Yesterday evening I loaded up the truck with all our camping gear, firewood, etc., thinking that the weather would be dry enough that it could sit outside for two days before we went camping. The Weather Channel's forecast called for partly cloudy skies with a 10% chance of rain today. I woke up this morning to rain, and lots of it. I managed to get a tarp over the truck bed before it really started coming down. At one point the gutters were gushing with runoff from the rain, and both of my vehicles were covered in sleet. I suppose that even though the forecast for this weekend says it'll be sunny, I should be expecting lots of clouds and rain. Actually, that's how last October's San Rafael campout was, and it turned out to be a great outing.

My website was down for a bit, but it came back up this afternoon sometime. Now that it's back up, I can no longer get Movable Type to work--Solo must have done something to the server. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

I got my truck back today, after being in the shop since Saturday for $480 in brake repairs. Last weekend while I was out driving in the mud, the front brakes suddenly started making a loud grinding noise whenever I applied the brakes. I was certain that the brake pads had simply worn down too far, so Saturday I bought some new brake pads, got the front of the truck up on jack stands, and removed the wheels (after breaking off one of the lug studs). Not only were the brake pads worn down badly, but each rotor had a big crack in it. The calipers also weren't working all too well--the pistons were just about seized, and I could barely turn the rotors by hand because the pistons in the calipers weren't releasing enough.

I didn't have time to replace all of that myself, and I probably don't have the right tools to do it correctly, so I put the wheels back on and took the truck to Grako's. The parts alone were over $300 (not including the pads I'd already purchased), but they only charged me for one hour of labor, though I'm sure there was a lot more involved than that (not that I was going to complain that they undercharged me). They also repacked the wheel bearings since everything was torn down that far.

I was beginning to get worried that we wouldn't be able to make it to our camping trip this weekend, but now everything is back on track.

Well, the hike on Saturday turned out to be a bust. I checked the weather forecast several times on Friday and again very early Saturday morning before we left, and it kept saying that there was a 30% chance of showers. So much for trusting the Weather Channel.

As soon as we got to Ferron and made the first turn off the highway, it started raining. The farther east we drove, the worse the rain got. The roads also got worse the farther we went, and eventually I just couldn't keep my truck going in a straight line along the road--it kept going sideways on the very slippery clay surface. We stopped and checked the NOAA weather report on one of my FRS radios, and their forecast called for rain all day long, so we decided to turn back and not risk getting stuck. We'd already crossed flowing water on the road in a couple of places, so I'm sure North Salt Wash would have been flowing as well.

Instead of going to Sid's Mountain, we cached all the way back to Price, taking most of the day to get back and stopping at 18 geocaches. Most of them I'd already been to, but I got seven new finds for the day. I'm now considering another trip out there this winter. I've done a lot of hiking in the Swell between December and February, and those months are usually perfect for long hikes, requiring less water for drinking and having less chance of water ruining the trip.

I'm taking a little vacation from work from now until Tuesday, and I'm taking some time to finally hike up onto Sid's Mountain. The mountain is really just some relatively flat ground, but it's surrounded by deep canyons with sheer walls on all sides. The cirumference of Sid's Mountain is more than 20 miles, but there are only two or three ways to hike up on top. Mike and I hiked 8.5 miles trying to find a route on top two years ago, but we couldn't find a way up. This time, I've talked to two people who have been there and know the way up onto the top, so it's just a matter of enduring the hike. Mark, Mike, and I are leaving Price on Saturday at 5:00 am, and I don't expect to be home until almost dark that evening. There are two geocaches on Sid's Mountain, and this will probably be the hardest I've ever worked for a cache.

It may or may not rain on us during the hike. The weather forecast for Saturday seems to change several times daily--sometimes it says there's a good chance of rain, other times it says it'll be mostly clear. I'm not terribly concerned about getting rained on, but I do wonder how it will be crossing North Salt Wash. The last time I was there, Mike and I got our shoes a little muddy after jumping across the trickle of water in the bottom of the canyon, but this weekend there could be more than a trickle, especially if it rains after we make the crossing the first time on the way up Sid's Mountain. I hope we don't have to wade across on our way back!

I'm worried about the road going out there. It's about 20 miles on a dirt road from Ferron to the trailhead, and with the recent rain that we've had, parts of the road are certain to have been washed out. The Emery County road crew might have gotten to that road by now, but they've got a lot of roads to fix right now and I'm not sure this one is a priority for them. Just in case, I'm planning on bringing shovels and some 2x6 lumber--we might have to do some road work in the dark of the early morning in order to even start the hike.

I did some great 4-wheeling today in my truck. There's this geocache that I'd planned on finding this weekend, but after all the rain during the week, I decided not to even try. But last night, somebody posted a find on the cache, and he was able to drive to within 0.6mi of the cache, so I figured I could hike that far if I had to. I ended up following my sister's family all the way to the cache, with them in their Bronco and me and the boys in the F-250. It wasn't until after we'd found the cache that things got interesting.

There was a canyon that I noticed in the satellite photos that looked interesting, sort of a slot canyon for about 200 yards before opening up really wide. We found a road that appeared to go off in the right direction toward that canyon, but it really tested the limits of both our vehicles. The road snaked down a ridge, pretty narrow in some places, into the bottom of a wash. Getting down wasn't a big problem, but I had my worries about getting back up. I almost got stuck in some deep mud down in the bottom of the wash, and after walking farther down a short section of the road, we decided not to press on and risk really getting stuck. Getting out of the wash and back up the ridge turned out to be as difficult as I'd feared. One steep section in particular had a 10-inch high ledge going across the road, and on my first attempt, the truck couldn't make it over the ledge. I had to pile up a lot of rocks and dirt in front of the ledge so that my tires would roll over it, and even then I had to get a run at it (here's a video that my sister took). Mark made it up just fine in his Bronco, and after that part the rest was easy.

This was just another of those places where I'd really love to go back to explore some more, but it'd really be better on a mountain bike, 'cause I don't want to put that much wear and tear on my truck again. :) I've heard from two different people now that there are some dinosaur bones in that area, and I'd like to see that. The petroglyphs near the cache were interesting, and I'm sure there's got to be more of them around as well.

We camped out near the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry this weekend, in a little spot surrounded on three sides by hills and giant boulders. Within a few miles in all directions from us were a lot of dinosaur bones, petrified wood, petroglyphs and pictographs, and balanced rocks. I was out there two weekends ago for a few hours with the boys, but we pretty much stuck to the main roads. This weekend we did some hiking and and exploring the back roads. I use the term "roads" loosely, because some of what we drove on hadn't seen a full-sized truck in a long time. I'm really starting to like that area--I've never spent much time out there until the past weekend, but now we've got plans to go back this coming weekend, if the weather isn't too crappy, to have a campfire, roast some marshmallows, and place a night cache.