March

Spring Break this year was pretty messed up. Christian had the third week off and Caitlyn had the fourth week off. That pretty much made it all but impossible to really do anything. At the start of Christian's break, Emily and her dad decided to take off for a bit of an adventure. Their plan was to do Steel Pass in Death Valley with Caitlyn's Jeep. Of course, as usual, as soon as it starts, we get a weather system in.

Regardless, they said most of the towns they went through was super crowded. They got rained on which turned to snow at some point. A lot of the roads were messed up but apparently, it was beautiful out there.

They camped in the rain. The tent needs to be treated. Apparently the rain got in and some of their stuff got all wet. We've had the tent since way before the kids were born.

They got up in the morning and headed into the snow.

We don't have chains for the Jeep yet but luckily, the ones for my truck mostly fit on her tires. They certainly needed them.

At one point the road gave way and the Jeep ended up in a pretty precarious situation. As before, Christian ended up having to rebuild and redirect the road to get out. Emily tried to help him move some rocks and broke our camping shovel. We always bring a full sized shovel for these situations and that's what Christian uses to literally dig himself out of these situations.

The pictures never really show quite how bad the terrain really is. It is really hard to capture. Luckily, they didn't roll over and the only thing that got damaged was a hanger for the exhaust pipe. Hopefully Christian will be able to weld it back to something useable. 

Because their camping gear got wet the night before, they decided to cut the trip short and head home after their long ordeal. 

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Christian spent the rest of his break working out in the shop mostly. He has a bunch of welding projects lined up. Emily worked on and off. When Caitlyn finally got her Spring Break and Christian had to get back to work, we planned a few afternoons out. Emily only had a few days that week that she wasn't working. On one of the days, the girls and I drove out towards LA to do some shopping (and eating). Emily wanted a few things before heading back to Idaho. We planned to have lunch out there and the girls were excited but we had trouble with most of the places we picked out. Some of the restaurants were not even open that day. We wasted a lot of time driving around and around. 

We finally settled on a little Chinese restaurant. The food was pretty good and we were adequately hungry by then but we didn't want to stuff ourselves because the girls wanted boba afterwards. We did some shopping in between. We had actually intended to stop by to see my mom while we were out there but we took too long and decided to head back and come see her another time. We didn't want to run into the worst of the traffic going home. We had a good time though and it was nice to spend some time with both of the girls. Sometimes Emily and I would go out but Caitlyn was usually in class or home doing homework or whatever.

Emily and Caitlyn spent one of their free days going to the beach. They had a great time but came back fairly sunburned. Caitlyn put some sunscreen on but her coverage was not that great. Emily didn't put any on at all and got it the worst.

The girls spent a lot of time this past month trying to relearn their organ songs. Their teacher wanted them to play during church which we were supposed to start back up. The organ was mostly put together but they were still putting some finishing touches to it and we kept having problems. We had to keep pushing back the date for them to play because the organ just was not ready yet. It was very frustrating.

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We did manage to get together with what is left of Christian's family this past month in San Diego. It was nice to see everybody for the most part.

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We spent the rest of the month sanding the XJ down to bare metal so that we can paint it. It is a lot of work. We are starting with the roof as that is where there are the most rusty spots.

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The girls went to another youth dance. The youth are sick of being isolated and basically missing out on the last of their childhood and have decided to get together with others who aren't afraid to get out and live their lives. Before all this, I tried to get the girls to go out to official church dances but they scoffed and refused to go. They never did too much with the other kids from church except once in a blue moon or during special holiday get togethers. Now, they have a group chat going and they get together every few weeks or so for a dance or to play games or whatever. It's kind of nice.

After a full year of being away from school, Caitlyn's school started re-opening at the end of the month for in person classes a couple days a week. Of course, because of "social distancing," they have the kids who signed of to go back to school split into two groups. Group A goes Monday and Tuesday and Group B goes Thursday and Friday. They are still online on Wednesday which is a minimum day anyway so they really only check in to all their classes. But because the teachers are stretched so thin, they pretty much reduced the amount of work the kids had to do by half. It's all pretty pathetic. None of the kids are getting much of an education. It's all a joke and the teachers are tortured with all kinds of useless red tape.

