this weekend i actually got some stuff DONE. it seems lately that my projects are so large that ijust chip away at them, digging away bits with my fingernails in the hopes that i will one day see a difference, but never actually seeing any change. this weekend, however, i actually got some things done!

saturday started out with gathering clothing to be donated to Odyssey House, a local organisation that helps young adults, as well as mothers and children in need. I had some clothes ready when i remembered that i might have some more things in the basement and sure enough - another box of clothes that Rich and i had put together to donate. so i was able to take even more things down! what a great feeling. then i grabbed some food and headed to work with my parents’ computer to upgrade their operating system. why go to work? broadband. T1. FAST. and we have tons of resources, for which i was glad when their machine would not boot off my firewire drive, nor could i image the machine off the CDs it shipped with, nor with the CD for the new OS. So, i was able to use a CD from the previous OS to image (make a back-up of the current configuration and copy it off to my firewire drive) and wipe the machine and then do the install from the CD for the new OS. The whole upgrade went much smoother than i thought it would and i am pretty happy with it - hopefully they are too! they seemed to be when i dropped it off.

after working on their machine i headed to the store to get some peanut butter and then stopped by my local t-mobile to check out their phones. my phone gets a battery life of about 15 minutes, as long as i do not actually make a call, and so i need a new one. not that i ever get any phone calls, but i like the thought of someone being able to call me if they felt like it. the guy there was actually helpful (i have had REALLY mixed results in their stores, and on the phone, honestly). in the end, since i had ordered a phone with their customer care the other week and then returned it (i had no idea they still made phones as big as this one was). i had to call customer care again. i don’t know if they put different people on when you call from a store or what, but these people did not suck. maybe they are afraid of people raising their voices and saying how unhappy they are when they are actually in a store, vs at home in the tub.

then off to the library where i decided to see what movies they had while i was there and as i glanced through the titles, i saw “he died with a felafel in his hand”: one of my favorite books! oh, if you can find this movie, rent it. the movie is as good as the book. really. don’t blame me if you don’t like either, though, i cannot control anyone’s lack of taste but my own.

sunday, we got out of town. thank goodness. we headed northwest, toward the lake, but never actually made it to the lake. instead, we saw this:

and headed back home in time to get in a traffic jam due to a hay transport catching on fire.

on which lmmh concedes that if her trip had lasted as long as posting about it has, she would be really happy with her benefits package.

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day seven meant leaving. heading back to slc. as much as i thought it would be great to shower, i had no desire to actually go back, i have to admit. we decided to try to hike a trail we had started on last year and had turned back after a while. This time, we set out to do the entire loop - heading up a hill and then down into a canyon and then coming out along the road again - or so we thought.

near the top of the hill, there is a lot of petrified wood. so much in fact that you would be amazed that there is some random guy out of torrey who has ‘placed’ petrified wood along the trail in attractive poses so that he can charge people to take them on his tour. what is amazing is that if you walk past these obviously positioned objects, you run into massive tree trunks of petrified wood emerging from the ground, and it is so natural in comparison to his placed objects that their configuration looks silly.

we headed down into the canyon, scrambling over rocks and down slots, making sure as we went that we could always get back up what we were going down in case we had to turn back.

the walls got steeper as we went, of course.

but we were still pretty sure we could make it through and get back down to the road.

until we ran into this:

at least a 100 foot drop to the next flat surface. thwarted! we turned back, enjoying scrambling up all the rocks as much as we enjoyed scrambling down them.

the rest of the day, we played tourists. We went to the visitor center in capitol reef and bought postcards, went up a pamphlet-guided nature trail, but stopped short of walking along the boardwalk to see the petroglyphs - too many people! it was rough running into so many people after 5 days of near solitude! then we stopped at a friend of sop’s in Torrey and hung out and talked and then slept on their floor. a great trip indeed!

in which pictures that sop has taken are shown and lmmh lives up to her name.

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lmmh decided to try sop’s ‘floating the river’ hypothesis as well (not a theory, since it failed to be proven by sop earlier).

the floating thing didn’t quite work out, but was fun nevertheless:

a lovely walkthrough beautiful landscape while drying out and ending the day.

in which sop and lmmh do not use proper care when dealing with the sun.

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the day started with two cups of tea, one was just not enough on this fine morning - we had to say hello to both earl AND lady grey. then we slowly gathered bits and pieces from camp and headed up pleasant creek (river? stream?).

the trail starts out on a road, which then turns off along a canal created by the diversion of pleasant creek to the town of notom. after a fence, the canal becomes stream again, going back to its natural state. there were so many things to discover and explore: lots of side areas to wander (or is it wonder?) around in.

first, some still nameless flowers;

then, this cool flower/bean-pod plant that also marks a point where the gaffer’s tape that had been holding together my camera since day 3 gave out and ruined another roll of film. but let’s just focus on the cool flowers for now, why don’t we:

this was the hottest day of the trip so far. we hiked until we finally got up on a ridge where we could enjoy the beauty of … a rancher’s house. just when you think you are alone. on the way back, with our sunscreen well sweated off, we went to float the river:

the river was not quite deep enough - i think i managed to float about 5 feet once - but it was loads of fun anyway! i’ll hit up sop for the pictures he snapped of me and add those later. this would be no fun at all if i couldn’t embarrass myself regularly, you know.

in which the Lamp Stand receives a new name, and our subjects are amazingly still able to ride on…

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the day started with a trek to get some fresh water. we hiked a little ways up long canyon where there was a stream inlet that appeared not to be as silty as the rest of the stream. plunking the filter in we got 5 gallons before the filter wanted to be cleaned. as we were near the end of the trip, we figured the 5 gallons would do us. we then jumped in the truck and set off to the campsite and the mine.

there was an offspurt road before the road to the mine that we figured might get us to Lamp Stand, so, after parking the truck, we headed off to that. finally, we saw something that might, if you squinted, may have served as a Lamp Stand to some rancher at some time.

what is that in the background?

with a little bit of help, that is:

we hereby dub thee “The Gin Stand”!

obviously, someone thought others might need some help in seeing Lamp Stand as well and kindly left that help in the shade of a nearby rock. sop opened and sniffed, and it was indeed gin, so he took a swig:

not wanting to be shown up (i am an itsy-bitsy bit competetive), i went for it as well:

your results may vary.

we sobered up while biking along the burr trail, taking random side roads to hone our sand-riding skills, finally heading back to camp past the fields of desert cilantro:

(which is just a name sop made up when i was oohing over the scent - it really does smell like a sweet cilantro! - he had me convinced we could pick a bunch and sprinkle it over our dinner the night before.)

oh! then we decided to head into capitol reefer:

and we finally found a campsite between the park and notom sometime after dark.