#1: When I was a young child, probably four or five years old, I thought the words "China" and "funky" were naughty words. From that, you may also infer that during the late '70s and early '80s, my parents listened to a lot of the Doobie Brothers. #2: Once, while showering after a weeklong camping trip, I realized that wet-dog-smell isn't limited only to dogs. I know, eww.

Demolishing concrete, without heavy equipment or power tools, is goddamned hard work. I've been working on and off for the last couple of weeks at removing the sidewalk that runs along my driveway, and I'm nowhere near halfway done. I started with just a sledgehammer and a 3' crowbar, but today I bought a smaller four pound sledge and a 12" concrete chisel. The work isn't going any faster, but I've been up against a particularly hard piece of concrete that appears to be bonded to the foundation of the house. There are at least two layers of concrete, one old and brittle at the bottom, and a newer layer over the top that's much harder. In some places the top layer is thicker than others, and I've been working on the thickest section of it. Pretty soon I'll have the arms of a blacksmith.

I didn't do much over the long Memorial Day weekend. I did manage to get out for a short hike yesterday, but some heavy rain and sleet cut it short. I went with Samantha and Mark and their two boys to Gentile Wash. We parked on the side of US-6 and hiked about 1/2 a mile up the canyon, then turned back and checked out some cliffs closer to the highway. I want to go back there this week when the weather is nice to hike to the end of the canyon, which would probably end up being a four mile round-trip hike. I haven't been able to figure out why somebody built a road going up the canyon (probably prospecting for coal), but it's been out of use for so long that it's only a foot trail now. I hope to find some old ruins or something else interesting up there, though it's possible that there's just nothing there.

My wife's parents gave us a Camp Chef Ultimate Dutch Oven last Christmas, and I've been hesitant to use it because dutch ovens seem like a lot of work. I finally got around to trying it out today. I spent a couple of hours cleaning off the factory wax coating and seasoning it, though most of that time was simply spent waiting while it sat in the oven.

After a dinner of BLTs (mmm, bacon) I started some charcoal in a firepit in the back yard and began making dessert. I just tried the recipe that came with the oven, cherry soda cobbler. I dumped two cans of cherry pie filling in the bottom of the dutch oven, then added a box of yellow cake mix, poured a can of lemon-lime soda over the top, and put it in the coals. While waiting for it to cook, we roasted some marshmallows and enjoyed the break in the weather, as it had rained quite a bit earlier today.

The cobbler turned out very nicely. The cake was done perfectly, and none of the pie filling was burned to the bottom of the oven (phew!). I had something similar a few years ago when some friends made a blueberry cobbler while we were camping, and it was excellent. I had hoped that mine would be that good, and it was. Cleaning up the dutch oven was relatively easy, so apparently I seasoned it adequately. I may experiment in the back yard again a time or two before our next camping trip, but I do plan on using this while camping from now on.

I started coming down with something yesterday--I had a fever, but was feeling extremely cold, and I was aching everywhere. My stomach hurt, but at least I wasn't feeling nauseous. As soon as I got off work I went to bed, where I stayed most of the evening. I managed to eat something right before my usual bedtime, which was the first time I'd eaten since breakfast. I expected to wake up this morning feeling just as ill, but I actually felt fine. Hopefully whatever it was doesn't return, 'cause I'd hate to spend all weekend being sick.

It's not as though I've got plans for this weekend. The rain has pretty much put a damper on anything I had wanted to do, but even without the rain, I think fuel prices would have limited my options. Diesel is currently $4.55/gallon, and I haven't filled the truck up for more than a month. If I do go anywhere this weekend, it will probably be either for an ATV ride up around the end of Airport Road, or maybe a hike near Kenilworth (again).

I laid down some grass seed in the back of my property today, hoping that all this rainy weather will help get it started. I don't plan on maintaining an actual lawn back there, but I do hope that the grass will outcompete the weeds. I usually have to mow down weeds a few times a year, but even if it means having to mow more often, I'd rather have grass growing there. As it stands now, it usually turns into a jungle before I get around to mowing the weeds.

