There was quite an impressive lightning storm here last night. And, of course, I had to seek high ground to get some good pictures of it. :) I drove up onto Wood Hill and stayed there as long as I dared, and got quite a few good pictures. I also took several from my front yard, and only a few of them turned out. While I was taking pictures from the sidewalk in front of my house, I saw something that I'd never seen before. There was this very bright blue-green glow in the sky to the east, and it lasted for about eight or ten seconds. It did fluctuate in intensity a small amount, but other than that it was a steady, bright glow. It came from the direction of the airport, just slightly north of east from my house, and unfortunately the house across the street blocked the brightest part so it was hard to tell exactly where it originated. It was probably something like this, 'cause the power was knocked out briefly after the glow stopped.

Just for the hell of it, we decided tonight to drive a short distance outside of town to roast some marshmallows and make s'mores. There's nothing but empty desert immediately surrounding Price, and within 15 minutes of leaving home we were already sitting in our camp chairs around a nice fire. It was a little warmish to have a fire--it was over 80° when we left home at 10:00 pm--but it was nice to get away for a short while and do something fun, especially for the kids. I'm sure we'll have had our share of campfires after this weekend, but when this really hot weather has passed, I'd like to get out more and do stuff like this more often.

Friday when I got off work, Traci and I loaded the kids up in the car and headed to Provo. We'd planned on doing some geocaching with her brother's family that night, then seeing a movie the next day. On the way up, I got pulled over for doing 89 in a 65. It was in that wide, long passing lane just past the Scofield turnoff, and there was a truck pulling a boat that I wanted to get around before the passing lane ended, so I gunned it. I didn't even see the UHP trooper heading in the opposite direction until it was too late. I saw his brake lights come on in my rear view mirror, and I was almost completely stopped on the shoulder before he completed his u-turn. It was strange having to tell a cop that I was carrying. He just asked me where it was, I told him it was on my right hip, and he just said, "Thanks" and carried on like it was an everyday occurrence (which it probably is for him). He only wrote me up for doing 80, so that saved me $125. This is my first ticket in four years, and I intend to make it my last for at least the next four.

Anyway, we got to Provo, ate some dinner, then headed out for some caching. We found a few while the kids tagged along, then it got dark and we took the kids home while Jaysen and I went out and found some more. We got 15 total for the night, and stayed out until 2:00 am. The next morning, Traci and I went to a matinee of Pirates. After that, we picked up the kids and headed home. We all had a good time, but now that we're back home we've got a lot of work to do to prepare for our upcoming camping trip.

It's hot...supposed to get up to 99° F tomorrow. We (my family and my sister's family) escaped a bit of the heat today by going for a drive to Bob Wright Canyon. The elevation is only 7,600' there, but that's still 2,000' higher than here, and it was noticeably cooler. The humidity didn't help, though. We placed a cache up there, and I was just dripping sweat when we got back to the trucks. If the stream running through the canyon would have been any deeper, I might have jumped in.

After getting back to Price, Traci and I ditched the kids and placed a couple more caches. I had several places in mind, but a couple of them didn't work out, at least not for the size of container I was trying to hide. I wanted to make up for all the micro caches around town, so I've started placing regular sized caches within the city limits. I've still got one more left to place, but it's going to take some time and ingenuity to get it done.

We've got a big camping trip coming up in a couple of weeks. We're planning on six days and five nights at Fish Lake, but I've got some work to do before we can go. The truck may need new rear brakes, and it's also leaking oil (I think from the rear-main engine seal), but I'm not sure if either if those is absolutely critical. The brakes are my main concern, so I'll probably be pulling the drums tomorrow to check them out. As for the rear-main seal, I don't even wanna think about how much it'll cost to replace that. The part itself is dirt-cheap (probably under $20), but labor costs for removing the transmission won't be pretty.

It's been a crazy weekend! Long story short, Mike and I found 50 geocaches in and around West Valley City within a 24-hour period.

I worked in the office on Friday, so I woke up at 6:00 am, found one geocache on the way to Provo, then worked eight hours in the office. After getting off work, I drove up to WVC and hung out for a bit, and when Mike's wife got home at about 6:30 pm, we headed out. 27 caches and 11 hours later, we returned to his house and caught a quick six hours of sleep. Then it was back on the road, and the caching was much better up near the airport--we found 23 caches in seven hours.

I'm hoping that it's not too difficult to get back to a normal eating and sleeping schedule. So far I've only eaten five meals in the last three days, and one of those consisted of merely a single PB&J sandwich and some salt and vinegar chips. I managed to get eight hours of sleep last night, though it started and ended about three hours later than normal, but I think I can cope.

Our camping trip this weekend was brief, but it was a lot of fun. I wasn't in the mood for water skiing, but I did end up driving John's boat several times while he skied. I'd never driven a boat before, and I wasn't quite comfortable doing it, but it was a little fun. We got rained out Friday night--right after I lit the campfire, the wind and lightning picked up and it started raining. We ended up just putting the fire out and hunkering down for the night a little earlier than we'd planned. Saturday morning we headed out on the water and found a couple of geocaches that were near the shoreline. After lunch and some more skiing and pulling the kids around on a tube, we broke camp and headed home. I found a few geocaches on the drive home, and got soaked in the process. It was pouring in Indian Canyon where two of the caches were, and it rained again in Price when I stopped at the RV dump.

It was nice having all day Sunday to unwind, and I've got tomorrow and Wednesday off work. Traci is taking the kids to her family reunion Thursday through Sunday, and I'll be finishing the drywall work in the upstairs bathroom then. And I'm sure I'll squeeze a little geocaching in while I'm at it. :)

I dug up some old pictures that I'd forgotten about, most of them were taken in the late '90s, but a few were worth scanning and uploading to my site. They weren't of the best quality to begin with, and scanning them in didn't help any, but here they are.