Depressing December

Emily finished her first semester (trimester?) of school. She finished earlier than Caitlyn and Christian, packed up and headed down to Syracuse with her roommate. We were a little worried about her driving back down on her own as the snow storms picked up right as she was getting ready to leave. We sent her some snow chains as an early Christmas present in case she needed it. She spent a couple of nights in Syracuse and then headed down to the St. George area of Utah where her cousin currently lives with his new wife.

Meanwhile, Caitlyn finished school Thursday afternoon and we packed a truck load of junk to donate/unload at Deseret Industries. She's been living with boxes piled up of all the extra stuff, out-grown clothes, books and toys that are no longer used since Emily left.

Christian finished school on Friday. It has been super stressful for him since over half of his students were failing. He managed to badger/cajole some of them into doing some work and got many of them to get passing grades; only a third of his students ended up still failing. It still sounds like a lot but considering how many more students in other classes actually failed, he did pretty good.

Early Saturday, Christian and I headed to St. George to meet Emily. We ended up asking Caitlyn to stay back to bring in packages that were en-route. We got into St. George pretty early. Emily said that her cousin went in to do some work that morning as he wasn't expecting us until noon. 

We decided to take a detour to Hurricane, UT to Matt's Off-Road Recovery and see if we can meet Matt and pick up some gear. His shop was actually closed but his truck was out front. We took some pictures like a couple of kids. Some other fans of his from California dropped by just after we did. As we were about to head out, Matt came up front to see what his dogs were barking about and we were able get him to sell us some gear and chat a while. Christian got an old Windor Towing hat and we picked up a t-shirt for Caitlyn as a consolation prize for leaving her behind.

We were pretty excited as he is so genuinely nice. Caitlyn made us give her all the details when we got home. 

Afterwards, we made it to Austin's house but found out all the kids took off for a bit of sight seeing. We were going to meet up with the kids but we ended up chatting with Natalie's mom for quite a while. They ended up coming back to meet us at the house. We had met Natalie's parents at the wedding but never really spoke to them. They seem like really good people. We chatted together for a while longer and went to take Austin and Natalie out to lunch with us.

We did get some good news and Natalie and Austin are actually expecting a baby! We are so excited for them. They also purchased some land near by and are working to build themselves their own home. They are actually currently living with Natalie's family while Natalie is going to school. 

We stayed quite a bit longer than we had intended but it was a good visit. After we dropped them back off, we headed back to Riverside. Caitlyn heated up dinner for us and we had a late dinner back at home with the whole family!

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We had a day to relax a bit and Emily started to unpack a bit but by Monday morning, we were off again. We decided to visit with my sister at her new home in Pacifica. She had visited about a week and a half and convinced my mom to go back up with her so we decided to go visit for the holidays. I have not seen them since the beginning of the year...probably for Chinese New Year. My mom is going nuts shut up all by herself for so many months. My brother is super paranoid about the whole Covid thing so he has been dropping off groceries to her and stopping by to fix something here and there but that's about it. He actually even just dropped off Thanksgiving dinner to her and she ate by herself in her big house. 

I have not tried to visit her since she seemed just about as paranoid as my brother but my sister said that she isn't really that bad. She occasionally freaks out when she watches too much news but my sister is usually able to calm her down. I think after so many months by herself, she got sick of it and took the chance to socialize. She seemed much happier with family around again and is even able to get better rest.

When we got to my sister's house, she was running errands and taking care of some things so we went for a walk on the beach.

It was really nice to be next to the ocean again. It wasn't very cold and the air was moist. I could have sat there listening to the ocean for hours but the tide was coming in and we were expected back for dinner. Christian started some bread for the next day. Tommy prepared the prime rib he got for dinner for the next day. They ran out of rosemary, so we made a run for some more. Other than that, we just chat for a while before calling it a night.

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We had too many plans for the next day and we could not quite decide what we would do. We ended up driving into San Francisco with just my sister. Our first stop was to the Ferry Building to visit the Acme Bread Bakery. Tommy requested some focaccia bread for the evening so Christian used his starter from the night before and we were talking about bread and Emily had heard us talking about Acme bread in Berkley for so long and wanted to taste what all the hubbub was about. Wendy told us that they had a little place in San Francisco as well, which is why we ended up going into San Francisco.

Since the girls have never been to San Francisco, Wendy decided to take them through a quick tour. After picking up some bread and some of their starter, we headed over to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 to see the sea lions.

Caitlyn wanted to stay longer but as the meter was running and we wanted to see some more things, we were off to see the Wave Organ.

The Wave Organ only works during high tide, so we did not get to hear anything. Afterwards, we headed into Chinatown to get some dim sum for lunch.

There was not much parking in Chinatown and there was a long line at the dim sum shop. It was pretty late by the time we hit all the shops we wanted to. We got a bit turned around and could not quite find the shop that had the lop cheong (Chinese sausage) we wanted to try. By the time we got back into the car, we were all starving and ended up eating most of it in the car. We managed to save a few things to bring back to the house! 

Back at their house, we finished our late lunch. Christian finished his focaccia bread while the roast was in the oven. Dinner was really good. For dessert, Wendy decided to do a bit of an ice cream tasting with some of the weird stuff she had and some weird ideas the boys through together. It was interesting. One was unexpectedly good and the others were....not so much. We ended up with just some regular ice cream with a berry sauce I through together!

