TooBusyForWork

Busy in Quartzsite

We have now been here for a bit over a week. After the fun SxS ride I posted about last time, we have just been hanging around trying to avoid the wind. It has been bad with gusts of 35-40 which is a lot in this open, dusty country. As you can see from this picture Kevin captured of me, I have done quite a bit of relaxing. Seems like the cats had the same idea. Those recliners are really comfy!

We ended up making a day of it in Lake Havasu City on Thursday. We picked up Amazon packages we had delivered to Parker, AZ on the way, bought and ate one of the ham and cheese croissants from Stark Bakery in Parker, did laundry at the fabulous Modern Laundry in LHC (cleanest and nicest we have ever been to), did grocery shopping, got my hair cut, and picked up 14 yards of fabric at Fabrics Unlimited.

Fabrics Unlimited is a really nice shop. They sell HandiQuilter machines and supplies plus Accuquilt products in addition to a big selection of quilt fabrics. They also have some specialty products for bag making, but that isn’t something I have ever really been interested in. I bought 6 yards of a black background fabric for the Moda Block of the Month I am starting on, two coordinating 3 yard pieces for a new quilt using the Turkey Trot Accuquilt die I bought before Christmas, and 2 yards of duck canvas for making new bags for the folding chairs we use on the RZR. While I was there the owner told me about a Zoom class they were having the next day (Friday) with a national HQ educator about quilting feathers. I was excited! I have always wanted to learn how to quilt feathers, and I haven’t ever been very successful. They had a sitdown quilting machine I could use (the rest of the class used long arm machines), so I signed up. That meant another 3 1/2 hour round trip the next day, but it was worth it. I used up three big pieces of quilt sandwich (they supplied that and the thread) practicing various feather types. I think I finally caught on! Some of the options I like better than others, but I now feel I could use feathers on a real quilt.

I know there is a lot of fuzz and some chalk marks, but you can ignore those. I am going to bind these and use them as cat quilts for Minnie’s hiding spot behind the recliner.

We are also getting ready for the rally I am hosting in a week. I am an active participant in the RVForum.net forums, and we always used to hold a rally during the big RV show week (aka “The Big Tent”). Sadly the previous rally master died a couple of years ago, so I stepped up to host it. Kevin made cool signs as turn indicators. There are a lot of roads out in the desert! Give a man a 3D printer, and you can get all kinds of neat stuff you never thought you’d need!

The sign is maybe 6”x4”, made on his 3 color printer

I have been cutting and piecing some, not just buying fabric. On Saturday I cut about 680 2.5” squares from the Christmas fat quarter bundle my kids bought for me. The quilt will be made up of 8 star blocks and 40 sixteen patch blocks, using pretty much all the fabrics in the bundle. I will still have enough for a pieced border if I choose to add it. I always cut more pieces than I need when making a scrap quilt so I have some extras to adjust colors and in case I mess up a few. Today I have been making “twosies” – sewing two squares together. I have well over half of the squares sewn, and I will probably finish the twosies later today. Then I start making “foursies” – sewing the twosies together. I won’t start that until next week. But here is the current state of twosies and single block in the box I am using.

I love pretty much mindless sewing like this. I have been listing to an audio book in the background, and just sewing a huge chain of these. Maybe I will have some blocks in the next blog post. Or I might decide to cut out the blocks for the Turkey Trot quilt and take that to the Quilt Guild meeting on Tuesday. Decisions, decisions!

Now in Quartzsite, winter 2025

We made it to Quartzsite on Friday, 3 Jan. We decided to leave Oklahoma City and take I-40 to Albuquerque before heading south on I-25. We took the cutoff at Deming to join I-10 at Hatch. We then take I-8 to the Phoenix Bypass up again to I-10 and into Quartzsite. Spent a couple of nights in a Walmart and another in an Elks Lodge, so it was easy stops. The weather was quite cooperative after we left OKC. We arrived about 2, dumped our waste tanks and filled with fresh water, then moved to our campsite in Tyson Wash LTVA. This is where we stayed last year, and it is lovely.

