  Now I don't feel the need to do that hike ever again.  I hate to see so many great trails lost to the fires and erosion.  

September birthdays - Kelli, Juge, Lou Anne,

September birthdays started out early with Kelli 's birthday on the 2nd.  She's new to our line-up as Derek's new wife.  She's such a classy, nice lady.  Kind of hard to know what to get her as we don't get to see her much, but flowers (freshcutpaper) and a dinner card hopefully were a good fit for her.  Paul and I dropped them by to her on her birthday morning and had a really nice little visit with her.  She probably thinks it's kind of weird to have the parents of her husband's deceased wife give her a bday present, but I'm so grateful that she's a part of that little family now and filling in that empty spot in Derek's and the kids lives.  I hope it's going to be a good thing for everyone involved. I have a hard time getting pictures of her for some reason, but she sent us one saying thank you for the gift (of the gift).

Next up was Juge for her #41!  Paul and Bean are working up at New Harmony right now and they drove in and met Juge for lunch at Park Place.  I had hoped to come, but it was on a day I work and no other day/time would work for her/me at the same time.  They had a nice time and I'm happy Juge was happy.  Again, sadly, no pictures were taken, but one was sent by Juge.  We got her a lightweight backpacking pillow/chocolate and a nice card.  It seemed to be a good fit, especially since she got a matching ZOX bracelet to go with it from someone else!

Paul and Bean are still working in New Harmony, so for Lou's birthday I drove up (I don't work on Friday's), picked them up, and we drove in to Cedar and met Lou for lunch on her birthday.  It was a nice time to visit with her without her having to be taking care of her family too.  Then she invited us up for her birthday dinner on Sunday too, so we had a double good time with her for her #47th birthday.  

A great Tushar Mt. campout/hike

 We wanted to get out for another campout before hunting season is in full swing and we wanted to get away from the heat in St. George.  We decided on the "Beaver Mountains" as we call them, but it's really the Tushar Mts. above Beaver.  Whatever you call them, we love them!  We had hoped an early start on Friday morning of the Labor Day weekend would net us one of our favorite camp spots, but it didn't.  Too many summer parked trailers make that pretty hard to do now days.  But we found a great little new spot and worked out just right.  It was off the road just enough to be private, but not so far to be too long a drive to get other places.  The weather, after 113 degrees in St. George, was a wonderful 65 degrees.  We needed to jacket up in the evening and morning.  We tried a new meal (using what we already had in the house to cut down the cost) and enjoyed an amazing pork chop, mashed potato, corn on the cob dinner with baked raspberry turnovers for dessert.  Breakfast was also delicious.  We had omelets with hatch green chili and swiss cheese, fruit, toast and hot chocolate and another turnover!!!  Paul does amazing things with a Camp Chef and a Dutch oven.  

We did have one glitch while driving down unknown roads looking for a campsite.  We ended up high centering and getting quite stuck in our new truck down one little road.  Should have taken a picture, but I didn't think about that while being stressed about being stuck and about how it might damage the vehicle.  But, if you're going to get stuck, it's really good to do it with Paul.  With a jack and some rocks we got out after about an hour's worth of work and no damage.  I'd rather not get stuck and add the stress, but if you do, it's awesome when you get out!

On Saturday morning we did the drive over to Big John's Flat and up to the peak.  All of this area is so beautiful!  Then we decided we'd hike up to see the goats/Delano Peak since we could see the goats from our parking spot.  I was worried.  Wasn't sure I was up at all for a hike at that elevation after a week of walking and bike riding on these legs.  It was a hard uphill start, but we made it the 2.5 miles up with an elevation gain of 1098 feet.  The trail was better than ever before and we saw the goats from a distance (didn't want to scare them off) and then made it up to Delano Peak.  I was glad we went then and surprised that we did so well actually.  Afterwards we drove to the next viewpoint and ate our lunch and then headed home.  We listened to a great book, Shaking the Nickle Bust by Ralph Moody to and from and some in camp.  It was a great, cool, restful, beautiful campout/hike!