Baba and Poppop Paddle Yankee

This week, we had Baba and Poppop for a visit. They felt like trying the canoe, so we went to Yankee. The water was low, but we've seen it worse. They took the first turn while the rest of us goofed around on the shore. Then the girls went out. Then I joined them. Finally, Baba and Poppop had another try. It wasn't much of an adventure, but it was probably about right for the group we had. We made it home in time for dinner.

Idaho

While EDO was on the east coast visiting her cousins, VSO and I went to Idaho. On the way north, we wanted to avoid the long extension of California called I-15, so we went to Milford. From there, we headed west to Baker. The sun was out as we came into town, but a towering storm was building over Wheeler Peak. Spectacular. It was about the last we saw of the sun until we reached Twin Falls. From Baker to Ely to Wells to Jackpot, storm after storm rolled through. The temperature on the car said 47F and the smell was of bruised sagebrush. It was a pretty nice afternoon.

Idaho has some famous rivers. We spent a night by one of them. The Snake, near Twin Falls, has, well, some falls. The picture, above, is from one of them. Shoshone Falls. The Niagara of the West. I made a picture of the cascade. But I didn't post it here. It is nothing like Niagara. Well, it is like Niagara in that water is flowing, but Niagara is 10 times bigger.

From Twin we took the freeway west through the hundred miles of ugly sprawl that used to be Boise and turned north on Highway 95 to New Meadows. After a stop at Goose Creek, we met Keith at the Bear Basin trails for a short mountain bike adventure. It was probably made shorter by a somewhat bloody crash on Keith's part and a bit of a bonk on VSO's part. (I don't blame her. She'd been sitting in the car for 8 hours and went straight to riding uphill in 85 degree sun.) We followed Keith to his house for a good dinner with Karen and Bryce. Afterwards, Karen took us out to Payette Lake. If it weren't for the constant motor noise, it would be a beautiful lake. Clean, clear, refreshing, but not cold.

In the morning, after breakfast at the Fogg Lifter, VSO voted strongly for a return to Bear Basin. Karen joined us and we did another 60 or 90 minute ride. VSO loved it. Despite running out of gas the afternoon before, that was her kind of riding: not steep, not rocky, not tricky, just good, smooth single-track. By about 1p it was time to start back. We thanked Keith and Karen, and then joined the long line of traffic along the North Fork of the Payette. We suffered all the way to Banks. At that point, we turned up the South Fork. I'd never been there. It was really a beautiful canyon (below). Looks like a fun float, too. We turned south at Lowman and made it to Boise by 7p.

In the morning there was nothing for it but the long, hot, crowded, boring, ugly freeway run to Salt Lake City. I thoroughly enjoy that kind of thing. In Salt Lake we met Mark and Kristi for lunch at the Red Butte Cafe. The best part of the day: Pretty good food and really good friends. From there we drove to Nephi where we stopped for gas. We filled the car, but my tank was empty. I asked VSO to drive and I put my hat over my face. After about 40 minutes of semi-coma I felt a little bit better. By then we were in Fillmore, so VSO took us all the way home.

A Day for Bottling

Yesterday morning, I picked eight or 10 pounds of wild plums from a tree on the northwest corner of The Homestead. Together, VSO and EDO bottled eight or 10 jars (bottles?) of plum jam. Can you tell who made the labels? While the water was hot, they also made six jars of pickles. It was a lot of work, but we'll use every bit of it this fall and winter.

The Rain Arrives

In the Parowan Valley, the month of June is typically our driest. By the middle of July, however, we can expect to start seeing monsoonal moisture. In 2012, I noted that we waited 56 days for the monsoons to start, with our first notable rainfall occurring on 13 July. This year, it started a week early. On Tuesday, the 8th, we got so much rain in Parowan that our basement flooded. It wasn't a bad flood, but there was enough water outside the house to pool-up and run in our doors and windows. Two days later, on the 10th, I drove from Marysvale to Parowan in near constant rain. These weren't isolated showers, instead the sky was low and grey from horizon to horizon. It is hot and sunny again now, but I guess the June drought is officially over for 2014. (As a minor aside, when Willa Cather writes about drought—as she does in Death Comes for the Archbishop—she spells it "drouth.")

WSB

I don't know what it is like where you live (or, as foresters from the lake states like to say, "in your neck of the woods"), but in southern Utah we are experiencing a Western Spruce Budworm (WSB, Choristoneura occidentalis) epidemic. The adult is a moth, but the growing budworm is, well, a caterpillar. The caterpillar feeds on the new leaves of spruce, fir, and Douglas fir. In our area, Douglas fir have been particularly hard hit, and many of them are partially defoliated. But, the reason I mention this now is that I was working in an infested stand last week. I was alone and it was quiet. As I worked, I could hear a steady pit-pat like rain on the forest floor. This being southern Utah the sky was, of course, clear, and there was no rain in the forecast. Instead, it was raining frass—the poop of the caterpillar.