Yesterday, Saturday, we headed out to the Barry Goldwater Training Range for a UTV trip. We hadn’t taken the RZR out of the truck bed, so we drove down to Wellton, AZ east of Yuma to meet up with a local guide. It is a 100 minute trip or so each way, and we drove a total of 50 miles on the range. Interesting trip. Here are some pictures with captions.

Our first stop was a picnic spot. The covered shelter had four fireplaces, and was quite impressive. The women’s restroom had a wall 3’ or so high, big enough to cover the important parts! The men’s toilet was quite a ways away and constructed the same way.

The range takes helping endangered species so there are a series of what are called “tanks” in this part of the world. They are many times big catchment ponds like this one that was almost completely empty. Nice scenery though.

There were all kinds of old military hardware along are path. Lots of old dead army tanks, pretend artillery batteries, multiple launch rocket systems that were rusted solid, etc. You can climb around them, and some of the folks did.

There is also a wooden replica of a town informally called “Combat City” used for training. These pictures were taken by my husband since it was more walking than I wanted to do.

Lots of wooden structures imitating a town

Sadly there are some aircraft wrecks too. Luckily the pilots survived both of the ones we saw. This is one of them.

And what desert trip would be complete without some really cool rocks? The weathering in this aged sandstone was fascinating. The scale is shown by the folks next to it.

We were exhausted by the time we made it home to the motorhome. We went to bed by 9:15 and didn’t get up until 6:30! I admit I woke up a few times, but I managed to get back to sleep quickly each time. The sunrise was glorious.

I will end with a demonstration that the two cats love the magic blankie!

On the road again for winter 2024/2025 trip

We are now on the way to Quartzsite, AZ where we spend most of the winter. I haven’t been in the mood for much since my last post. I just had no energy, and I was taking 2 hour naps every day in addition to sleeping more than normal at night. To no one’s surprise except my PA, I had a thyroid problem. She increased my thyroid medication (I had half of my thyroid removed many years ago due to benign nodule), and I feel human again! Not enough to finish the sewing I had planned, but enough to prep for Christmas and the trip.

Last time I noted we were heading back early for a quilting class with Kaye England. She had this really complex block that needed precision piecing, and it was a challenge. I only completed 4 of the 16” blocks in 3 days, but that was with lots of discussions. I intend on using them for a runner on a sideboard. I picked colors that will go very well with my china.

Two blocks of my Kaye England class along with the china I use

We finally did get an opportunity to see the comet that came through. I think it was named something unpronounceable: Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. We were in Iowa, and usually the skies are too hazy to see faint objects, but this one was quite visible to the naked eye if you knew where to look. My iPhone picked it up pretty well.

I did get a bit of quilting done. I did two Hunter’s Star quilts, and I got both of them quilting before running into a wall. I really like the result of this circular quilting on an angular pattern.

The green Hunter’s Star went to a friend of my oldest son, and the pink one was chosen by my youngest granddaughter.

Kevin got a new 3D printer that is MUCH faster and significantly larger than his old ones. He has been having a ball with it. He made these two things for Halloween.

Christmas was also celebrated with some 3D items. He played around with his two color printer for this tree. The little lights made it interesting.

He made some villages. This was my favorite.

He finished with a really superb tree that we added to our nativity set displays. The lights are actually color chasing, and there is a remote you can use to change the colors. Pretty impressive. The buffet is the one my blue Kaye England table runner is going to go on eventually.

And my motorhome sewing area is all complete! Kevin added latches for the storage unit, and the fabulous red chair is one I bought at the Kaye England class. The low back fits my lumbar curve perfectly, and it is amazingly comfortable. I am absolutely thrilled with it. I tried it out with some sewing before Christmas (putting a bunch of blocks together into a small throw), and it works well. I will fine tune the setup this winter.

For my birthday I got a fat quarter bundle of some lovely Christmas fabrics, and I will be sewing that if I can decide on a design. I also have plans for a Turkey Trot quilt, and I am doing a Moda Block of the Month with a local quilt shop via Zoom. I will have plenty to do.