Afterwards, they pulled out the MaJong set and taught Emily and Caitlyn how to play. Christian helped Wendy sharpen her fancy Japanese knives and taught Wendy and the boys how to sharpen a knife using sharpening stones.

We went to bed pretty late. Christian stayed up even later to finish up the knives.

In the morning, we planned to head out again to get back in time to visit with Christian's dad. Tommy took Christian out to pick up some baked buns for breakfast. He bought enough to send us back with a bunch as well, so we did not need to stop by to pick up any food along the way.

It was a short visit, but it was really good to see my family again. We, of course, did not see my brother's family. We were all too afraid to tell him we were up there visiting.

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The morning after we returned, we prepared for another feast, this time for Terry and his wife, Jackie. We had a rib roast aging in our curing chamber for about a week before we took off to S.F. It was Christmas Eve and Marian decided not to join us this year. Apparently she'd been sick with the flu or something and a bunch of people at her work had been testing positive for Covid so she did not come.

This whole year has been increasingly out of whack, so all the changes did not phase me that much. We did not get together for Thanksgiving and we did not take a family Christmas picture or send out cards. We got a bunch of new decorations that Christian's mom sent down from Oregon so I didn't even bother with the Christmas tree this year.

After Terry and Jackie left, we started opening presents that evening.

We kept back a few presents for the next morning, along with the stockings and some presents that Marian had left here over the summer. The only glitch was that Marian could not remember who most of the presents belonged to so we played musical presents as it was opened. Marian joined us via Zoom for most of that!

With all the Christmas festivities done, we prepared for our big winter trip to New Mexico. We were all packed up and ready to go but decided the evening before to double check the weather forecasts and maps for all the places we wanted to visit. 

We found out that we would be pretty much running from a storm most of the way. On top of that, we found out that a lot of the places we picked out to visit were actually on Indian Reservation land again. We knew from our experience from the previous month that all of those places would be closed to visitors and didn't want to deal with that fiasco again.  In the end, we decided that it just would not be worth the time and gas to drive two days to see only a few things that would be open to us. 

And unfortunately because of the weather, we would not be able to change our destination very easily to anywhere else. We thought that we could salvage our time a little by just doing some small semi-local day trips but that turned out to be a disaster as well.

We tried twice to go up to the mountains to drive up in the snow but found that it was just too crowded. We didn't want to get stuck on the mountain roads with all these people who really had no right to be there. They did not know how to drive in the snow. They all picked up snow chains but did not know how to put them on, much less when to put them on. It was a nightmare. We tried to go during that first rain and then earlier in the morning the next day but ended up turning back both times. 

On the third day, we decided to investigate a trail that went into the southern end of Death Valley. We figured that there would at least be less people out on the lesser known roads. There was still quite a few cars heading onto the main road into Death Valley. The road skimmed the edge of a military base so we were not sure that we could get through.

We did manage to get through but it ended at some communication tower. We did pass a few questionable people parked along side the road here and there and the only other people out in the area were some geologists. 

As the sun went down, we did go out onto a more traveled road to get out as we wanted a faster way home. We stopped to heat up some dinner and headed home.

We gave up after that. Christian spent the rest of his time working in his shop and Emily spent her time looking for a job. I just bounced around between them and worked on trying to get Caitlyn to work on some of her projects.

Nettlesome November

 I feel like everything has been a bit off-kilter most of the year. Nothing is as it should be for so many reason. I've gotten a bit lazy on my posts and have been posting only once a month for the most part. But it makes it difficult to remember everything that has been going on.

First, Emily had joined an intramural soccer team at BYU. She likes to stay active and she still misses soccer. They had their last game at the beginning of the month and her team placed second.

Emily has not shared a lot of pictures with us since she has been away, but luckily, her roommate or someone must have taken this one of her and her team.

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Christian had his birthday this month and I was stunned to find that I didn't have any pictures. I got him a new film scanner as ours stopped working. We have been scanning (and re-scanning) a lot of our old negatives but there has been many that we still have not touched. 

Emily sent him a neat utility knife from Amazon and Caitlyn got him an extra GoPro mount. He had to work on his birthday, so we didn't do too much. He didn't even technically have a cake as he requested a Tarte Tatin. It's one of his most favorite desserts.

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We also celebrated our wedding anniversary. Christian was behind in his school work, so we didn't go anywhere. He made us a nice dinner over the weekend. And I made us another one in the middle of the week. Marian made us a little wooden plaque with one of our wedding pictures in it.

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We originally considered going up to see Emily over the Thanksgiving break, but decided against it in the end. Dropping her off back in September was rather an ordeal. It is just too far to be driving back and forth and it is just so cold up there now. Instead, she went home with her roommate who lives in Northern Utah...about three hours away.

We were originally going to go up to see the Redwoods but the forecast showed rain for most of the time we were supposed to be up there. We were supposed to end the trip by stopping by my sister's place for Thanksgiving. 

Instead, we decided to go to Arizona and possibly southern Utah. The weather was supposed to be relatively mild there. Our main destination was the Navaho Nation. Christian's been wanting to go there for a very long time. The end goal being Monument Valley. We knew that most of the Reservation was closed down with Stay-At-Home orders because of Covid, but we had no plans to go into town or anthing anyway.

