I've tried several times over the past few weeks to get my chainsaw to start, but the thing won't run. So, today I went to get some firewood using a sledge hammer. It worked surprisingly well. :D I bludgeoned a couple of pinyon pines and ended up with about half of my truck's bed full of firewood. Combined with what I already have, I'm hoping it will be enough wood to keep a nice fire going every evening for the next week or so that I'm out camping. That's one item done from my to-do list, and a million left to go.

Yesterday the weather alternated between summer- and winter-like. Around noon, Mark and I were hiking near the Rochester petroglyph panel and we had to take our jackets off because it got pretty hot. A few hours later we were hiking up to Lookout Point, and the wind almost froze my face off. I really regretted leaving my hat and gloves in the truck. There were even some snow flurries, but mostly it was the sand blowing in my face that bothered me. Still, it was a great day, and as usual I'm wishing I could spend more time in that area. I'm not sure the weather will hold out for any more camping trips after this week, but if it does, I already know where I want to go.

It's supposed to be cold, windy, and rainy this weekend, so I figured it would be a good time to do some hiking. I'm gonna head down to the Ferron/Emery area to see some rock art and other sights, and I'm sure I'll pick up a few geocaches along the way. ;) Actually, there are 27 caches in the entire northern San Rafael Swell that I haven't found, and I'd like to find them all within the next couple of months. I'm hoping to find 10 of them this weekend, but that may be pushing it. Mark is going to be with me, so we'll be stopping at a few that I've already been to that he hasn't found yet.

After tomorrow, I won't work another Friday for the rest of the year. I've taken very few vacation days this year, but if I don't use them up they won't carry over into next year. Next week is the big camping trip at Buckhorn Flat, and I've taken 10 days off work in a row. I'm not sure that I'll be camping there that entire time, but that's my initial plan. I guess it depends on whether or not I get bored. There will be people camped with me Thursday through at least Tuesday, so I'm not worried about finding things to do on those days. Michael will be in school during the week and I'll have Bradley with me, so I'm going to have to head back into town on Halloween so that he can go trick-or-treating--plus, a hot shower will probably feel good after six days of camping.

What a weekend! Actually, just Sunday was awesome. The weather actually wasn't all that bad, but I'm not exactly disappointed that I didn't go camping. I was bored Saturday morning and looking for something to do, and I decided I wanted to drive down into the Swell to find a new geocache near Calf Canyon. Then I got to looking in Google Earth around that same area, and saw a place that I'd noticed before where the Entrada Sandstone had eroded into what looked like the same kind of formations at Goblin Valley. The rock formations were about ¾-mile from Hamburger Rocks, so I wanted to hike into the area to check it out and place a cache.

It was already too late Saturday to start making plans to go that same day, so I made plans with Sam and Mark to go the next morning. It started out cold and windy, but by the time we made it to Calf Canyon, it was warming up. We hiked around in the bottom of the canyon for awhile--the kids played in some water and caught tadpoles, and we saw some very neat pictographs.

After spending more than an hour at Calf Canyon, we drove back the way we came and took the turnoff to Hamburger Rocks. We ate lunch there, then began the hike east across the aptly named Sand Bench. The hike was pretty easy, but it went slow because Bradley kept stopping to play in the sand. We finally reached the canyon rim overlooking the valley where the rock formations were supposed to be, and the view was incredible. It really was just like a miniature Goblin Valley. We played on the rocks for more than an hour, then placed a cache which I called Ghoul Gulch.

We packed a lot of fun into just that one day, and it more than made up for the boring day we had on Saturday. The kids have already asked if we can go back to Hamburger Rocks and Ghoul Gulch next weekend, and in turn I've been bugging Traci to come with us. She claims to be too busy, but we'll see. ;)

Ok, so I wussed out on the camping trip I had planned for this weekend. The weather is not only supposed to be rainy now, but the high temperature is only supposed to be around 50°, with lows around freezing. No thanks, I'd rather be holed up all weekend in my house than in the camp trailer. I might take the kids out for a hike if there's a warm spell one of these afternoons, but other than that I think my ass had better get used to this chair.

It looks like the kids and I will be making another attempt at camping in the rain this weekend. Except this time, I plan on fixing the leaks in the trailer roof before we go. Traci's sister is supposed to have her baby this Friday, so Traci wants to stay in town to goo-goo-ga-ga over the baby. I'm sure Michael and Bradley and I wouldn't see her anyway if we stayed home, so why not go out and have some fun? We stayed cooped up in the house this past weekend while Traci went scrapbooking with her family, and that was decidedly boring.

Our friends DeViDe usually plan a geocaching event each spring and fall, where a bunch of crazies get together in the San Rafael Swell for some camping and brave the weather to go caching, hiking, and 4-wheelin'. They couldn't do it this fall, so I picked out a campsite and submitted the event listing. There's really not much else I need to do--people will just show up and we'll all have a lot of fun. At least that's how it always turns out.

I got a roofing contractor (actually, the only roofing contractor in Carbon and Emery counties) to come take a look at my garage roof today. It's been almost four years since I first noticed the roof leaking, but now I can actually see daylight through a few small holes in the roof. Part of the eaves, which are (ridiculously) made of particle board, are sagging and falling apart. For about $400 or $500 more than I could do the job by myself, they're gonna tear most of the roof off and put a new one on. Not only that, but it'll probably only take them a day, where it would take me more than a week. It'll burn up any savings that I had, but it's already a relief knowing that it'll be done reasonably soon.