Caitlyn wanted to take the CHSPE and just test out of high school at the end of this school year but because of "COVID," they kept delaying the test date. Once it was finally announced, we found out that there were no test sites in the Inland Empire this year and the cost went up more than double. 

She only needs two classes to graduate and is trying to figure out some kind of loophole to get around it but it doesn't look good for her as her district won't let her take anything less than 5 classes so that they can be sure to get the funding for her attendance. They offer nothing in the way of electives that is worth taking so she is very frustrated.

Emily's Birthday

 Emily turned 18!

It's so crazy that it has been 18 years and she will be leaving again for Idaho next month.

Her birthday landed on a Friday this year, so we were just home by ourselves. She did not have to work. I guess it was a good and bad thing. She didn't really want to have to work on her birthday but they still have her working very minimal hours still. Every week she gets a little more so she might be working halfway decent hours by the time she has to quit and go back to school! We are happy she got a chance to earn a bit of money for school though and now she has a bit of job experience to help her get her next position.

As usual, we had some of her favorite foods she either doesn't get that often or missed. For breakfast she asked for some rice porridge. For lunch, we picked up some carne asada fries at our favorite taco shop. And for dinner, we made poke at home.

She also got to open/use some of her birthday gifts. her main gift was a couple of pairs of new Vans.

Some of her old shoes were pretty trashed so I got her some new ones on the condition that she throw away one of her old ones that she keeps saying is still "fine."

We had the usual suspects over for a big birthday luncheon on Saturday. We have not all gotten together in a long time. 

I always save her fancier cake for her party as I don't have the energy and time to do that twice. So if I know we are planning a bigger party, I will do something simpler for her actual birthday with just ourselves. She got more presents...well, sort of.

Apparently, Emily was in the doghouse with Marian again. It seems that they had another agreement that Emily did not follow up on. I don't know what it was and frankly, I don't think I want to know but Marian definitely wants Emily to know that that is not okay. So she got a shredded $20 bill and a bag of Idaho potatoes. Don't ask...I won't either. But in the end, Marian got her some gas so, they came to some kind of understanding about it all.

She also brought over the rest of our presents from Christmas since we didn't see her for the holidays this past year.

She got Comfy's for all the girls including myself. Evidently, a bunch of Emily's college friends had them so she knew what they were. Marian had described them to me before but I had never heard of them. They are very warm! Emily will definitely get lots of use out of hers in Idaho. Caitlyn has already gotten lots of use of hers since she gets up early for Seminary and just sits in front of her computer all day. Our house is kept fairly cool most of the time as Christian usually runs hot if he is not also sitting in front of his computer teaching.

Christian had to rotate Marian's tires as well. Seems like everyone needs it. That's the third set of tires he's rotated in the past month that doesn't actually belong to us. They were going to try to get her to get a new set of tires but Christian said that she doesn't need them yet and just rotated them so that they would wear a bit more evenly. Plus, she had one tire that was over inflated which seemed to be causing the problem. With that fixed, hopefully Marian will not need new tires for a while yet.

After Terry and Jackie had left, Marian got us some cap steaks for dinner and she played MahJong with the girls. Caitlyn has been wanting to play again since they learned to play over Christmas. I have forgotten completely how to play. Our set has not been used since college when we played with Marian!

Frustrating February

 Another month of busy nothings has passed us by. It's been nearly a year of covid shutdowns and I am so sick to death of all the bullshit. We seem to be just passing the time and waiting in limbo for something to happen.

The only significant thing we did this past month was celebrate Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Ox. We normally get together with my family and make and eat dumplings until we drop. This year, we did manage to get together with some of my family but we just had a big luncheon. We planned to go visit with my mom and she ended up inviting my brother and his family. Surprisingly, he agreed but we would eat outside in the yard. 

My sister did not expect that we would be getting together this year and did not make plans to come back, so it was a surprise that we kind of got together at all. She would probably do something with my mom in another week or two when she planned to return again.