Since it is Christmas, I thought I’d show a picture of our Christmas lights. We added railings earlier in the fall, and putting lights on them was one of the primary reasons. It is much easier to drape railings with lights than putting them on the eaves!

And it wouldn’t be a good post without pictures of the cats. Luna climbed up on this chair at Thanksgiving as soon as we put it out before the family arrived. She was definitely saying, “MINE, MINE, ALL MINE!” Minnie, in her normal way, decided to play “There is no cat.” She loves hiding underneath things.

Minnie in today’s edition of “There is no cat.”

We actually left the afternoon of 27 December, staying in the Osceola, IA Walmart lot. Tonight we are staying in the Emporia, KS lot. And the next two nights we are staying at Arcadia Lake in Edmond, OK while we visit my sister. After that we will see what the weather is before deciding our final route to Arizona.

On the way home from Red Bay, AL

We are in our last night before getting to Iowa, spending the night (again) in the Walmart parking lot in Bowling Green, MO. We don’t have far to go tomorrow because we will be staying in Marion, IA while I take a quilting class with Kaye England! I am quite excited. I have followed her work for years, but I never anticipated being able to take a 3 day class with her. We are doing “Odette’s Journey” quilt using either Accuquilt cutting or some specialty angle cutters. While I have both, I know I will be using my beloved Accuquit. There is one odd piece I might have to use a ruler for, but I hope not. I will post my progress after the class.

We did get all kinds of stuff done in Red Bay. We had someone in Chris Berry’s shop remove our front TV (never used since our initial inspection!) and replace it with cabinets. They cut down the cabinet so it no longer is a head banger and put a shelf and doors on. Tiffin will no longer let you order custom cabinet doors, so the millwork is a bit different. I don’t think it matters overmuch though.

We also go our yearly motorhome service at Bay Diesel. They did fix a MIL engine light after discovering it was due to noise on a data line. The TPMS repeater Kevin had installed was noisy, and he had to move it to a new location. There were over 70,000 instances of the offending message LOL! We had already had it investigated, and we knew it wasn’t a big deal, but it is nice to drive the motorhome without a yellow caution light.

On Thursday we had Precision RV do a big inspection and preventative maintenance on the roof and slides. RV roofs have a lot of holes in them for things like vents and mountings, and Kevin just didn’t feel up to climbing on his belly all over the roof (I knew he was a smart man). They used 3 complete tubes of specialized caulking on the front cap seal where we had hail damage last year. Luckily we had no water damage, and all the rest of the roof looked good. We also had them clean out the undersides of the slides. Years ago we had some Corelle dishes break. While we got most of it, some small pieces had made it under the slide. With many years and many miles, they were completely pulverized into tiny pieces. Glad they got them out, and my slides don’t crackle as we open and close them any more.

Another thing we did was to remove the sofa in the motorhome and start converting that into a sewing area I can leave set up all the time! We are still figuring out the most efficient spot to put my sewing table, and we will be picking up a narrow storage cabinet before we head out after Christmas.

It’s not much to look at yet, but the black strap is the seat belt to hold it in place, while the laundry basket and plastic storage container holds the things I need for the class I am taking. Pretty much all of that will go in the storage cabinet except when i need to sew outside the motorhome. The machine is put up in its purple case ready to put in the car along with the rest of my things.

I actually did get quite a bit of quilting done. I cut, sewed, and pressed all but the border of a quilt for my son’s partner. I can’t show it yet, just in case, but I am quite happy with it! I will border it and quilt it at home. It was so nice to just be able to sew for shorter amounts of time without having to take things out then put them away each time.

