A bit too much adventure

Off to Boise I go! Way back on Valentines Day in 2020, when John and I had flown to Boston and were anxiously trying to get me scheduled for colon cancer surgery, John gave me a hand-drawn card that said it was good for a trip to a cabin in the woods.

I put the card on my nightstand and spent a lot of time after my surgery looking at it. Would I live to go on our promised cabin trip someday, or would cancer and the pandemic prove to be the end of me? The card was both encouraging and comforting.

A rough recovery and a pandemic later, we decided it was finally time to go to that cabin in the woods. I found a fantastic looking cabin on Airbnb in northern Idaho, and booked it for our upcoming 15th wedding anniversary. Here’s the amazing advertisement photo…we shall see if it lives up to its promise!

The plan was for Biska and I to drive up to see the kids in Boise. We planned to hang out and go camping for a few days. Then John would fly in and we would spend the second week in northern Idaho.

The last time I drove by myself to Boise in the van, Biska was a not-yet-potty-trained puppy, and it was an emergency trip to help get rid of the crazy roommates before they did any more damage. I took the slow way, sticking to major freeways, and it took me two and a half days. But the short route, due north through rural Nevada on country highways, takes 16 hours, according to google. I figured if I went that way I could do it in two days. When I’m driving by myself, I estimate an extra hour for every 8 hours. So that’s two 9-hour days.

When I’m traveling alone with Biska in the van, I actually find it easier to camp rather than stay in a hotel. I reserved a spot in a nice campground just off the road in the mountains on the way up. I packed the van for everything we’d need, including John’s fishing gear, so he didn’t have to take it on the airplane.

I left right on time, 7:30 AM and made it all of 2 blocks before our first glitch. I heard a thunk, and the next thing I knew, Biska was in my lap, trembling and cowering. I pulled to the side of the road (still walking distance from home), and looked over – a huge and heavy piece of wood, which is part of our van bed, had come loose and had fallen when I took the first left turn of the trip.

I didn’t know if it had actually hit her. I hadn’t noticed if she had been on the passenger seat or in her bed on the floor between the seats. Was she hurt and in pain, or just scared out of her wits? With a dog, it’s hard to tell. I checked her over and decided it was safe to continue onward.

The next 12 hours are just a muddle in my mind of road construction, cars about running into each other, strong cross winds, gas stations that are difficult to maneuver in a large van, and increasing exhaustion. I felt like I was stopping for breaks all the time, yet somehow I failed to regularly eat.

I remember one time when I stopped for a break I noticed to my consternation that my heart was absolutely pounding. I wasn’t exactly sure why. Yes, traffic had been difficult, but was I really that stressed out?

I remember another time I was so turned around at a weird and complicated intersection of highways that I just followed the truck in front of me and figured I could get oriented later and backtrack if needed. But even with a truck to follow, it seemed we were going the wrong way on a one-way AND across a highway with no sight distance AND suddenly we came across a recent car accident in the middle of it all. I just hung on and followed the truck and hoped for the best.

Another time, in the middle of an unusually narrow and curvy stretch of freeway, in middle of road construction, a car was broken down and they were trying to work on the car – and it wasn’t fully pulled out of the right hand lane! There was very little sight distance around the curve. Suddenly there was a stopped car and people on the freeway! Cars in the right lane were abruptly swerving into the left lane, and the cars in the left lane could not swerve into the median to make room for them because it was construction area with cement barriers on the left line.

From the left lane I saw a huge semi truck trying to stop behind them (and we had all been at freeway speeds instants before). It looked like he was going to plow right into them; it was either that or change lanes and take me out instead. If I were him, I would take out a camper van sooner than hit a pedestrian. I think he managed to get stopped. He was decelerating at a wonky angle – either he deliberately angled himself to protect them with his truck or he was sliding out of control as he came to a stop. I kept on going – there was really no other option. I hope it all worked out!?

The highlight of our day was this amazing dog park at Love’s Truck Stop.

While there I noticed the longest trailer I’ve ever seen.