We drove into Arizona on the first day and stopped at the Kaibab National Forest to set up camp for the night before we ran out of daylight. The sun went down really fast! 

The next morning, we got up and headed back on the road towards the Grand Canyon. We saw some elk running through the forest. We stopped by the Grandview Lookout Tower and climbed up to see the view. It was pretty cold and windy up there. 

We got to look out over into the Grand Canyon. There's no point in going into the park unless we had the time to actually hike into it. 

It was quite beautiful and peaceful where we were.

We continued on our way down a forest road that was supposed to lead us into the Navajo Reservation area. On the last leg of the road, we found the road blocked. The road was closed off except for residents. We didn't know what all that was about. We continued a little way to see if we could get around it as our 4x4 road would start shortly beyond the gated area.

We found a locked gate that we would not be able to get passed. Another car was approaching from the other side. Apparently, they were residents of the Reservation and had a code to get through. They informed us that the road was closed to non-residents and we would have to go back around 40 miles in order to take the main road that would allow us to continue into the Reservation. However, they were willing to let us by if they could extort from us a $40 dollar payment. 

The whole thing made no sense as we were still in the Kaibab National Forest and should have been until we got to our 4x4 road. It was newly paved and the gate looked new as well. They claimed it had been there for a long time. They told us about the stay-at-home order, which we already aware of. The closure was about to take place, so I don't know why they were out leaving the area right before curfew.

We were not about to give in to their shake-down for money, so we thanked them and headed back. We only back-tracked a few miles though to near where we were earlier this morning and took one of the fire roads through the mountains. We were not very happy about the whole situation.

We did, however, find a really nice campsite for the night. We went a little further to make sure that the road went through and to make sure the road was passable and then headed back to set up camp, remembering how quickly it got dark the night before. We did see some wild horses in the trees along the way.

Christian set up our tent while Caitlyn and I collected wood for a fire. There was a nice sunset but could not get a very good view because of the trees. We had a nice warm fire, which was nice, especially since we got some snow flurries after it got dark.

We got some more snow flurries during the night, but eventually the wind blew the clouds out of the area and we woke up to fairly clear skies. It was pretty chilly though. There were a few patches of snow still on the ground.

On the third day, we continued on our way towards the Reservation. As we exited the National Forest and entered the Navajo territory, there were dirt trails that dotted the landscape like a spiderweb. After driving for a while and guessing at which road to take, we started to get a bit nervous about finding our way. We headed in the general direction we knew that we were supposed to go and found our road.

When we turned out onto the road that they blocked us off from the day before, we found a bunch of shack's and stand where the Indians normally sold jewelry, rugs and other crafts...all of which were closed though. You can see stands that would normally be in use but along side some of them, were stands that were obviously abandoned and left like so much garbage on the side of the road.

This would be just the tip of the iceberg though, as we were about to find out. There were scenic pullouts dotted along the landscape (also closed with warnings of severe fees if you should disregard the closures). Since we were out in the middle of nowhere with no one around, you would wonder why they would be so protective and insistent on keeping their little pullouts closed. The reason is not because of safety your anything like that. The reason the roads are closed with threats of fines up to $1k is because they normally have people there charging fees just to pull off the road and since they are unable to do business at this time, they won't allow you to go down them. And if you wanted to travel down the road for a couple of miles and wanted to pull off at each of the scenic pullouts, you would have to pay each and every time!

We were not getting a very good feeling about being in Navajo territory. As we continued further down the road, you can see the sides of the roads literally glitter with light. That is not because of some majestic view of the beautiful landscape, it because the hillside is literally covered with broken glass and trash. It was disgusting. Because of all the road closures of all the back, unimproved roads, because the people will try to extort money from you every chance they got and because the land was covered in so much trash, we decided that we did not want to stay and waste any more time in this ghetto.

We decided to head up to Utah early but that we would still pass through Monument Valley on our way out since we had wanted to see it for so long. I think that the actual park was closed as well, but that did not stop at least a hundred cars from parking along the road. I'm not even sure what they were doing. Perhaps the road was closed to vehicles but everyone decided to walk in anyway. I'm not sure.

The place could have been every bit as majestic as we were led to believe.

However, because of all the trash and the residents parking and building their homes right next to a lot of the rock formations, you had to be very choosey about which ones you would bother taking pictures of and cropping them correctly so that you don't see the trash, the cars and dwellings, some of which were obviously abandoned.

We didn't take pictures of most of the trash, as we were too disgusted, but we did take a few.

We were also reading this Tony Hillerman novel on our way through Arizona and found out one of the reasons that there were so many obviously abandoned hogan's and other dwellings along the way. Apparently, when a Navajo dies inside of a house, it is immediately abandoned and they will cut a hole into the dwelling in order for their spirit to exit...and they will just leave it like that and move on.

After we crossed over to Utah, nothing much changed as the Navajo territory continued into Utah. Although, I have to admit that the joint Navaho-Hopi land was a bit cleaner and there were actually roads that were not blocked off there. But really, we could not get out of the reservation area fast enough. Immediately, as you exited the reservation though, it was visibly cleaner. It was almost a sigh of relief as we left the reservation behind.