We went over early to help my mom in the kitchen. Apparently, my brother also went early to help. Maybe he wanted to prepare the food himself for his family...I don't know. But shortly after we got there, Christian went to look at my mom's car, as she was having problems with the check engine light coming on and my mom sent my brother out to take him to the auto parts store as we did not know the area. One of the possible problems was a vacuum leak from the gas cap. Since that was the easiest fix, they decided to address that problem and see if it would fix the issue. 

Afterwards, Christian noticed my mom's tires were not wearing evenly, so he wanted to rotate them but her car did not have a jack so they had to cobble together what they could find.

My brother's family arrived in time for lunch but stayed outside in the backyard. We ate but did not interact that much as we were all sitting at different tables. Plus his kids were sullen and not very social. It was all very sad. We tried to talk to them but they were not very responsive. The girls told us a little more about what was going on afterwards but I think their Covid isolation is getting to them in ways that my brother just doesn't understand.

Afterwards, Debbie and the kids left as the kids had homework and junk to do. The girls and I sat and visited with my mom while I helped her clean up. Christian sat out and chatted with my brother for quite a while before we all decided to call it a day and leave. Christian needed to come back to Riverside to help ordain a friend's son to be a Teacher in the Deacon's Quorum. Afterwards, we visited with their family for a bit as we had not seen them for at least several months.

Emily was disappointed that we were not doing dumplings this year. She had returned home from college excited for our normal traditions. We decided to make a small batch by ourselves at home. We have only done it once all by ourselves. We had to work out some details so we took some notes as we worked as we don't want the tradition to die off with my mom. But our family has been doing the majority of the work for years now at these get together's so it was not that difficult. 

The only problem we ran into was running out of wheat starch. We thought that we had more of a stock of it, but was only able to find one package. The girls and I made a run for the semi-local Chinese market but they didn't even carry it. When we got together with my family, my brother went for a run to the market to try to find it for us, but the store he went to did not carry it either. Emily was devastated, so we decided that we will have to continue some other time when we can make some time to go to the proper markets. 

Anyway, the small batch that we made turned out really well. It was delicious!

We basically celebrated Chinese New Year on Valentine's Day so we didn't do that much for Valentine's. 

The rest of the time was just spent slugging through school and work for Emily. She's doing okay but they don't give her that many hours. They have been increasing her hours slowly every week but it is just incremental at best. She's just biding her time and trying to earn as much money as they will allow her before returning to college in a month and a half. 

And unfortunately, the new gas cap did not fix my mom's check engine light as it came back a couple of days after we left.

Christian ended up back in the Emergency Room. Apparently, he got another kidney stone. Because of Covid, I could not go in with him. We did not know what the problem was initially, so I sat in the parking lot for over an hour, waiting for some kind of status update. By the time I was allowed to call in to find out what was going on, they had run a CT scan and were waiting for the results so I just went home to wait because in trying to call in to get an update, my call got dropped twice. It was very frustrating. Christian did not grab his phone so there was no way to contact him directly. 

After another hour or so, I called back in. They said that it was most likely a kidney stone but that the doctor had not reviewed it yet to say for certain. After the third hour, the doctor finally called to confirm that it was a kidney stone and was getting ready to release him with an order of drugs.

Christian was pretty doped up on pain killers which made him a bit groggy and very nauseous but they had already released him and he was waiting in line at the Pharmacy. Now that place was a freaking nightmare. We waited in line for about 30 minutes to get to move on to the line in the actual Pharmacy. Once we checked in, they made us go back outside to wait in line to get back in all over again. The line was even longer than before. There were so many pissed off irate people but they just treated us all like cattle. They didn't care if some could barely stand up. Anyway, the whole thing took nearly as long as his stay in Emergency. And they kept making us put hand sanitizer on every time we went in and out of the door so the skin on my hand was trashed for almost a week afterwards.