Actually once I saw a wind turbine being transported. That might have been longer, I’m not sure. But meanwhile, that dog park, isn’t it amazing? There’s two sections, one for little dogs and one for big dogs. With real grass!

Finally at 7:00 that night, I pulled into our campsite. It was a beautiful campground, but unfortunately I didn’t remember to take any pictures. It was near-dark and I was so trashed I felt like a zombie. I tried to call John to let him know that I arrived and I was barely coherent. I remember wondering at what point adventures become too adventurous? I mean, there has to be some difficulty involved or we’d call it a walk in the park, not an adventure. Right? But there’s also a point at which it isn’t an adventure anymore, it’s just an ordeal.

I never did figure out why it took me 11 1/2 hours to go halfway to Boise. The drive the next day went far easier, and I happily arrived at the kid’s house at a reasonable time in the afternoon.

Their neighborhood is old and gentrifying. Callan and Chirstina have a nice newer house, with two master suites upstairs plus a main floor bedroom and bathroom, for a total of 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Callan’s is one of four new houses that were built on what was originally a single lot. You can see in the photo below an example a small, old house on a large lot, like the one that was torn down to make room for Callan’s and the other houses. This photo was taken standing in their yard and looking across the street.

I unloaded the van and got myself situated in the front master bedroom they generously vacated for me. They have a roommate (a very good one this time) in the downstairs bedroom. Their upstairs office is also an ensuite, and they figured it was easier to move themselves into their office suite than move their computers into their bedroom. It’s very nice to have two rooms upstairs, each with an ensuite bath. I really enjoyed having my own bathroom in my room.

Callan and Chirstina’s main hobby is playing computer games together. They play thoughtful, collaborative games of strategy. It’s sort of cool how they work together to figure out the strategy for the game plots.

I had scheduled as many life coaching clients as possible for that next day, because it was the only day I planned to work that week. Chirstina went to the trouble of putting pictures on the wall behind a folding desk, so I would have somewhere I could zoom with a professional-looking background. These are pictures she painted herself. I particularly like the green one.

I was relieved to be safely there and settled in. Little did I know, I was in for much more adventure before my trip was over. More about that next post.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Buckskin Gulch, Utah

After giving up on the hot, slow, circuitous “official” route to the Buckskin Gulch, we went back to our campsite and decided to take the original route the next morning.

Our campsite was still available, yay. It’s not an official campground, just one of those pull-outs off the road with a fire ring. We parked in a slightly different spot this time. It took a little more work getting the van level. We don’t have a fancy leveling system or even those plastic ramps that look like big lego blocks. We just scavenge rocks that we find sitting around near the campsite, put them where we need them, and drive up on top of them. We were able to get tucked away in the trees a bit better than the previous night.

We found this dog gravesite near our campsite. Awww. The rock says, “Roz Dog, A Good Girl, 1999-2015” I bet Roz had a good life.

We were glad that we had our new Starlink internet connection because that afternoon our house sale in Albuquerque nearly fell through. It wasn’t our buyer’s fault – it was the fault of our terrible, horrible, no good, relocation company. It was everything we could do to keep them from cancelling our sales contract – a contract that both us and our buyers were happy with!

By the way, we still haven’t closed on that house sale. We were supposed to have closed yesterday but our relocation company has once again messed up. Now it’s Memorial Day weekend and our best hope is Tuesday for closing. But back to my Utah story.

That next morning we drove to the trailhead that is supposed to be for “The Wave” trail, but is also (we discovered) the original, and closer, way to get to Buckskin Gulch. The first little bit of the trail was a wide wash and we walked with a bunch of Wave hikers.

The majority of the hikers soon took the Wave trail to the right, leaving only me, John, and a nice young man whose name I forgot, to continue down the wash toward the gulch. Our new friend said he was a computer programmer from Austin, Texas. He had wanted to hike the Wave trail but hadn’t managed to get a permit; they had sold out. The number of people allowed on that trail is limited by permit because it is so popular.

I have seen pictures of the Wave, and I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. I think some landmarks get famous and others don’t due to tipping point dynamics more than actual virtue. We’ve seen some truly amazing formations that aren’t on the internet, so no one is ever there.