I probably should note where all we stayed on this trip too. We left on Tuesday and stayed at the same Bowling Green Walmart we are at now. The next night we stayed at the Elks Lodge in Sikeston, MO. My oh my oh my did they have good food! The last Wednesday of the month is smoked ribs, and they were some of the best I have ever eaten. We stayed in at the Red Bay RV Park, a well graveled and graded FHU “campground.” The sites are pretty wide, and the place is well kept. We stayed there from Thursday, 24 September, until Saturday, 5 October, at noon when we headed to Ricky Johnson’s place for a wash and wax. The motorhome looks so pretty! That night we stayed at the Jackson, TN Walmart. We head to a reserved campsite at Wanatee County Park in Marion, IA. The kids and grandkids from Cedar Rapids are coming out for dinner on Thursday after the class, so it will be nice to see them too.

Late posting again

I have no idea why I sometimes just can’t get in the mood to post. It might be because I am also active on Facebook and post some things there. But I can’t use FB as a search tool to show where I’ve been and what I have seen, so here I am back to it again.

We were, as usual, really busy at the FMCA convention. I taught a class on collapsable storage containers that went really well. Everybody got finished, and that’s a major accomplishment by itself. It helped that everyone knew how to use their sewing machines! Here was a sample I made.

We had thought about just gradually and slowly heading back home, but we decided to pretty much just head straight back with only a bit of detours. We spent Thursday, 22 September, in Caldwell, ID at the Elks Lodge. Nice place. Then we stayed at dry camping spot at Stanton Crossing, ID for 3 nights. There was a nice museum there we visited too. Nice change from all the crowds in Oregon. From there we went to northern Utah on the southern part of the Uintah Moutains and a nice boondock site along the Mirror Lake highway. We did some riding and generally kept relaxing. On Friday, 30 August, we were in Laramie at the Walmart. Saturday we stayed at Cabelas in Kearney, NE. Sunday we stayed at an Elks Club in Des Moines. On Monday, Labor Day, we made it home, though it was late enough in the day we just stayed in the motorhome at the local campground (Big Woods Lake) again. It is so easy to just put the motorhome in a spot and unpack gradually!

I really haven’t done much sewing this entire summer. I did finish a couple of quilts that were mostly pieced in the motorhome. The triangle one only needed binding, but the Hunter Star needed quilting and binding. Much easier to quilt on the sitdown Sweet 16!

Now we are off again. We left this morning for Red Bay, AL for our yearly motorhome service, to fix a few nagging issues, and to get a bit of remodeling done We stayed in the Walmart parking lot in Bowling Green, MO, between Hannibal and St. Louis. About 270 miles from home so a nice day’s drive.

Florence, OR and Coos Bay for DRVC rally

We did find two nights at the second Elk’s Club in town, so we stayed in Florence a total of four days. That gave us some time for sightseeing in the area.

This is actually the way I know I am getting near the coast – moss everywhere on the trees! Even the stones grow heavy lichen/moss layers in this humidity and mild climate.

One of my favorite spots is Thor’s Well. It is a circular depression that fills with water from the waves, then the water bursts up before disappearing completely. The picture below shows it in the center of the shoreline.

There is a pretty solid wind that comes in from the Pacific that has sculpted these streets so they are tilted, not straight.

And then there is the marine layer that shows up most mornings.

And we saw a black bear! It was crossed the road without warning and we only caught a glimpse of it with our dash cam. This is a screen capture from a long distance away.

We then got to the rally, held at the Coos Bay Mill RV Park . It is associated with a casino, but the campground is right on the bay. This bulk cargo ship was headed farther inland to fill up with wood chips. The chips are transported to Asia and made into paper. You can see one tow/tender at the stern and another small one on the starboard bow.

A rally is always a busy time, so not really any pictures from that. We had a great time though! Very good technical presentations, fun at meals and games, and just an all-around good time getting to visit with old friends and make some new ones. We left this morning (Friday, 9 August), and decided to stay closer to the coast while we could. We find a decent spot at the downtown Elks Lodge in Florence again. It is noisy from traffic, but the sites are adequate with water and electricity. We will fill up our fresh water tank before we leave Sunday morning, and we have identified a few spots to dump the waste tanks before we get to Redmond since the Expo Center doesn’t have a dump station.

