June 17......SNOW at 7,500 feet

Well here it is Wednesday, time to play catch up again. 

It's tough to see, but
it's the U-Haul Crowd

We headed to work Saturday morning and rounded the last corner on the mile trip to the booth, when to our surprise there sits a U-Haul truck, about 6 other vehicles, a lot of people, boxes and stuff.  If they wouldn't have been blowing up a raft, I would have thought they were having a yard sale.  The normal rush of guided launches showed up a little after 7:00 and again about 8:00, then about 9:00 a truck broke free from the crowd at the top of the parking lot and headed down to me.  They were taking down the 1st of 9 rafts and wanted to know what they owed.  We have a $5.00 usage fee for the area, but there were so many seniors with seniors passes I only charged them for 1 pass and sent them on their way.  The raft, a pile of stuff and a few people stayed at the river, while the truck came back up to get ready for the next raft, belongings and people.  About 10:00 when the second general launch came down, I remembered it was 'National get Outdoors Day' and there was no usage charge, so I headed up to the crowd at the end of the lot to return their money and get my day pass back.  Well worth the trip, a fresh cup of percolated coffee and a cinnamon roll was my gift from them....not bad.  After that, we had a good amount of other launches that day, but it was fun to watch these people get ready, and they did their raft count for me with each trip past my booth.  They finally headed down with raft #9 about 12:00 noon, now that was a long morning for those folks, but they are doing a 5 night camping trip on the river, all the way to Ladore Canyon, Colorado, about a 60 mile river trip, wow.   When we left at 1:00, the crowd was having lunch on the river, waiting for their shuttle vehicles to return so they could set out on their trip, what a crowd, we wished them a good trip and headed home.  Back home, tended to Rudy, lunch, a nap for Brad and a stay at home lazy day for us all.

 



Yes, the raft is bigger
than the car!!

Sunday morning is Fathers Day so there were a bunch of dads going down the river with no wives or kids, other than themselves.  They all seemed like they were having a good time and some of the wives showed up to the pick up vehicles and run shuttle service for the hubbies.....nice women.  It was a little cloudy all day, but we still had a pretty good river crowd.  Nothing much exciting happened and 1:00 rolled around pretty quick.  I texted Dad this morning and tried to call after work, but no luck getting a hold of him. I was going to try a little later, but Jim came over and the next thing I knew it was 8:00 PM here, 10:00 PM in PA, a little late for a phone call.  A quick meal for us and off to bed about 10:00.

 

Monday and Tuesday are pretty chilly and most of our traffic is the guided fishing trips, the only
interesting thing is that the dam is slowly closing the by-pass tubes and the river has dropped from

Water Level dropping,
the white pipe used
to be underwater

8600 CFM to about 6300 CFM when we left at noon on Tuesday.  They started Monday morning and dropped it a little at 7:00 AM and again at 8:00 AM, then held it steady until about 6:00 PM when they dropped it a little more.  Tuesday morning they started dropping the flow again and Brad was all excited, the benches were out of the water and so is the board walk area down at the launch site.  He was happy he could put the trash can back down on the bench area and the boats are no longer tying off to the water faucet and there is more room on the ramp and tie up area.  A couple of neighborly visits each evening, with Jim and us having our little happy hour and the others stopping in to say hi and chat for a while, nothing much happening Monday, but Tuesday while Brad napped, I did laundry and worked on the new jigsaw puzzle in the laundry room.  When Brad got up, he and Rudy came over to join me and Brad actually worked on the puzzle as well.  The wind is blowing and the temp is dropping and they are calling for snow above 8,000

Snowy June 17 night

feet, but guess what, we are close enough that it is snowing by 7:00.  Lucky for us, I put a pork roast in the crock pot with BBQ sauce for pulled pork with mashed potatoes for dinner, not a bad choice for a cold, snowy night.

 

Today, Wednesday, Brad woke up to 34 degrees and about 1.5 inches of snow, burr.  It was beautiful, and as usual, Brad and Rudy did their 1.5 mile walk, while I slept in, yawn.  I was still up at 6:30, checking out the snow and how beautiful it is.  They get back, get inside and we all decide this is the place to stay....so we computer surf looking for a place to volunteer for next year until

Deer sighted on the
morning walk

about 8:00 when we have a quick breakfast and since we forgot to get dog food last week, we start getting ready to head into Vernal.  More computer surfing and map checking, so we ended up having lunch here at the house and didn't get out of here until a little after 12:00 and it still only 43 degrees.  We are both dressed rather warm, but lucky for us we layered our clothes, once we did the 2,500 foot decent down the mountain, the temperature hit about 65 degrees, whew a little warm, so the top layers come off.  We stopped at a new sporting goods store, the pet store, then off to the grocery store, where Brad dropped me off and headed out to wash the car.  I didn't get very far until he was back, but another $200.00 in food and I am hoping I don't have to make this trip again for another 2 weeks.  I called Mel on our way home to wish her a good trip and fun vacation,

Beautiful Early Morning
Lake View

and we finally got home about 6:00 PM.  Unloaded the car, groceries put away and a nice UPS package sitting under the Moho.  My sister does love me, 3 bags of Middleswarth BBQ chips for me, and 2 bags of pretzels for my husband.  Decision made, Italian sausages and chips for dinner....for me that was a no brain-er.  Jim stopped over while dinner was cooking, and then Fred stopped into say 'hi' while he was out walking CJ.  We chit chatted for a little while, but the cold was getting to us all, so they left, I got the table ready and dinner was server, yum.  Now dishes are done, trash out, dog walked, Brad and Rudy are in bed, so I am finishing the blog, needing to load pictures yet, but I'll be off to bed soon.  Hoping to do some site seeing and a little hiking tomorrow. 

Baby Deer spotted on
the way home from
Vernal

 

Thanks for the visit,

Diane and Brad