We walked with our new friend for a short distance, and sure enough, there was the gulch! It was beautiful. Here you can see our friend walking up ahead with Biska.

This next picture shows a drop off. It’s not that far, but it’s too far to jump down it, and not easily scrambled. There used to be a ladder but the ladder had washed out. We turned back, because there really wasn’t a way down.

As we started to hike back out, someone else on the trail pointed out the route around the drop-off. There was a tiny trail sign, easy to miss. Similar to our scramble on our first night in a different wash, we had to go up and around and back down past the choke point. Up we went!

The next few pictures are of us after we’ve scrambled up, and we’re looking at the route back down into the canyon. It was not particularly difficult, but it was steep and exposed.

Yep, that’s the way down.

If we wanted to hike the gulch, we had to get all the way down into that.

Uhhh. Here I am, contemplating it.

By that time, two more guys had joined us. John and I went down first. Well, Biska went first. She had no problem! Can you see her down there in the crack?

The two other guys followed us with no problems, but our friend from Austin just didn’t have the confidence to do it. We offered to help him down but he just couldn’t get up the nerve.

John went back up to help. Here’s a picture of John talking to our friend about how to do it. It looks pretty imposing from this angle!

I felt bad for the guy because I really sympathized. Although this stretch was really not all that difficult for me. John and I had done more difficult sections near our campsite on the hike we took the first morning. I realized that I’m not too bad out there myself. I always compare myself to John, but that’s not a very fair comparison. John is a mountain goat!

Here we are after we got down. We hiked the short distance back up to the choke point to see what it looks like from below. The people above are asking me how we got down there, and I explained they had to backtrack and take the trail up and around and back down. You can see some remnants of the broken ladder.

It was very beautiful in the canyon – and dry! Often these slot canyons are wet and muddy. People will wade through hip deep muck. Not for me! They are also very dangerous if there is rain anywhere upstream. Don’t ever go into one of these if there’s rain forecast anywhere nearby.

Uh oh, Biska needs help. Luckily she’s smart enough not to jump too far.

John to the rescue.

Here’s John giving Biska some water – you can see remnants of the washed out ladder stuck high up in the canyon behind them.

Then first slot canyon joined a bigger canyon. It was here that we realized why the trailhead had been moved. They were routing people around that initial side canyon that had the broken ladder. The main canyon is also a slot canyon – the actual Buckskin Gulch. The new trailhead that we thought was too hot and long on the previous day was the slow, easy way to get to the main Buckskin Gulch slot canyon. The way we went this time was a pretty little side canyon and a short cut – if you don’t mind scrambling.

Here we are in the main canyon, with the opening of the slot hidden in the shadow.

The two guys who had come in with us took our photo.

This is looking back at the entrance to the side canyon.

Here’s the entrance to the main part of the slot canyon.

I love this next picture of the back of me, peering ahead (taken by John).

John is a happy guy!

I love the lighting on these next two.

A small cave

It was a great hike and worth the scramble!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Who moved my cheese?

The next morning, we drove up the road to a trailhead. I was looking forward to hiking on a real trail. No more crazy steep rock scrambling! Our destination was a slot canyon called Buckskin Gulch.

When we reached the highway turnoff for the Buckskin Gulch trailhead, John said something about it not being right. He had been there once before, but it was twenty or more years ago. How could he possibly remember?

The trailhead signs were entirely clear. This was the Buckskin Gulch trailhead. So we put on our boots, and off we went.

And we went, and went and went. It was a pretty trail, and easy. But where was the slot canyon? There were nearby rock formations, so surely we were almost there?

Almost there?

Almost there?

We trudged along this valley and it started getting pretty hot.

Surely we’re almost there?

By then the sun was high, and we’d made it to a few cliff faces, but we still hadn’t found the slot canyon.

Biska was hot, and we decided to turn around. Even if we were almost to the cool and shaded slot canyon, we had come too far on the open plain, and we’d have to hike back through it in the heat.

Here’s John with his Garmin trying to figure out – where are we? Turns out we were just over halfway to the slot canyon. That made no sense. This was marked as the trailhead to the slot canyon. We should have had half a mile of hiking to the canyon, not several miles.