We drove back through to the areas we were more familiar with. We decided that we would head into the Canyonlands the next day so we planned to return to Hanksville, UT to spend the night. We passed through the Hite Overlook again. There was a lot less water in it than when we saw it this summer. It was also a lot more brown and less vibrant. I guess they have not gotten a lot of rainfall this fall yet.

We got into Hanksville pretty late and we found a side road that we could pull off on in order to camp. Ever since all the crowded places have been closed down due to Covid, people from all over the nation has flooded into our wild areas with their RVs and have made it very difficult to travel our normal routes. Plus, they bring their dirt bikes and side-by-sides and tear up the roads.

In the morning, we had beautiful views of Factory Butte. We saw some herds of antelope running across the road.

It was, however, like 15° F this morning, so it was a very chilly night. We continued on our way to the Canyonlands. We still have many miles to go so although we started early, we didn't end up getting to our destination, until about lunch time. That is also because we took the wrong road when we got there. We turned in at the Horsethief Campground but we were supposed to look for Horsethief Road which was just about a minute further. Anyway, we spend quite a bit of time traveling down the false Horsethief Road. We also looked for possible campsites along the way. We did find some nice possibilities and will probably return at some point but at the end of the road, we found a nice view of the Green River below...we just could not find a way down to it.

We returned the way we came and discovered the correct Horsethief Road. We decided to head out to the White Rim Trail as we had planned, even though it was already lunchtime. Someone had said that it only takes half a day to travel it, which we were about to find out was not true.

We descended onto the trail, into the Canyonlands National Park. Utah, by the way, has some of the best dirt roads I have ever been on. Some of their dirt roads are smoother and better engineered than most of the paved roads where we live. You will take some of these roads that look like they end at the bottom of some mountain and you wonder how you are supposed to get over it and suddenly, the road appears out of nowhere and continues on a switchback up the mountain on a road you swear didn't exist just a few moments before. It's almost art. Anyway, my point is that once we crossed into the National Park territory, the road got immediately rough like it's been barely maintained over the years. While the Utah road engineers may have created the road in the first place, it may not have been maintained much or at all by the National Park Service.

Our first pullout  was a small beach where Christian got to dip his head into the chilly Green River. It was very beautiful and peaceful.

We continued on the trail. There were some pretty scary steep sections with only enough room for one vehicle to pass. I don't know how you are supposed to traverse the trail with vehicles coming from both directions.

I think we picked the perfect time to do this popular trail. It is winter and the day before Thanksgiving, so there were not too many people on it. There were still more than we would have liked but luckily, we crossed paths with them on the wider sections of the trail. We don't even know how they drove some of the vehicles they took down that trail there. It was kind of crazy in parts.

We stopped and took a group family shot at one nice spot. I considered photoshop-ing Emily into the photo with us for our Christmas picture this year but decided not to bother.

Christian took a pretty wide shot anyway, so you can't see us too well.

As we thought that we would be starting to get to the end of the trail and the sun was going down, we suddenly got a flat tire.

We thought we ran over a small-ish sharp rock that was jutting out of the ground but we later found out from the damage and the footage from the GoPro, that we got a little too close to a rock on the right hand side. The wheel actually got hit hard and it got bent, letting the air out of our tire. There wasn't actually anything wrong with the actual tire but the steel wheel was pretty badly damaged. 

Christian changed the tire as the sun was going down on the narrow trail and we continued on our way, now without a spare. When we got to the top of the section, we saw some lights of vehicles and camps and thought we finally made it out. Much to our surprise, we were a long way off. It turns out that we were only about halfway through the trail. 

Many, many hours later, we finally made it to the end in the dark of night. It was late, we were cold, tired and pretty stressed out. We didn't know if were still on the right trail as it was taking forever and we didn't know if we missed a turn somewhere. We had to get out occasionally because it looked like we lost the trail a bunch of times. Plus, if something else was going to happen to our tires, we had no spare!

There was enough moonlight to see that we missed some epic views. The last section of the trail was pretty scary. We had to traverse some very steep switchbacks to get out of the canyon in the dark.

We were supposed to exit the trail and return to the false Horsethief Road to one of the campsites we found in the morning but we didn't want to go down any more rough roads that we were forced to without  a spare. We ended up going all the way up to camp near Floy Wash which which we discovered over the summer. We were tired, it was late and we ended up just skipping dinner and going to bed. 

We left to head home the next morning. We were not comfortable driving any more than necessary without a spare. We cut our trip a little short but we were okay with that. We pulled off along the way at some scenic pullouts (which they don't charge you for!).

It was a nice drive on our way out of Utah.

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Incidentally, after we got home, Christian was able to pound out his wheel and get the tire back on. So far it isn't leaking!

Oppressive October

 It was a long month. Every week the "distance learning" gets more and more ridiculous for the teachers and just useless for so many students. Every week Christian gets new oppressive marching orders for a new or additional way they want information reported, or something new they want to make the students do that they should not be able to dictate to the teachers in their individual classes. The state have mired the teachers in so much red tape and reporting that they no longer have time or energy to actually teach. It is so ridiculous. One of the teachers in Christian's staff meeting broke down crying because she was just so overwhelmed with the crap they keep demanding from them.