I also did get a bunch more kits cut out for my class so I will have a good collection for the students to choose from. Now I have to get serious with writing the instructions out and doing a partial construction one.

My next post will probably be from Redmond next week unless something cool happens unexpectedly.

Antelope Island views then north

I forgot to post any pictures from Antelope Island, so here you go! The bison herd on Antelope Island is famous. The bulls were looking pretty beat up since mating season was just finishing.

And no set of pictures for Antelope Island is complete without a gorgeous sunset view. The sunset was just orange/red from the smoke haze. Beautiful, but it makes it tough to breathe.

We did get to Island Park, ID and found a great boondocking site on Sunday, 21 July. We stayed there through Thursday night. We obviously took some RZR rides, but we also enjoyed meeting some friends who were work camping in the area, one in West Yellowstone and one at Henry’s Lake State Park. We discovered the osprey nest on a dead end trail we took by accident. Nice accident! There were two young birds. When I snapped this picture (from a long way away!), one adult bird had just flown off to get more food for the hungry teens.

There was quite a bit of water, and we saw lots of lilies.

We also took one day into Yellowstone. We got into the park by 7:00 am. It was cool enough some of the animals like these elk were still close to the road. The other advantage of early, cool mornings is the steam rising from the thermal features is much more visible.

These three elk were just as we got into the park

We saw a number of the primary animals – bison, bald eagle, osprey, elk, deer, and a fat, happy black bear.

We spent Friday, 26 July, at the Y Knot Winery campground, Glenn’s Ferry, ID. It was still smoky, something that had been increasing since the last couple of days at Island Park. The next day was a killer. We had reservations in Burns, OR, but the AQI was over 600! A lot of eastern Oregon seems to be on fire, and there was a big one just outside Burns. The haze was thick, and the air smelled of smoke. We just kept going until we got to Bend, OR where we stopped at an Elks Lodge again. The drive was mostly 2 lane roads with lots of curves. I was tired when we got set up!

The next day wasn’t any better, but we wanted to keep heading west to get out of the smoke. We drove from Bend to Springfield, OR, just outside Eugene, OR. I had a UPS delivery sent there, and I needed to pick it up before our chapter rally. The road from 5 miles south of Sisters pretty much all the way to Springfield was the slowest I have driven the motorhome. It was only 120 miles, but it took over 4 hours. The traffic was very heavy, there was lots of construction, and the mountain roads very winding. Ugh. We hadn’t started until 10:30, because we thought it wouldn’t take long. I was awfully tired when we finally got to the Elks Lodge where we stopped for the night. We have definitely gotten a lot out of our Elk’s Lodge membership! It is nice to have a safe spot to pull into while traveling. Many are dry camping for $5-$10 which is just fine for us. Some have electricity which is nice on hot days, and those are $20-$30 a night, still worthwhile.

I was so tired of the bad air quality, so we headed for the coast instead of staying in Springfield a few days like we had intended. We are currently at the Elk’s Lodge campground in Florence, OR 1 mile off Hwy 101. Beautiful place for $35 a night with electricity and water. We could only get 2 nights here, but they also have dry camping where we hope to spend the next nights before our FMCA rally in Coos Bay. I intend on hitting the local fabric shop for some more fat quarters and interfacing for class samples. I am teaching a class on collapsable fabric storage containers, and it is easier to show students some of the steps than describe them. I have the kits cut for the students, but I will partially make some more as examples.

Now to clean up!

North Rim Part 2

Ok, I will just come out and say the North Rim of the Grand Canyon beats the South Rim, hands down! I don’t know that I will ever visit the South Rim again.

We took 4 July to just drive around the area and see a few sights before our tour group got together. Here are some highlights.

On 5 July we met our tour group. We started off with an evening ride to a fire tour about 10 miles away. It was very, very, very dusty! There were about 45 or so rigs on this trip, and it seemed to take forever at the stop we made. The fire tower only allowed four people at a time, and it seemed a LOT of people wanted to climb it.