Time to turn around and hike back out. There’s always tomorrow.

After we got back out, we discovered that it was indeed an unnecessarily long way to the slot canyon. There was a closer trailhead to the slot canyon that John was remembering, but it was no longer marked as the trailhead for the slot canyon. It was only marked as the trailhead for some other trails.

Our initial guess was that they were trying to divert some of the slot canyon traffic elsewhere because the original trailhead also went to a very popular rock formation called the Wave. You need a permit to go on that trail. We weren’t interested in hiking to the Wave, so we didn’t need a permit, but we wanted to park in the same parking lot as for the Wave. Do they no longer let slot canyon hikers park there? Is it now only people with permits the hike the Wave?

The new trailhead they came up with for the slot canyon turned out to be 6 extra miles of hiking (three in and three out) just to get to the canyon. That’s not ok! Not when there’s a closer trailhead, a mere half mile from the slot canyon!

We decided to try again the next morning, and this time we’d try to park at the original trailhead – if we could.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Crazy steep off-trail scramble

The next morning, we set off up the same wash as the previous evening. This time we had the whole day ahead of us.

Here’s where we quit the night before:

Here’s where we’re going to go up and around it. Yeah…hmmm.

It looked do-able here, although it was a lot steeper than it looks in the picture.

Ok, so far, so good. But it’s really steep.

The van is waaaay down there.

Hard to tell in the picture, but that’s basically a drop-off there under the snag. I’m not sure how I get myself into these things. It’s my fault. John’s not egging me on. It’s just that somehow it looks easier from below? Or I think I’m almost there? Or I forget that heights make me uncomfortable? I keep getting myself into these situations and regretting it!

Stupid steep.

Pretty though.

We decided to go over the top of this ridge to the right, rather than trying to go back down the side of the wash, which was both steep and rough. There was a decent chance that the slope down to the road would be gentler than the sides of the wash.

Yep, there’s the road, way down there. And there’s fewer big boulders on this side. John’s happy.

But I’m crouched with my back against a rock, contemplating the drop-off. I can see the van down there. Now if only I had wings, it would be easy! At least, with fewer boulders, it’ll be more of a butt-slide down than a rock climb.

Whew, made it down. Home sweet home.

Next time, a trail maybe?

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Evening walk from the campsite

We arrived in Utah a little later than expected due to our flat tire en route. This was the first camping spot we found near a trail we planned to hike the next day.

At first we figured it was a temporary spot just for that night, and we’d find a better spot the next day. But we ended up liking the spot better than we thought we would. Turns out there was good hiking right there.

These photos are from our evening walk. Or I should say, our evening rock scramble.

The sun was down and it was darker than the photos make it look like. We had a light on Biska in case she wandered too far.

Here’s where we quit. It was too dark to climb this. The next day we found a way around it, but we had enough evening walk/scramble for the first day.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Utah Trip – First Stop

Wait – that sign suggests we’re in between Flagstaff and Phoenix. That’s not Utah. Yeah, so we were driving along and several things happened, nearly all at once. First, Biska got up, farted, and looked anxious. I wondered if we needed to stop to give her a walk. At the same time, the van dashboard beeped and John said something about a tire, which I didn’t hear.

John said he was going to pull over (for the dog, I thought) and I objected; not along the side of a freeway (because Biska’s a good girl and she can wait), and then he said there’s an exit, and I said ok. There happened to be an exit nearly immediately – in fact, we almost passed it. He took the exit and started to park the van at the nearest possible location. I suggested he go a little further down the dirt road away from the freeway, and he said we shouldn’t. We had a flat tire! Oh. This wasn’t about the dog at all.

Yup, that’s a flat tire.

It was actually a great place to have a flat tire, assuming we didn’t need any amenities. Which we didn’t. I happily walked Biska on the dirt roads while John changed the tire.

Here is John, hamming for the camera. He wasn’t worried. He had everything he needed, including a full sized spare.

He also had a tire repair kit and and an electric air pump. He fixed the flat and stowed it away, in case we had any future issues.