If we had options and didn't owe so much money from him going back to school to get his teaching credential, Christian would have quit by now. No one is getting anything from all this idiocy. More than half his students are failing and apparently, all the other teachers in his school or district is experiencing the same thing. The students are not motivated to learn or do anything in this atmosphere. Christian is at his wits end and is ready to explode. He still spends time trying to get his students to get their grades up but when the students have little motivation and the computer doesn't ever even work like it's supposed to and their home environments are not conducive to learning, it is fighting an uphill battle. I'm sure he will end up with less failing students than many other teachers but it may come as a cost as he won't have time to jump through all the states' new hoops. We don't know what the consequences of all that will be but a person only has so much time and energy in a day.

Christian sits at his computer working on this stuff 12 to 14 hours a day. And when he's not, he's still thinking of what he needs to do and trying to come up with lesson plans which he needs to make up as he goes.

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Speaking of technology not working as it is supposed to, our internet provider sent us a new modem and forced us to install it in order to continue our service with them. That led to two weeks of stress and dropped internet services, sometimes during classes and meetings. After many phone calls, wasted time and energy, they finally sent a technician to come look into it. He fixed it, or at least we think so, as we have not had any further problems this week. We had to have Caitlyn e-mail her teachers as well so that they knew what was going on.

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Because of all the stress Christian has been under and the lack of sun and fresh air Caitlyn never gets anymore, we've been forcing everyone to walk away for a bit of R&R. Caitlyn is just pale doesn't have the energy she used to. The new phone/computer culture has really ruined her. We thought it was bad before, but now with the new distance learning, she is just a shut-in.

So, the first chance we got, we headed back out to the Mojave desert in search of Cadiz Road. We made our first attempt back when Emily was still here with us. Alas, we still did not find it.

We did, however, find a neat area to scramble around on the rocks. It also offered a, somewhat off-the-beaten-path, camping area good for a get-a-way weekend.

We also found an interesting area we wanted to explore more of. We ran into some more turkey vultures watering in the aqueduct and a beautiful sunset.

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The next time we went out, we went to explore a way up to the Arica Mountain range that we saw last time. It is a really neat rock formation so we drove around to see what was a good way to get there. We found several roads on the map that was supposed to take you a good way up. We first explored some of the surrounding area before heading up the trail.

Unfortunately, once we picked a trail to get up, as we drove out of a wash and headed up into the rock formation, the road under us crumbled and we got stuck in this pit of the finest silt.

We had one tire entirely up in the air on one side, the back tire on the same side was kind of teetering barely touching the ground, the other back tire was sunk in the silt so we really only had the other front passenger tire that was actually engaged. It was super precarious. Christian was driving. Caitlyn was in the front passenger seat and I was in the back. Caitlyn had to get out and hang off the driver's door so that Christian could scoot out while I got into the driver's seat. It was totally crazy and scary. After testing it, we were able to keep it from tipping over with me sitting there while keeping the door swung out and open to balance it. Caitlyn took videos and pictures while Christian tried various methods to get us out. 

None of it was working. Every time I would try to drive out, it dug us in further. We had to disengage the sway bar which got the front driver's side to almost touch the ground. Christian said a prayer and had be back out a bit and we were finally able to drive out.

Of course, that left us with what to do from there. We considered driving forward to see if we can find another way down. The hole made when the road collapsed on itself was way too big to fill in. We looked for a different approach that we might be able to ford, but there were drop-offs in every direction. Caitlyn walked up several hills but could not see another way off of the road we were heading up. We figured that it was starting to get late and we were running out of time. Christian finally decided to move the road over about half the width of a car and started digging to level the ground. It was a lot of work but when he was finished, the road looked totally drivable and headed back the way we came with no problems.

Even though it looked fine, we had to hit the road at exactly the right way or it might knock us into the sandy area and tip the vehicle over for real this time. We also wanted to be far enough over so that more of the road didn't collapse under us. It was still stressful.

As we made it back to the main road, the sun was setting and we had to air-up the tires to get back down the road towards home.  It was late, we were thirsty and hungry and still a ways away from civilization.

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We were able to actually go into church one week. It was shortened and a bit weird. Our new organ was finally completed. Now we need to try to work organ practice back into our schedule. Caitlyn started off the summer doing piano pretty well but by the end of summer, she barely touched it again. With her school schedule, we had to try to make her continue, albeit slowly, making progress.

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On Halloween, we went out and finally made it to Cadiz Road. We found some old salt mines off of there. 

We tried to drive across the dry riverbed but there were too many rabbit warrens and other hazards that we had to worry about. 

From Cadiz Road, we went in search of the road that we lead us to the Old Woman. It is supposed to be a nice pinnacle with good climbing routes in the middle of nowhere. We saw the mountain range it was supposed to be on, but we could not find a road that would lead us to it. After several false starts, we decided to end the day at the Cadiz Sand Dunes instead.

Unfortunately, there was another car load full of people ahead of us. They were really loud and had a drone. We headed in a different direction but they were in all our shots of the sunset, so we decided to just Photoshop them out and left early to head home. It was really beautiful out there and the dunes were a lot bigger than I thought they would be but unfortunately, not peaceful. Another car arrived as we headed out.