On Saturday we divided into two groups of 30ish rigs to do a ride. Our leader was fairly good, but not completely clear on directions. He also complained about the speed we were making but he stopped for a LONG time at each stop. I know it takes a while for folks to pee and drink water, but it doesn’t take 45 minutes! The ride was beautiful, but it made the previous dusty ride look clean. So much dust! I am just not used to a super dusty ride like that. In our club in Quartzsite we mostly ride on rocks, not dusty locations, and I have seldom riden with so many people, and then it wasn’t on dusty roads. But the views were good.

I did bump up the saturation on this to see the shades

On Sunday we only did a part of the ride with the tour group since we had already seen their last stop. At last I could breathe! We had a fabulous lunch all by ourselves in a beautiful grove of pines. There is a lot of virgin forest here.

Kevin showing just how big these Virgin Ponderosa pines really are

We were supposed to travel next to Marysvale, UT, but the fires there were on the west side of town heading east. I figured the smoke would be just as bad for me as the dust had been, so we cancelled our reservations. Hopefully we can get back there another time. On Monday, 8 July, we went to a cheap campground in Fredonia, UT, the Wagon Wheel RV Park. It was FHU for on,y $30 a night, so we didn’t complain. We got all our laundry done and stocked up on groceries in nearby Colorado City. We then had to decide what to do next since the fires interfered with our trip to Marysvale. We decided to just go back to the North Rim!

There are bison in the North Rim, but we hadn’t seen any until our last day there. We finally saw one just standing around (kind of boring) and another have a nice dust bath in a Buffalo wallow. Guess which one I am posting?

We generally just relaxed a lot, riding only another couple of days. The views were so lovely, the campsite so quiet, and the weather so temperate we just chilled reading books and such. We ate at Jacob’s Lake restaurant and the Kaibab Lodge, and both were excellent.

On Monday, 15 July, we started to head north. We spent one night at the Saint George Elks Lodge, and we were the only ones there! Then again, it was 105! Awful, but the views were nice. Tuesday we went to the Cedar City RV Resort, a nice place. We had reservations to see “Much Ado About Nothing”at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and it was a hoot, Shakespeare’s comedies are belly laughing funny and definitely not “high brow” stuff. We had intended to visit a small Renaissance Faire going on, but it was just too miserably hot since they didn’t open until 11:00 am. We did visit the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum, but I gave out from the heat before I got to all the outdoor exhibits. Nice museum though!

Did I mention it was HOT? After the 105 degrees in St. George and the 99 degrees in Cedar City, we decided to prolong the pain by spending time at Antelope Island State Park, UT. The island is in the Great Salt Lake, and it was one of our favorite spots when we lived in SLC. We also wanted to see friends in the area. Antelope Island was also really hot, 10 degrees above average, but what is “average” anymore? There was also a LOT of haze from smoke. We did get a bunch of shopping done, and we spent time with friends, so it was worth it. But we aren’t going to stay 3 nights like we planned. We decided to head to Island Park tomorrow morning. Temps are forecast to be in the mid to upper 80s, and we can handle that. Crossing my fingers!

North Rim, Part 1

After a fabulous trip in the Uintas, we needed to move on. Because the holiday is this week, we couldn’t find a really nice place to spend a couple of days. Everything was reserved! We ended up at a Love’s Travel Stop in Salina, UT, just off I-70. Good things: it was close for travel, clean, concrete patio, and amazingly quiet. Not so good things: expensive for a bare pull through with no trees, no landscaping, just concrete and black top. It met the need though. We did lots of laundry, got groceries, and we generally caught up with things. Not my favorite kind of place though, and it will be on my “if nothing else is available” list.

We drove the rest of the way to the North Rim on Monday. We found an amazing boondock site just off FS 22 which branches off AZ 67, the Grand Canyon HWY. Two miles up a gravel road led to a huge site surrounded by aspens and pines with a few fairly level spots.