Ironically, during the time that John was fixing our tire, a tow truck came for another vehicle. I’m glad that wasn’t us. That car was barely drivable. The tow truck driver was able to drive it a couple of feet to get it lined up with his trailer, but it was making some crazy engine noise.

We were soon on our way. Thanks John, for being prepared and saving the day!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Heading to California

In January, Biska and I drove two days to meet Laura in Atascadero, a small town just north of San Luis Obispo, near the central coast of California. Well, I drove. Biska slept. The first night we spent in Joshua Tree National Park.

We went for a short walk but it was cold, windy and miserable. Biska hung outside for a little while, but pretty soon we both just retreated into the van. The wind howled and the van rocked back and forth.

Sunrise the next morning:

Biska’s waiting for me to finish my coffee.

It was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed our morning walk. I wished I could have stayed longer; I was not looking forward to our drive through Los Angeles.

The drive through Los Angeles went ok, and then we hit the grapevine, which is a twisty section of the interstate that goes up and over the mountains between Santa Clarita and Bakersfield. Due to mudslides, the multi-lane freeway narrowed to one lane. We crept up the mountain behind the trucks, laboring at 5 miles an hour for a long time.

I wouldn’t typically have even been on the grapevine to get to Atascadero, but my preferred route up the coast on 101 was closed in several places due to mudslides. I ended up going all the way up to Highway 46 and then west to Paso Robles.

We were originally going to camp at Cerro Alto campground, halfway between Atascadero and Morro Bay. We canceled those reservations when the flooding started about a week before our trip. It was a good thing we canceled, because soon that highway closed.

After canceling our camping reservations, we considered canceling the entire trip because the weather forecast was so bad. But the trip was Laura’s birthday present, and Laura had already gotten the time off, so we forged ahead with our vacation. I was able to find a last-minute airbnb for a very good rate. It was discounted steeply from their usual rates. I expect they had a cancelation.

Here’s Laura and Zane, setting off for the trip in the rain. It was two days drive for me, but only three hours for them.

It was a relief to get there! I was glad we hadn’t canceled the trip. It was a great little airbnb, with a fenced yard for the dogs. Here’s the view from the back deck when we arrived late that afternoon.

Happy birthday Laura!

Here’s the sunset that night:

The dogs were racing around the yard, happy to be free after long hours in the car.

There was a pretty sky the next morning too.

And deer in the back pasture:

The only weird thing about the airbnb was the laundry outside in the rain.

On the second or third day we suddenly realized we no longer had hot water. The owner came over immediately, and plugged the hot water heater into a different outlet with an extension cord.

It seemed pretty sketchy to me, but it worked.

The inside was cozy. I brought a quilt to throw over the couch so Biska didn’t shed all over it.

And the dogs each had their beds.

We were lucky to find a dog-friendly spot out of the rain.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Good-bye Washington; Montana, here we come – Post 31 of our August Seattle Trip

Here is the final catch-up flashback post from our August vacation to Seattle. On the last day of August, we bid a fond farewell to our West Seattle home for the month, and our excellent hosts, Amy and Ian. We plan to be back!

On the way home we decided to stop at Flathead Lake, Montana. It was a bit out of our way, but it was recommended by a friend of mine who is from Montana and goes up there every summer. It’s a huge lake, very clean and beautiful.

We arrived in the evening and after we got our camper van situated, we took a quick walk in the dark to see the water.

The next morning was beautiful.

The highlight of our short Flathead Lake side trip was when John rented a small sailboat for the afternoon. He wanted to see how Biska does on a sailboat, because we are thinking of taking her with us to Florida in February.

Turns out she does just fine!

We didn’t have a lot wind that day, but it was enough to sail a little bit.

It was fun being out on a sailboat again. It was a similar size as ours – a little one.

We stayed in a bay and didn’t go too far out in the lake.

It was mostly rural around the lake, but this huge mansion on an island gave us something to gawk at.

After awhile the wind picked up, which was useful at first, but with the wind came afternoon thunder clouds. I don’t like the prospect of lightning when I’m in a sailboat with the mast pointed into the sky, so we headed back.