I did something today that I've wanted to do for years. The difficulty of it has always put me off, but for some reason last night I made the decision to just go for it and hike to the top of the mountain just north of Kenilworth. When I was a kid living in Kenilworth, I once hiked up the old tram grade, but never made it farther than that. The tram grade goes more than halfway up the mountain, but it's relatively easy to hike up. Once you reach the top of the tram grade, the terrain is steep and loose, with lots of rocks, boulders, and fallen trees. Another reason I kept putting this hike off is because it had always been either too hot or too cold when the urge struck me, but today I just didn't care. It almost got up to 90° today, I got pretty sunburned and had to carry a lot of water with me, but it was worth it.

I didn't leave home until pretty late in the morning today, and I parked the car just below the water tank above Kenilworth. The tram grade had been torn up during the mine reclamation a few decades ago, but it was still a fairly easy hike up that part. I stopped several times to drink some water and let the burning in my legs subside a little. Torrey spent the whole hike up chasing after grasshoppers and lizards, and she showed a lot of interest in a dead deer about halfway up the tram grade. The higher we climbed, the more remnants of the tram there were--rails, ties, cables, pipes, etc. At the top of the tram grade, there was a wide, sagebrush-covered area with a cliff dropping down one side and another cliff rising up on the other side. This was the part I was most worried about, because I didn't know whether I'd be able to get past the cliff going farther up the mountain. I had to spend a few minutes standing at the bottom of the cliff looking for a way up, but I eventually spotted a way up that was pretty easy.

After that, the going got tough. The trees were thick and the hillside was steep, and it was difficult picking my way up the mountain. It was only about 700 horizontal feet from the top of the tram grade to the top of the mountain, with an elevation gain of about 400 feet, but it took me about 30 minutes to cover that much ground. Once I reached the top, the view was amazing. I could see the Book Cliffs stretching south all the way to Mt. Elliott, and I could see the Wasatch Plateau well into Emery County as well. Even the uplift of the San Rafael Swell was clearly visible from there. I placed a geocache near the top, called my wife to let her know I had made it, then started the descent down.

What had taken me three hours to hike up only took 30 minutes to hike down. My round-trip hike was only 1.75 miles, and according to my GPS I spent about 1/3 of the entire time stopped to rest. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get a chance to hike across the shelf line to see the actual mine, but the shelf line has crumbled and fallen down the mountain, and the way across looked to steep to hike across, especially without someone else there to help me in case I got into trouble. I may go back someday just to see the mine, but at least for now I can check one thing off my List Of Things To Do Before I Die. :)

Tomorrow, Traci and I will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Neither of us is into big celebrations, so we're going to spend the evening at home together, without the kids (thanks to her parents). We had planned a camping trip this weekend, but there was too much that we needed to do in order to get ready for it and too little time in which to do it, so we're going to shoot for next weekend instead. That will be Memorial weekend, and we run the risk of the Bear Creek campground being full (or at least crowded). We may try to reserve a site there, but the last time we did that we had to drive to Castle Dale to pay for the site in full. That was three years ago, and if I recall correctly the campground actually wasn't too full then.

Speaking of three years ago, diesel fuel was only $2.39 per gallon then when I bought my truck. Today it's $4.35, or at least it was a few days ago. I normally consider fueling up the truck to be no different than any other necessity--when I'm thirsty, I take a drink of water. However, lately that has been changing. I've held off doing a lot of things this spring because of high fuel prices, and it doesn't show any sign of letting up. I haven't been on a single long hike this year, mostly because my preferred destinations are just too far away to justify spending that much money driving to. I used to take off on a whim and spend the entire day in the desert driving and hiking, but it looks like those days are numbered.

It was an uneventful weekend--so much so that I don't even recall what I did--but I took yesterday (Monday) off work and did some hiking with Dave. Dave and I had never met before, but we became acquainted through Flickr, and he just happened to be vacationing in Utah and asked me if I wanted to check out the old abandoned railroad grade near Green River. I had already been out in that area before, but I never got far from the interstate. It's pretty desolate country, but with some interesting things that you just can't see when you're cruising at 75 miles per hour. We ate a quick breakfast at the West Winds truck stop in Green River, then headed east toward the Floy exit. We spent a few hours checking out points along the railroad grade, and also observed some oddities that were visible in Google Earth but not readily explainable. It turns out that those oddities still defy explanation when you're looking at them in person, but they were probably excavations left by mineral or oil exploration. Some of them look like craters from the air, but from the ground they look like depressions in the surface, some elongated with mounds of dirt on either end, and others round with the dirt spread out all around the hole.