We have since put up the Clam shelter since there are a lot of flies and a few mosquitos. Monday night we had dinner at the Kaibab Lodge, and it was fabulous! They normally offer a buffet, but it was pretty quiet so they just had a few menu items for choices. Everything was done beautifully, and it tasted great. We had a nice talk with the cook. He stays at the lodge in the summer and in Yuma during the winter. He full-times in a 27’ travel trailer.

On Tuesday we drove to Hurricane, UT to pick up the RZR we had left for an oil change on Monday. We had a bunch of engine work done before we left Iowa, and it needed an out of cycle oil change. It was a bit before the 50 hours recommended, but we would have been over the hours if we had waited until we left. I also picked up some new fabric for a quilt top I am hoping to finish during this trip.

Today we drove to the North Rim visitor center. Lots and lots fewer visitors than the South Rim! I was so proud of myself walking for 200 yards or so with a brief stop in the middle. I could not walk 50’ before my nerve ablation, so life definitely looking up. After all the driving, we both took a nap! We had pizza for dinner, made on the Blackstone. Sausage, onions, and mushrooms made a fabulous topping.

For the next four days we will be doing a bunch of UTV riding, so more to come!

North Slope Road, UT and surrounds

North Slope Road is also known as WY 283, China Meadow Road, and USFS 072. We are parked not far off the road behind a row of pines. Since we arrived on Monday we have taken three RZR rides. The first was a short jaunt on Monday to China Meadows just down the road. It is a large beaver-created meadow that is beautiful. There is a small tent campground, but lots more dispersed sites. And we saw a moose! The picture is just awful because we were totally surprised when he stepped out of the willows and crossed the road. This pic is from Kevin’s phone and does not do the animal justice. This was probably the most beautiful bull moose I have ever seen. He was a glistening dark brown and huge. He walked across the road and was gone into the trees and up the hill by the time we got our wits together. You can see a bit of China Meadows too.

On Monday we took a longer trip on the west side of Marsh Lake. It was lovely! We climbed up the mountains well north to Stateline Reservoir, and then followed the trail along the ridge. There were lots of ruined log cabins scattered through the entire route. We asked a USFS employee what they were the remnant of, and he said they were left over from the tie hacking days. Beginning in the 1860s with the Transcontinental Railroad and continuing periodically through the 1930s, tie hackers would harvest wood, cut it the size of railroad ties, and send them downriver to be collected.

We found a collection of ruins designated as an archeological site. I was told it was a central collecting site for the tie hackers, and it included a commissary plus a number of outbuildings. The first ruin show is the large commissary. You need to click on the link, probably twice.

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This one is just an example of the ride. Most of it was on smooth two digit roads.

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This shows Stateline Reservoir.

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Today we drove on the east side of the campground a total of 60+ miles. It was rough! Wyoming has many trails restricted to 50” units which include motorcycles, traditional sit on ATVs, and the smallest of the side by sides like ours. This is what they use to make sure you stay true to the size limit! This was through a bog.

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Then there are these photos too. It was beavers that made the beautiful meadows, and this dam, not even close to being the largest, is a meadow in the making,

Big beaver dam to eventually make the beautiful meadows.

White columbines were everywhere in the riparian areas.

I have never seen so many white columbines!

Of course the GoPro was busy too. This was the first 50” trail we too, today. It was ROUGH! It went mostly straight up through a big blowdown. Very interesting, and challenging to drive on. There was one spot where a dead tree had rolled into the road, and Kevin moved it to the side, securing it with a rock.

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Here is a video of the bog boardwalk trail.

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Luckily not all of the trip was challenging, but we were both tired and a bit sore.

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it is expected to rain tomorrow, so we decided to take the truck to visit Ft. Bridger. Going to see how my back holds up!

Oh, and I did do some sewing. I finished up a sample for a class I hope to teach at the Redmond, OR FMCA convention in August. It is a cute fabric box that folds completely flat! RVers always need compact storage ideas.

Umm. Should have taken a picture of it collapsed!

And to end on an adorable note, the cats love the motorhome! They spend all their time staring out windows at the squirrels, mice, chipmunks, and birds, that they collapse and cuddle more than usual.