The whole hand sanitizer thing was such a joke anyway because Christian was telling me how filthy the Emergency room was.  There was trash all over the floor and the bathroom was covered in urine and feces. He tried to get someone to clean it but no one ever bothered to do it in the 3 or 4 hours that he was in there. Luckily, the doctor and technicians/nurses seemed fairly well competent and helpful though.

In the end, it was a small stone and he was able to pass it fairly quickly after all that. He had a phone appointment with his Urologist afterwards and he has ordered some additional tests. Apparently they were concerned as his kidney was a bit inflamed and his uric acids are a bit high.

Joyless January

Since we couldn't really go anywhere anymore, we settled down at home to take care of some things we've been wanting or needing to do. Christian worked on his stick welding and made his first project.

Rocket Stove

Emily had to hose down all the salt on her truck so that it doesn't rust and eat away the metal on her truck. They salt the roads like crazy in the snow there in Idaho and Utah too. She was also due for an oil change.

Christian also got her some new weather stripping for her window as they were getting old and brittle. Apparently, she broke off some parts of it when de-icing her windows with a ice-scraper in Idaho.

Caitlyn got some bits and pieces for her XJ for Christmas. Emily helped her put them on her car. Caitlyn worked on a few minor projects but didn't get a whole lot done. She had to get back to school a week before her dad.

Emily worked more in earnest in getting a job. Unfortunately, she found out that for a lot of the jobs, they required her to be 18. She applied for a ton of your typical fast food/retail jobs. She didn't hear from most of them. Some seemed to be taking applications but not really hiring. She ended up accepting a job to work at McDonalds but they dragged their feet in getting her started with having to do hours and hours of paperwork and sludge through redtape. Seemed kind of ridiculous. When she finally got some training in and received her schedule for the next week, she found out her boss scheduled her to work on Sundays and some late nights which she specifically stated that she could not do. Her manager disregarded the information she put on her application as well as what she stated in her orientation and what they entered into the computer system as her availability. She argued that that is not what she stated orally at her interview (which we doubt). She kept forgetting that Emily wasn't even 18 and was not currently going to school but insisted that Emily said that her schedule was completely open. Anyway, after a week of training and crap, she quit because of the grief the manager was giving her for "changing her availability."

Emily was super pissed because Wendy's had contacted her after she accepted the job to McDonalds and now she lost that position as well. She went and applied for a few part time jobs at the University Village and had an online interview but nothing became of it. 

First paycheck

After over a week of not being able to find another job, Emily called her manager to find out about getting her paycheck. Her manager offered for her to come back to work. Emily really didn't want to take it because her boss had been such a jerk to her and wasted so much of her time. Plus we spent something like a hundred dollars on clothing and her food handler's license for her to even get the job. Her first paycheck would barely be enough to offset what was spent. In the end, Emily decided to go back but keep her eyes open for anything else that might come through that was better. She is frankly running out of time. Of course, when she finally got her paycheck, it was missing a couple of hours so she still has to get that fixed.

They had her finish her training but she still hasn't gotten regular hours yet so she is only working part-time. More of her boss jerking her around because the job position she applied for was supposed to be full time. She would have been better off going to Wendy's but it is too late now and some hours is still better than none since so many jobs have been eliminated and so many business closed down due to the stupid coronavirus.

It will get her some money to be able to go back to school and give her job experience to be able to get better jobs later.

Snow on BoxSprings Mtn.

We got some super strange weather this month. Most of the time if felt more like June than January. We got epically hot days and when we finally got a few days of rain, it got so cold that we actually got some snow. But it didn't last and we are back to sunny clear days but thankfully not as hot as previously...yet.

We were supposed to get more rain but as usual, the chances of that happening shrunk to nil and we are back to warm dry weather. The sun is bad but the wind is the worst.

Emily and Caitlyn attended a winter formal with many of the youth in our stake. It was not official as we are not allowed to do anything like that, but a family in the stake with a large property decided to have a private one for the kids. The kids really needed to have something like this as they have all had their young lives disrupted this past year and have been isolated for too long. My kids would not even have wanted to go to something like this is the past because they were not comfortable going to dances but we encouraged them to go and they somewhat reluctantly agreed but they ended up having a really good time.

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.