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We published Terry's short story this month. We have been trying to get the word out with limited success. We are still working on his main story to come out shortly.

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Emily is doing well in Idaho. She really likes one of her roommates. They have a lot in common and she is meeting people and having fun. It's been cold there and she has even had a couple of snow days but they have not lasted too long. She joined an intramural soccer team. Hopefully, she is keeping up with her school work. She does not have any really interesting classes so hopefully she is slogging through it. 

After the grueling drive with the added expense in gas to drop Emily off in Idaho, we realized that we could not afford to go visit her during Thanksgiving and then arrange for her to come back just several weeks later at the end of her quarter. She does not have classes this winter and will return in the Spring. She got invited to her roommate's house for Thanksgiving though. Her family lives in Northern Utah, so it is a bit of a drive but not insurmountable. They seem excited about the prospect and we are glad for that.

Sad September

 September started with us continuing to frantically finish getting Emily ready to go off to college. Her driver's license actually did arrive in time for her to get in the mail here for her. The stickers for her car did not. 

Emily procrastinated packing up her stuff until the last couple of days. Of course, she ended up forgetting a bunch of stuff in the end.

We woke up early on Thursday to head out for Idaho. We just drove up the 15 as it would be the most direct route. We made pretty good time but we still ran into some traffic jams in a couple of different spots in Utah. Our plan was to stop near the Utah/Idaho border and camp off some utility roads but, as usual, we found that the roads that lead in the direction we planned to go were gated off by private companies/individuals or even by the BLM themselves. We could not get to the open land that we found on maps. We knew that once we got into Idaho, there would be even less of a chance to find public land to camp on as it is totally covered with farms and ranches through this area. In the end, since we made good time, we stopped to pick up dinner and continue on to Rexburg. So in the end, we made it in one day but we were terribly tired and disgruntled about it all. We camped out by the dunes as we had scouted out during the summer.

It was pretty cold out there. We had planned to camp at the border because of where it was located and it should have been at least 10 degrees warmer there. We got onto the campus in the morning to check Emily into her apartment shortly after they opened. There was one roommate already there. Apparently she'd been there since the Spring. She seemed pretty nice. She got her pick of space after that. We got her half unpacked before lunch. Christian still had meetings on Thursday and Friday so Christian got a data pass to attend to his meetings while we were on the road. He had another one in the apartment while Emily unpacked.

Her actual apartment was not left quite that clean which we were not that pleased about. The complex itself was a bit old and could be taken care of a lot better. The grounds itself seemed to be taken care of fairly well but the parking lots were not. We partly rushed up here so that she can check in early and get a good spot but also so that we can make sure that she got a parking pass as it was a possibility for them to run out. We probably didn't have to worry though as the complex was not entirely filled up yet. We took a break and went out to Fong's for lunch. We took Emily's roommate out with us so that they can get to know each other. 

We came back to the apartment afterwards to drop off her roommate and the leftover food and headed back out to get Emily's school ID and books. Christian came to find some shade and finish some work he had to do on the computer while he waited outside for us. It was all a bit overwhelming and confusing but there were lots of very helpful and friendly people there. 

We did run into one big problem while we were trying to get everything set up for Emily. When Emily tried to pay her rent for the quarter, the bank wouldn't let her do it. We tried updating her address, we talked to the management for the apartment a couple of times, we called the bank to try to find out what the problem was since she has the funds for it. In the end, we found out that the idiot banker that we have been dealing with here in Moreno Valley did not take the daily limit off of her account when she switched the account from a teen account to a normal adult account. We could not do it over the phone so Emily had to wait until Monday to go to the bank to sort it out. Then she had to make an appointment with a banker and go back again to get it done. What a hassle that banker here caused us over and over again. She made us waste so much time and energy because of her incompetence.

Afterwards, we went out to shop for a few items Emily realized that she needed at the apartment and a few groceries to get her started. That actually took a while but to be honest, in the end, I think we went on a a quest for some items just because we wanted an excuse to stick around a bit. Emily was still scared and a bit stressed about being on her own but she got a text from her friend from California and they were planning to meet up so we finally decided to head out and make our way back home. We did not want to take the 15 back and wanted to explore a little. It was more difficult than I thought to leave Emily there. I think we all had a difficult time with it but we know that the experience will be good for her.

We took the back roads to head out of Idaho. Because we left so late, we actually did not make it out by the end of the day. We drove until we were tired and found a place to pull over. We camped near some windmills. The next morning we got up to continue on. We stopped by the Castle Rocks National Park area to investigate. It seemed like a pretty neat area and we wanted to investigate as they are supposed to have some good climbing in the area.

It was still pretty early in the morning so we thought we can scout it out a little, but shortly after we arrived, some park ranger came by and wanted to give us a ticket since we did not pay the entrance/parking fee. We did not plan to stay but just wanted to look around a bit. But during all this time, cars started to stream into the area and we decided to just move on out. Thankfully, Christian managed to talk the Ranger guy out of giving us a ticket.

We then drove into the City of Rocks area and it seemed to be packed with the worst sorts of tourists from Utah. We didn't bother stopping. There were, however, some good camping possibilities in this area as there was nothing else out here but open land. It was a bit smokey in this area though but we did not know where the fire was.