After parting company with Dave, I drove home and found several geocaches along the way. I got soaked from the rain while finding a couple of caches off of I-70, but as I drove north on US-6, it cleared up and eventually became sunny. I particularly enjoyed the cache at the Woodside cemetery. I'm still uneasy whenever I'm stopped anywhere near Woodside, but I didn't have to leave sight of the car in order to find the cache. The cemetery is out of sight and hearing distance from the highway, and I spent a few minutes walking around and enjoying the scenery. It's probably the best cache I've found all year, though I haven't found many this year. Yet.

I've been trying to make some improvements around my yard lately, and along those lines, I sold both my '87 and '88 Subarus today. The only reason I've been holding on to the '87 is because it only needed a little work to get road-worthy, and it would have been nice to have something besides my truck to beat on. Well, I never really got around to fixing that car, and with the recent purchase of some ATVs, I didn't have any more use for it. The '88 was only hanging around just in case I needed parts for the '87. I made enough money from the sale of both to recover what I had put into the '87, so I consider it a good deal.

My next project will be to demolish and remove the sidewalk in the driveway. The sidewalk runs along the house foundation and is raised about 6" above the driveway, and it prevents me from parking the camp trailer close enough to the house to drive the ATVs around the other side of the trailer. With the sidewalk gone I'll be able to park the trailer in the driveway, drive the ATVs through the driveway (in order to load them into the truck), and still be able to open the camp trailer door. Right now I can only do two of those things at once.

I finished laying rocks down in the 40' long irrigation ditch in my back yard today. I lined the bottom with large flat rocks for the water to flow over, and lined the sides with rectangular, blocky rocks to contain the flow of water. So far they ("they" being the water users along the ditch) haven't started running water from the canal down the ditch, but I expect it any day now. Perhaps tomorrow would be a good day? ;)

I also planted 14 tomato plants in the garden plot this evening. Several weeks ago Traci and I planted, from seed, a mix of large tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and yellow "pear" tomatoes. Most of the plants are over a foot tall now, and I had to tear some branches off them and bury them deeply to keep them from falling over after being planted in the soil. We've also got some corn, squash (crookneck and spaghetti), and cucumbers started, but we got a late start and they won't be ready to put into the ground for another week or two.

I've had a fascination with balanced rocks during the past couple of years, especially those which lie upon and protect an underlying layer of less resistant rock, such as this and this and this and this. Today, I ran across this picture in which the same principle is applied, but in a much different manner. It sure gave me a good laugh.

We left Price relatively late in the afternoon yesterday and hauled the ATVs up to Kenilworth to do some riding in the area. I would've rather gone in the morning but Traci had to go to church, though now I'm glad we went when we did--more on that later. Here's a link to some pictures from yesterday.

We parked just off the pavement near the big curve in the highway where it enters Kenilworth and started unloading the ATVs. During the few minutes that it took me to unload both machines, we saw a few other people riding past on ATVs, one of which turned out to be a guy who lives just up the street from me whom I'd never met before. He stopped to chat, and while I didn't recognize him, he knew who I was--he probably just recognized the truck since it's always parked in front of my house.

After unloading and getting all geared up (helmets, gloves, etc.), we started up the road in Bull Hollow. We tried that road several weeks ago but got stopped by some deep snow, but yesterday the road was clear. Our first stop was at some old mining equipment that appeared to be three huge motor housings that had been stripped of everything but the outer metal casings. I'm assuming that they were either for ventilation fans or for pulling tram cars, but so much of the area has been reclaimed that it's difficult to tell what it used to look like. We had only been stopped for a minute or two when a large group of ATVs came up the trail behind us. We were parked in the middle of the road because we didn't expect company, so we had to move our machines off to the side. A few minutes after that group passed, a couple of other people came riding up the road, and that sort of set the pace for the rest of the day--we saw a lot of people in the area all evening long, which was quite a surprise. I didn't realize the area was so popular.

