Horse Canyon

I've hiked in the lower end of Horse Canyon before, in 2018, but I didn't realize that, like too many of the canyons along the Book Cliffs, it is blocked by private property about half an hour up.  If you start at the old bomb cache and walk to the fence and back, you'll have a one hour outing.  One highlight for me is that there is a surprising amount of Douglas fir and Rocky Mountain maple in the canyon bottom, which isn't much above 6,000 feet.  Another highlight, at least for a few minutes yesterday afternoon, was a strong storm that popped over the ridge just as I was returning to the cache.  It started with gumball sized hail, which I avoided with a rush to the Chev, and finished with enough rain to start the washes flowing.  (One final small highlight was the early flowering of the goldenrod and rabbitbrush.  If you dislike summer as much as I do, this is a welcome sign of the times.)

Aggie

EDO first appeared in this newspaper about 13 and a half years ago.  The little blondie in the foreground.  Today she appears as a university student.  It is official:  She is in the dorm and ready for her first class on August 24th.  She will do well.

Forest Foods

We were out on the Alpine Pond loop yesterday and I was attracted by the color of the elderberries.  On the other hand, VSO liked the fungus; she said it looked like cheese curds.

Monsoon

Last May, I posted about the failure of the monsoon, particularly in 2020.  We had a little monsoonal moisture last year, but it wasn't until the past few weeks that we have truly begun to catch up.  There have been afternoon showers nearly every day, and some of them have been quite wet.  I have not visited The Homestead since early August, but when I pulled in this morning, I was amazed at how green everything was (especially the weeds).  By mid-afternoon, it came again, a solid storm with a good slug of moisture.  As it tapered off, we went out to the Vermillion Castle for an hour.

Eighty Eighty Eighty Eighty Eight

I may have mentioned that the car is the first vehicle to ever come into our possession with fewer than one hundred thousand miles on the odometer.  For that reason, I have never seen this number before.  Is it significant?  It struck on Highway 10, just as we entered the outskirts of Price.  Where, my reader might notice, I was scrupulously observing the traffic laws.

Spring Creek

The girls were in Salt Lake this week.  On their way back to Parowan they detoured through Price.  I'm not sure that either of them have visited the Manti Skyline before, so yesterday afternoon we drove up Huntington Canyon.  Just short of the top, we stopped at one of the winter parking areas and began to walk down the old road above Spring Creek.  It was sunny and warm, with dramatic clouds overhead.  As soon as we reached the first aspen clone, though, it began to rain.  Standing there under a tree, we discussed our options, settling on a one-way hike for VSO and me, while EDO returned to the highway to bring the car around.  That was when it really started to rain.  My rain jacket which, of course, was in the car, remained dry, but everything else was soaked.  Oh well, it was a warm rain, and beautiful.

Hot Water; Hot Work

This week we had a brand new water heater installed at The Homestead.  So far; so good.  But, how are we going to get the old heater out of the cellar?  Let's say it weighs 200 or 250 lbs.  That is not an impossible thing to move, especially if you have two or three people.  (I can't really count VSO because she recently spent a week in the hospital, so call it two.)  But it is, essentially, an impossible thing to control.  It has no handles and is round and slippery.  If you start it up the stairs and lose control of it, someone else will be in the hospital.  In the event, I screwed a stud to the doorframe at the top of the stairs and set up a Z-drag to control it.  Then I levered it up, step by step.  A couple of hot hours of work.