We meandered through the back roads into Utah and then Nevada. We saw some turkey vultures and some really neat wild horses.

At some point, we realized that we were just not getting very far very fast and needed to move our time table up a bit. We jumped onto some bigger roads to make better time. It was a pretty grueling journey. We got near Carson City, it was getting late and we were pretty tired from our long day of driving and not much rest. Our plan was to head down the 395 to enter into California near Bridgeport.

As we headed into Minden, Nevada, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of traffic for that road on that time of day. Pretty soon, the traffic was bumper to bumper and there were police lights up ahead. Even if there was an accident, there seemed to be too many cars. We hoped that there was not a fire and people were being evacuated or getting turned around. But our traffic kept moving slowly forward. Next to us, we found lots of cars parked on the side of the road and that seemed pretty unusual as well. Shortly after, we saw crowds of people walking in the opposite direction of traffic. Some of the people were holding signs so we were afraid that there was some protest going on but none of it made sense because it was late into the night practically in the middle of nowhere. All we knew was that we were tired and didn't want to get rerouted somewhere and have to go all the way back to enter California through Carson City. We also didn't want to get stuck in the middle of some big violent protest. I got Christian's phone which still had some data left and tried to find some news report on what was going on. 

Apparently a Trump rally for the 2020 election just let out. There were thousands and thousands of people flooding out of the area like at the end of a concert at the Forum. Some were driving and the others were heading back to their cars along the road. I've never seen anything like it. We had planned to pull into a McDonald's or something to get a coke to help us get back over to California but a lot of the people leaving seemed to have the same idea or they were having a late dinner or something. We opted to just keep going and get out to where we could camp as soon as we could.

Bridgeport was really cold. The temperature had dropped down 10 degrees in the three miles it took to get into the town. We continued on until it got a bit warmer and we were too tired to continue on. We just slept in the truck as we were and got moving again when the sun came up. 

We stopped by at the Olancha Dunes to do a little exploring.

We had the place to ourselves and had a little bit of fun driving around on the dunes. They were not too big but some of it was really soft. 

We finally called it a day and headed back the rest of the way home. Caitlyn had stayed home for her classes on Thursday and Friday so Marian had gone to stay with her and keep her company. We are extremely thankful for that as we were a lot more comfortable leaving Caitlyn behind with someone to stay with her. She was still there when we got back so we got to visit with her a little bit. Caitlyn made us all dinner while we unpacked and got cleaned up.
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Christian had to get back to teaching online the very next day so his schedule was really hectic and had no time to unwind before having to put his nose back to the grindstone. We got incredibly lucky that he only had a few meetings to attend while we were away and was still able to do that for the most part on the road which allowed him to be able to drop Emily off for college.

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Caitlyn had been stressing about her Calculus class for the last month. In the beginning, Emily was able to help her out occasionally but things were getting more difficult and Emily is no longer here to help her so we got her to drop out of Calculus and go back to Pre-Calculus to reinforce what she was supposed to have learned at the end of the last school year. She is much happier now but she had to add a zero period in order to rearrange her schedules to make it work.

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We kind of celebrated my birthday early since Emily would not be around when my birthday came up. I turned 50 this year. Seems kind of surreal. She got me a leg pillow to help me sleep.

Actually, Christian gave me my present even earlier. He got me a new camera.

I actually got it in time to use for Austin and Natalie's wedding. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to really take it out to play with it beyond that. Dropping Emily off in Idaho was just too stressful, I really didn't take too many photos. 

On my actual birthday, Christian had to work and Caitlyn had class so we didn't really do too much. Christian wanted to take me out for my birthday so I at least didn't have to cook on my birthday. Since we still aren't allowed to go out to restaurants, we picked up some Poke for dinner. That was actually really tasty. 

I also got a lens hood for the new lens that came with my camera. Caitlyn got my old SLR. It was supposed to go to Emily but we could never get her to bother taking pictures most of the time so we gave it to the one who had proven that they would actually use it.

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Meanwhile, the weather has not improved around here at all. We have had temperatures around 100 degrees for the entire month. The air quality is still bad from all the fires burning all around us. Christian has been working day and night most days because of all the insane requirements the state keeps piling up on everyone. Everything has gotten insane. 

Awful August

It seems as if every day, since we've returned from our epic road trip, has been over one hundred degrees. It has been excruciatingly hot. It's been pretty unbearable. We can barely open our windows in the morning to get some air. Some days, it never gets cool enough. The plants are suffering and we need to work on some things outside but it is too hot to work out there and we get bit up from mosquitos constantly. It is truly a misery. 

Christian started back at school at the end of the first week of August. They moved him to Rialto High School this year. We had to get into his old classroom to pick up the rest of his stuff and move them over to his new classroom. The problem is, is that they had a classroom key for him but no building key and the former teacher in that classroom didn't even remove all his stuff yet. The good news is that he will get to teach Physics still and he will only have to teach one subject this year instead of two. Last year he had to teach two different Physics classes.

The next week he started teaching from home, except he didn't have access to the District website to get into the school's system. He had to teach out of his Google Classroom for a week and a half before he got access to put in the student information.