And that’s the last of the posts from our excellent summer trip up north. I hope you enjoyed the series. We certainly enjoyed the trip.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism

Seattle Trip – Day 2 – Still heading towards Boise

Day two went waaaay better than day one. Morning arrived sunny and beautiful.

It was a nice campsite, tucked into the trees. I was sorry to have to immediately leave our pretty campsite that we had not had time to enjoy the previous evening, having arrived far too late.

There were several trails in the area and it would have been nice to go for a hike. But we had another 7 hours of driving to our campsite in Idaho. So we made coffee, went for a quick walk around the campground, packed up and headed out.

We made a mental note to come back someday. It looked like a great area. The only downside was no cell reception, which is a common issue in southern Utah. 

As we drove up towards Salt Lake City, I took several photos of these mountains.

We couldn’t figure it out – is that snow or white rock? It’s July and 100 degrees out, but I remember being snowed on in the mountains just east of Salt Lake in July several years ago, even though it was very hot down in the valley. It’s all about elevation! In the end though, we decided it was probably white rock. We definitely want to come back and check it out someday.

For lunch we bought Greek take-out and ate at a park. Actually, weirdly, the park we had identified on the map was closed, so we ate in the shade of a tree on the edge of a grassy drainage basin right outside the park. Looks like a park to me!

In case you’re wondering, that loop around Biska’s nose keeps her calm and keeps her from pulling my arm off in excitement when we walk. It’s called a “gentle leader” and if you have a dog who pulls too hard on walks, I greatly recommend it. It’s not tight and doesn’t hurt her at all. It’s not a muzzle, and no, she doesn’t bite. She is just very exuberantly happy about life! She wants to run up to and interact with every bird, person, dog, child, squirrel, and anything that moves! At least she’s not timid, right?

That evening’s campsite was in a county park along a creek right outside of Twin Falls.

We arrived at 6 pm instead of 9 pm. What a difference three hours made! I did astoundingly better. Instead of a nightmarish never-ending drive in the dark, I wasn’t even tired yet. So I arrived cheerful and ready to see the sights. We had time for a walk, a leisurely dinner of Greek leftovers from lunch, and then another walk.

The park had a paved walking path that went on for at least a couple of miles along a creek.

One section of the path included a challenging frisbee golf course.

John especially wanted me to take a picture of this waterfall, but I have a true Oregonian’s disdain for small, unimpressive, unphotogenic dribbles of falling water. So John took the photo. It’s a nice photo, and there’s a waterfall there if you look closely.

It had been very hot and dry, but right around bedtime the evening mosquitos suddenly appeared in droves and chased us back to our van.

It was still very hot, so we started up our air conditioner. The van has two air conditioners. We have the regular air conditioner that most vehicles have, which only runs when the engine is running. We’ve also installed a small portable unit. It actually takes up quite a lot of space under our sink, but it is very much worth it.

The point of our portable unit is we can run it off electricity from the campsite plug without having to run our engine. We could even run it off our own solar generated power, but probably not for long before it drained our set of RV batteries we have installed in a row under our bunk. We can run it indefinitely if we have a source of electricity. Our campsite came with an electrical outlet, so we decided to leave the AC running all night. The way it’s designed, the fan runs continuously regardless of whether it’s cooling or not. We turned it the fan down to it’s lowest setting for the night, but it was still a lot of airflow in such a small space.

In the middle of the night I realized I had a sore throat. I figured it was probably due to the constant blowing of the air conditioner only 4 feet from my face. I considered turning it off, but didn’t know what the outside temps were doing. The daytime temps were well into the 100’s, so the outside temps could be in the 80’s. I was too asleep to figure it out, so I just left it running.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Seattle Trip – Day 1 – Heading towards Boise

I am sorry to post two grumpy posts in a row, but our first day of vacation wasn’t any easier than the last few days leading up to it! The first travel day is never a relaxing day.