We tried riding to the end of the road in Bull Hollow, some boulders had fallen in the middle of the road and I wasn't confident that I could ride around them without damaging my ATV, so we parked and hiked the remaining 1/4-mile to the end. There were some old concrete foundations and sandstone block walls, but I couldn't tell what they used to be a part of. The upper part of the canyon is closed off on three sides by some enormous and scenic cliffs, and it would be fun to go back to hike around some more.

After Bull Hollow we rode over to Cordingly Canyon, which is the next canyon to the east. I had wanted to try riding up a road that was visible in Google Earth that leads to the Aberdeen Mine, but I didn't see any sign of a road branching off the Cordingly Canyon road. Traci had already ridden ahead of me and out of sight, so I decided to make a stop there on our way back to hike around and look for the road.

In Cordingly Canyon, the road has been improved since the last time I was there. Fire crews bulldozed the road last July to fight a wildfire, and where you could only ride an ATV before, now you can drive an SUV or truck. We saw a lot of snow under the heavy cover of pine trees along the road, and even drove through a couple of small snow drifts across the road. Right where the trail gets steep and starts switching back up the mountainside to the top of the Book Cliffs, there was a gate that hadn't been there at the beginning of last year. Since it was getting late and we couldn't go any farther, we started back for the truck. I did stop again briefly where I thought the Aberdeen Mine road should have been, and I hiked up the hillside and came across what looked like a wash or gully. However, it followed the curvature of the mountainside so closely instead of running downhill, and it certainly appears to be a road in the aerial photo, so perhaps the tram grade has just been reclaimed by nature.

Back at the truck, I had loaded both ATVs and was beginning to tie them down, when the strangest thing happened. Let me start this off with a little backstory. In the last month I've been to Kenilworth three times with Traci and the kids (and once without them), which is normally about as many times as I go there in a whole year. Each time we were there, I always had some story to tell them about growing up there--I'd point out a canyon and tell them how I'd ridden my bicycle up there with a friend, or show them the house I used to live in, or tell them about the time I climbed the mountain above town, etc. Most of the stories involved my best friend at the time, Daniel, who I haven't seen since we were kids. So, as I was tying down the ATVs, it was a shock to see Daniel come down the road on a 3-wheeler. We both immediately recognized each other, and he hit the brakes and pulled off the road next to me. He had his son with him, so his son and my two boys played while we caught up. It was kind of a surreal experience, hanging out in my hometown with my childhood best friend. We talked until the sun was almost down, for probably almost two hours, but he had to get back home to Salt Lake and Traci and I needed to get the kids home for some dinner. The timing couldn't have been more right for our chance encounter, but we exchanged phone numbers and hopefully we'll keep in touch.

It's been nice having ATVs because we can ride for hours and hours (seeming all day long) on a single tank of gas (3.5 gallons). The bad thing is that it takes a lot of diesel to haul the ATVs anywhere using the truck. Diesel is currently $4.19/gallon, so I've been spending a lot of time looking for close-to-home places to ride the ATVs. Last weekend we did some riding a couple miles north of Price and found a couple of trails that were kind of fun, but really nothing special. The nice thing about them is that I only had to haul the ATVs 1.5 miles from home. I found some good looking trails here that are primarily used by rock crawlers, so I'll have to find out if they're suitable for our 4-wheelers--I'm guessing not, but it's worth looking into. I've also been looking around in Google Earth to find trails to ride on. There are a surprising number of old mine roads in the Book Cliffs, and I think we're going to ride a couple of them this weekend. We tried riding up Bull Hollow just north of Kenilworth several weeks ago, but we ran into too much snow to go all the way up the canyon. I'd like to ride it again this weekend, and possibly try Cordingly and Alrad canyons as well (time permitting). There are a couple more old roads near the end of Airport Road that dead-end near several coal mining prospects, but those would take a whole day by themselves.

I'll have to save my pennies in order to ride where I'd really like to go--places like the ATV trails in the center of the San Rafael Swell, like Devil's Racetrack, Eagle Canyon, etc. By the time I can easily afford that kind of trip (or when fuel prices go down), it'll be pretty hot to be riding and hiking in that area, but the change of scenery will be worth it.