The back of some stranger’s head. How many of you were out shopping today and that was your view as you stood in line waiting to get and/or pay for your must-have, 20% off, limited supply Christmas presents?
I decided to avoid all the hoopla and headed up to the family land instead. This is what I was looking at all day:
Much better than anything you can see at Wal*Mart.
We may not have gotten much (or any) snow here in Salt Lake when that storm came through last week, but our cabin did.
My older brother and I went up there today and had a much more successful trip that the previous one, and maiden voyage, with my Jeep.
There was about a foot of snow on the dirt roads up there, and at first we didn’t thin we would make it up the 3 miles to the cabin. But we decided to give it a go anyway and headed up. The Jeep did fantastic. It made it past the Paxman’s, up the S curve and even the rocky S curve, past the F-U tree and fairly easily down the hill, around the corner and up the hill past Don’s fence. We had some good momentum going so we went right past our gate and made it all the way up to the south end of the property.
Then we decided to try it. There is a spot on our private road that goes through an open area. You need to come out of the trees, take a hard left and go up a badly rutted road that generally has more snow that anywhere else.
It took us three tries, blazing a little further up the hill each time, before we made it past and all the way to the cabin.
Success. It was a challenging drive, but I loved it, which is one of the reasons I wanted a Jeep in the first place.
More snow due this week. Maybe another try next weekend?
Was a lot of fun. No. More like, as my big brother kept saying, an adventure.
My older brother and his wife drove their Dodge Durango up to our land. (100 miles of highway then 3 miles of dirt road). My little brother and his wife drove their Jeep Cherokee. I came up in my newly acquired Jeep Wrangler.
It was warm enough that we took the doors and top off my Wrangler and went to see what hills we could climb in it.
As we were traveling over hill and over dale we were touting the awesomeness of the “legendary Jeep off road capabilities.”
After lunch my little brother and his wife headed home in the Cherokee. The other three of us were going to hang out until dusk and then head into Heber for dinner.
Less than 10 minutes after they left, we heard my brother coming back. One of his wheel bearings had started to go, and he didn’t feel comfortable driving back to Salt Lake that way. Since he and his wife had to get back to relieve grandma of the kids, we packed up everything into the Durango and my Jeep and took off.
On the way down the hill my Jeep started overheating, so we went to the rest area and filled it up with water. 15 miles later, just past Current Creek, it overheated again. Now we decided to pull out the thermostat, hoping that would keep it cool all the way home, and it might have worked if we hadn’t messed up the gasket. Water was pouring out even after we put the whole thing back together. Crap. We had to leave my Jeep on the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere, and pack everyone into the Durango.
I hated the idea of leaving my Jeep on the side of the road overnight, my brothers agreed, so we took my brother’s big old Ford truck with his car trailer up and brought it down. By the time we got home it was 11 pm, so since the other Jeep was safe on our own property we decided to get it in the morning.
8 am the next morning we were on the road again. Since the truck and trailer wouldn’t make it all the way up the dirt road, we found a good place to turn it around and started walking up to our cabin. With GPS in hand, we decided to cut the 2.5 mile drive in half by walking straight through the woods. Great idea, except about halfway up we started seeing fairly fresh cat tracks. Big cat tracks. Apparently big enough to take down a deer, which really gave a rise to our adrenaline when we found the picked-clean remains of one.
Big sticks in hand, we made it up to the cabin untouched, drove the Jeep down to the truck and got it home just past noon.
Fun stuff. Go up in 3 vehicles, make it home in one. 2 Jeeps down, Dodge Durango saves the day. Midnight run to get the Wrangler, bright and early run to get the Cherokee. And a(n imaginary) run in with a big, hungry cat.
All in all, and adventurous weekend.
First I want to say that I do feel bad for the people in Duchesne County who owned the 100+ cabins that were just destroyed in the “Church Camp Fire”. I have an idea how it feels, I got a small taste of it when I heard there was a wild fire on the mountains outside of Duchesne. I imagined our property, nicely wooded over most of it, completely burned out, trees gone, shade gone, cabin and campers lost.
I’m sorry that not everyone gets the sense of relief I got when I came home, got on the internet and found out that the fire is at least 20 miles (32 km) from our property. But I can’t help being happy that it is.
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Went up to the property yesterday, it's still there! Overall, it was an incredibly relaxing day. It was warm enough that I walked around without my shorts on. Danny asked me why I bothered keeping my lower half covered, considering I was up there all alone. Well, considering the sun burn I got on my upper half, I'm kinda glad for the psychological block society gave me. Anyway, I went on a couple nice walks and completely planned out Chapter 1 for the Psychology class I'm teaching this fall. I know what I'm going to stress, the projects they're going to have to do and how I'm going to grade them. It's amazing how much work I can get done when there is no TV, internet and other things to distract me. Only 20 more days and I'll have the whole book covered. On the way home I decided to take the Wolf Creek Pass route home. Which, by the way, is a lot longer than just taking SR40 back. But it was something different, and quite scenic. I left the land around 3:30 and got home real close to 7:00, but I did make quite a few stops for pictures. Then I got home, cleaned up and went down to Free Wheeler to bug Danny for a couple deliveries. Headed home and, despite being in the convertible (with a top that doesn't go up) and it raining lightly, stopped in at Albertsons to pick up some aloe vera gel for my sunburn. Made it home before the storm really hit, and fell asleep on the back porch listening to the storm. I was pretty surprised how relaxing the thunder and lightning was for me. Anyway, that was my day, and the main thing is that the fires have avoided our little area. Oh, and if you want to see the pictures I took, click HERE.
<---Dylan, feelin' not so good. 
er himself. Leaves a nice puddle of semi-digested chocolate milk in the middle of the road (it's a side dirt road, we didn't let him puke in the middle of US 40!) After that he starts to feel a little bit better, but we're starting to consider just calling it a day and heading home. We decided to head over to Strawberry Reservoir so we could rinse off his clothes, we really didn't want to be smelling them all the way home. As soon as we get moving again Dylan's stomach starts bugging him again, but we make it the 3 miles or so safe and sound. We pull down to the shore of Strawberry and hang out there for a while - cleaning off the clothes and getting pictures of crawdads in the lake, the mountains and other sights around there. Dylan, as you can see by the picture, is feeling a lot better by now. As we're thinking about heading up to the land again, we notice it's already almost 3:00, and Danny promised Nana he would be back by 5:00 to pick up Josh. Hmmm, decisions, decisions, decisions. Take our time here at Strawberry, enjoy ourselves and relax a 
bit, or rush up to the land with just enough time to say "Hi Land" and turn around and come home. Hard choice. Strawberry was fun.