We were slow to leave because it turned out John had more remodel prep work he wanted to do. I had thought that we just had one last box to pack of last minute items we were still using. But he didn’t want construction dust and general wear and tear on our furniture and possessions, so he was hurriedly wrapping many items in plastic. You can buy big rolls of plastic in the moving sections of Home Depot and Lowes specifically for that purpose, it’s sort of like mega-sized saran wrap. I understand his logic, but the plastic wrapping is not something I’d choose to do if I were in charge, and something about it bugs me irrationally, lol.

Yeah, the houseplants are in Tucson. No, they can’t survive an entire month without water. I’m hoping our remodel contractor, Neil, can water them once or twice while we’re gone.

My poor house, all packed up!

Finally we were ready to leave. We hadn’t even managed to get out of Tucson before we came upon a traffic accident. Never a good omen.

Plus, did you see those gray skies? Yep, by the time we had reached Phoenix, the weather had turned awful. In the summer the desert can get some fairly extreme weather – high winds and brief, torrential rainfall. It will dump buckets in a very short time, reducing visibility to near zero and flooding the roads. The water can’t run off as fast as it’s coming down.

We got lucky and found a sunny park for a quick lunch of bread and cheese. At least Biska was doing fine. She is a great traveler!

As we continued on through Las Vegas, our phones were showing a 2-hour delay on the freeway between Las Vegas and St. George, UT. It was actually two different back-to-back delays, one of about half hour and followed by another of about an hour and a half.

It was already late in the afternoon and at that point, my vote would have been to get a hotel and try again the next morning. But John is an optimistic person and he also tends to want to stick to the plan. I like plans too, but I’m more of a Plan B and C sort of person. I was tired.

But he had a couple of good points. First, it wasn’t going to hurt us any to sit in traffic. We have everything we need accessible in the van. Secondly, phone data isn’t always reliable, so maybe it had cleared. It appeared to be clearing, we thought, hopefully.

So we crept along in stop and go traffic for two hours. The first slow up turned out to be a fairly severe accident. Someone in a small car had rear-ended a semi-truck. Looking at the damage of the car, it was hard for me to imagine that the person could have survived. I found it upsetting and did not take a picture of that one. Next we came to the road construction that had caused the slow-up and the accident. 

By the time we got through all that, it was early evening. Again my vote was to stay in a hotel in St. George. But we had reservations at a campground just an hour up the road, and John wanted to press on. He didn’t want to have to mess around with finding a hotel, unloading our van, etc. We were so close – we just had one more hour to drive!

The road through the canyon into the mountains north out of St. George is surprisingly twisty. The van was being blown around by very strong winds, and pummeled by thundershowers. Soon it was dark. The combination of dark and twisty and windy and downpours at 80 miles an hour was terrible! I tried to lose myself in my kindle book, but that wasn’t helping.

For some reason I had accidentally downloaded one of those psychological thriller books, complete with a psychopath killer and unreliable narrators. It wasn’t the kind of book I needed right then. But our cell reception (and my patience level) wasn’t good enough for me to want to try to find something else.

We had reservations at a private campground with limited check-in hours. It started to look like we weren’t going to make check-in. The instructions said to call if we were going to be past 9:00 pm, so I called. The guy was grumpy about the weather and seemed to suggest that we shouldn’t even bother to come. He called his own campground “a big mud pit”. Well, that wasn’t encouraging.

Plus, they closed at 10:00 pm. Would we even make it by 10? Turns out just barely – we arrived at 9:40! That’s cutting it tight. It was pitch dark and silent. Luckily we drive a small van and not a big rig. But our back-up camera doesn’t work in the dark, particularly with bikes on the bike rack on the back of the van. I had to get out and direct John as he backed up based solely on my feedback, completely blind in the night.

After we got situated for the night, John generously took the dog for a walk, but I didn’t even leave the van after we got it parked. It was past bedtime and it had been a hard day.

As we drifted off to sleep we were suddenly jolted awake by the long and agonizing cry of a squirrel or other small mammal in fear for its life. Then something small clunked against the van. I don’t know if the clunk was the fleeing animal or a somewhat larger animal that must have been chasing it. I don’t know the outcome of that drama, but it did not set a relaxing tone for my dreams.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.