Caitlyn started her classes as well. She had to choose between Physics or Chinese 3 because it was at the same time. I know that they only have one Chinese class but shouldn't they have more than one Physics class to choose from? In the end, she just stuck with her Chinese class since she's already decided that she isn't going to be a science major. She was still missing one class and had been trying to get a response from her school counselor since before summer started. We honestly wasn't sure she still worked there as there seems to be a revolving door at her school. She has had a different counselor every year.

In the end, she got her schedule squared away but she has a bunch of easy classes this year, which is okay since she is worried about her calculus class. And in the end, she decided to take another RCC class through their Dual Enrollment program. 

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About mid-month, we headed down to Ramona to attend our nephew's wedding. We were not looking forward to it, however as it was still terribly hot and there is a lot of family drama going on with the rest of his family. Apparently his mom flipped out and divorced her husband. The divorce went through just before the wedding and she planned to move away just after. It was all very uncomfortable and we didn't know what she might say or do.

The wedding was okay though and we are thrilled for Austin and Natalie.

They had a small outdoor wedding at a friend's house. Luckily, it was on a hill and there was a bit of a breeze to make it bearable. They had the wedding, then we had lunch but left right after they cut the cake as they were about to start the party, so we left it to the youngsters to find some relief from the heat. Austin and Natalie will be leaving shortly to start their new life in St. George, Utah.

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Emily and I have been going back and forth from the bank and the DMV this summer. We went to open her an account on her own but found out that she needed either her Driver's license or State ID to get it on her own. We finally gave up on hoping that the DMV would open up for behind the wheel appointments and went to get her a Real ID. We had to wait in a line that wrapped all around the building. We then still had to get a number and wait by our car for them to call us to get into the building. We were so hot and tired by the time we got in and got it done. We inquired about when they might be opening up for appointments but they were still trying to catch up with all the cancelled appointments from before and had no idea when it would happen. 

About a week or two later, they finally opened up for appointments and Emily got to squeeze in her behind the wheel test before leaving for college. Luckily, she passed but I was actually pretty worried as the guy testing her had just failed another student in front of us and one of the other parents' son, who was waiting with me, had him before and said that he had failed his kid previously as well, so apparently he had a reputation for being a hard-ass.

So, after being in limbo and worrying about what was going to happen with all this, she finally got her license and we immediately set to work trying to get her insured and getting the vehicle re-registered with the DMV. We'll see how that goes. Everything has been set in motion. Christian took Emily to get the SMOG check for the Ranger and the paperwork has been dropped off at the DMV office. Now she is waiting for the stickers to come in and her license to be sent to her. She only has a couple of weeks left.

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Emily and Caitlyn have shared rooms most of their lives. We decided long ago to keep it that way, even though we had enough room for them to have their own because it is too easy for teenagers to stomp off into their own rooms and shut everybody out. But since Emily is leaving for college soon, we decided to let Caitlyn consolidate her crap to one room instead of staring at Emily's empty side in two different rooms. 

In addition, since Christian is working from home now, he's been complaining that his work area is just too small. 

So, we decided to play musical rooms. Christian and I had the smallest room in the house as our office. The kids had two rooms. One was their bedroom and the other was their playroom which turned into their study once things got more serious at school. They have their own desks and computers in there.

We decided to commandeer their playroom as our new office (which is the second biggest bedroom in the house after the master bedroom). Originally, Caitlyn was claiming it once Emily moved out. We let her keep her bedroom instead and moved Emily into our old office. In actuality, her bedroom is just a smidge smaller than the playroom but we wanted all the extra room that we could get.

It's been a complete mess in the house for several weeks now as we try to juggle all our stuff from one room to another. One annoying thing we found out is that the closet in our new office is actually smaller than the one in our old office for some reason. We've been getting rid of a lot of our old papers and shredding lots of our old files while the kids have been sorting and getting rid of a lot of their old toys, games and books. It is difficult since DI is still not open and we can't just haul everything out of here to donate. But at the same time, we can't store everything in here forever so we just ended up trashing a lot of their stuff. Our trash can fills up again immediately after the trash gets taken away for the week. If DI doesn't open soon, we will probably just continue put their old stuff in the trash probably. 

Christian is trashing his old desk and built himself a new desktop by repurposing a piece of plywood from our old organ at church. He threw together some shelving to hold his stuff and to hold up the desk top. It's much more useable now. Plus the school gave the teachers some extra money to help them work from home so he got a more comfortable seat and a new computer monitor. 

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Marian dropped by to see Emily before she heads out to college in a couple of weeks. She brought a ton of goodies that she will need for college (i.e. food, snacks, supplies).

Even with all the stuff she brought, she forgot a few things that she had planned to get Emily and so we went on a little shopping excursion to get her a few more items. It's crazy how much stuff you need to go out on your own but we've been trying to get her ready for weeks now and she still is missing stuff. 

Anyway, we are always thankful for Marian's thoughtfulness and generosity.

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Shortly after Christian finally got access to his District computer system and started trying to catch up on inputting the class information for his students, the whole system got shut down. Apparently, the whole district has been closed down indefinitely to investigate some malware that has infected their system. It's a real mess. The FBI is apparently investigating but Christian has not been able to teach for over a week now and we do not know how long this will go on. 

Meanwhile, we are trying to endure the heat and finish getting Emily ready for college. She managed to get her Patriarchal Blessing so hopefully it will be a help to her.