News of the (whoops! past two) Week(s)

We were all set last weekend to spend a night at the sand dunes in west Juab County, but reports of freezing nights scared us off, despite John pish-poshing our pampered city-ness. So instead we met up in SLC for the afternoon before Chris' All-State Choir concert at the tabernacle. Rob, Betsy, Ethan, and Amy came with us to Temple Square and surrounds to look at the flowers and the new construction at City Creek. In the end the flowers were a bit scanty, having just been pulled up for the spring bulbs to be set (I presume), but the visit was still fun.

We spent some time in the two visitors' centers. When Betsy asked Ethan who this person was, he shouted, "JeeJee!"

John was very civilized and appropriate...

..until the urge for a nap overwhelmed him...

...below, in the most public spot in Salt Lake. "Would you lie down on the steps of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican?" I said to him. "Or on the floor of the Taj Mahal? This is just the same." He is shameless.

It was fun to spend time with the kids.

I think maybe my pretty new blue and teal scarf was not quite as cool as I thought it was. No, the scarf is OK, it was the rest of me. Sigh.

Betsy, Ethan, and Snoopy. Snoopy has his own sign. Ethan talks and talks, orally and with his hands (ASL). Maybe we'll learn sign as he does.

Ethan and Auntie Amy:

Rob at one of the new fountains next to Deseret Book at the new City Creek development. While there we saw John's new book (one of a collection of essays on Fathers).

Betsy, Amy, Rob, and Ethan skipped out on the concert, but that was OK because we got to sit by Liz and Alan
and Tana and J.Lynn. In fact we ate dinner before the concert at the nearby JBs with Tana, J.Lynn, and Shane, who was also singing.

They wouldn't let us take photos during the concert, so this one was taken beforehand, and about a third of the choir is missing. J.Lynn took pictures and video during the afternoon practice session, however. Here is a video of part of one of their songs. Pretty impressive!

J.Lynn took this photo of Chris. Liz and Alan's Frost is bottom right.

We did our writing group the next day at Charlotte England's cabin. I took my camera but forgot to take photos. We have been participating in the writing group for twenty years now.

This week was my first chance to swim since surgery (since a long while before that, actually. A side effect of endometrial cancer is that you're not so comfortable swimming). Anyway, it was great! I don't know why the pool is so underused in the evening, but there have only been four or five other people in the pool whenever we've gone. I think it has helped get me off my metabolic plateau. I've now lost 41 lbs. Even though my blood sugar is still above normal, it's much better than it was right after surgery. We'll see how it progresses. My blood pressure is usually between 110-125/70-80. I went to visit mom and dad at the farm on Friday and all we talked about was medical stuff. I am now officially Old.

Several of us, including Sergene, went to see RED on Saturday. Extremely silly. I've still got a crush on Bruce Willis though. Then John, Sergene, and I went to see The Magic Flute at BYU. Here for your listening pleasure, is the Queen of the Night.

The West Desert

John and I have been planning a three-day, two-night trip west through the desert into Nevada by pickup to do research for our respective writing projects (mine is a novel about fundamentalist Mormon werewolves with a commune in eastern Juab County, and his is a 19th Century polygamist murder mystery), but alas, we shredded a tire on the gravel road between Lookout Pass and Simpson Springs and didn't feel confident enough of our spare to continue west.

It was a beautiful night, full moon, only a little cool. We decided to go on the five miles or so to Simpson Springs to camp and then come back home the next morning.

John, competent as always, changed the tire and we went on our way. You can't tell in the pix, but the moon was like a spotlight and the desert was magical.

Here he starts supper--corn on the cob, fresh peaches and tomatoes, hot chocolate, cheesy potato soup. He cut up a can of spam into the soup, a true desert-rat touch. Yum!

We slept on our cots under the juniper tree.


John told me stories about cattle drives between Greenjacket and Riverbed from when he was a kid. They would often camp at Simpson Springs, which had a pony express station and a glass-bottomed pond for swimming (glass-bottomed with broken beer bottles, and filled in now).

Here's John and Table Mountain:

We went for a short walk back up to the foothills. Here's a higher view of Table Mountain:

Yes! I was there!

Pretty rocks for the waterfall garden:

Driving out this morning, we saw 25-30 antelope:


John at Lookout:

From Lookout you can see Mt. Nebo in the farthest distance. The three peaks are always recognizable, north, south, east, or west, even by air as you're flying home:

Near Vernon we saw a golden eagle on a power line. What a beauty.

At home again, we're bottling tomato juice and peaches, so the day is not wasted. We'll make the longer trip later.

Shakespeare in Cedar City

We took a little one-night/two-day trip to Cedar City and saw Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and Pride and Prejudice. Janet was the one who arranged it, leaving John P in Moab and driving over with her giant placid dogs, Lily and Sheba. We stayed in the usual Quality Inn. "Quality!" said Grandma Gene. "They advertised and told us it was one king and two queens!" but it was one queen and two regular sized beds. We (including Grandma Gene) went swimming twice. We saw plays in all three theaters. Our favorite was Macbeth in the Adams Theater, very spooky, bloody, and dramatic. And short. And what woman couldn't appreciate Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters as expressions of her own darker side. And the perils of counting on prophecies to plan one's life. I had forgotten (or I was struck again anyway) by the prophecies borrowed by Tolkien for LOTR--the moving trees and "shall not be harmed by man of woman born."

It was great to see Janet. We promised to come visit them in Vermont in October.
We're planning to make our short trip to Costa Rica next week. I haven't had time to think about it, but John and Nicolle are going to talk about and work on the possibility of another wilderness writing Study Abroad program there. That would be fun!

Winter in Zion Canyon

On the way back from Las Vegas we stopped overnight at Springdale, and visited Zion National Park. Weeping Rock (above) looks very different in the winter. The deer seemed not to worry about us tourists.
Chris, Niels, and John at the bottom of the Narrows.
The vertical hikes were inches deep in packed ice, and we weren't dressed for winter walking. We drove through the tunnels on the way out. I remember parking at the big bay windows and looking out on the canyon from the side of the cliff when I was a little girl.

John Teaches Wilderness Writing

We went to a very nice meeting of the Central Utah Writers Project at Daniel's Summit southeast of Heber City. John taught a mini-version of his wilderness writing schtick, including the coyote trap (above). It was fun to see him in professional action.

Here is Strawberry Reservoir, in the distance:

Cool Price Museum

I think Chris and John were trying to reenact the epic battle of the dinos (above). Not sure. Chris' tag (on facebook) for the photo below is "Pch. Those things were extinct like a hundred years ago, quit pulling my leg. Hold on..."
Dire wolf. The ultimate transformation ambition of werewolves everywhere.
John, mammoth, and tipi:
Utah's newest dinosaurs:
We feel a special affection for the Utahraptor:
Utahraptor, artist rendition. Possibly toy-maker's rendition.

Nine Mile Canyon

So we went with the High Priests Group to Nine Mile Canyon to look at the petroglyphs or pictographs or whatever they are. Chris went along because he needs the hours to get his license (40 hours in all). The rock art was way cool.





So here is Chris driving. We were thinking four, maybe five hours on the road. Our destination was out near Price, we would have lunch at a picnic spot and come straight home.
But John thought we should take a short cut via Argyle Road back to Soldiers Summit. Only ten miles. So we drove ten miles on a graded but unpaved road that wasn't too bad. But then we started to go uphill. But then it clouded over. But then it started to rain. But then we drove ten more miles through slippery clay mud--uphill, in the rain, with lightning and thunder, with a ravine on one side and a ditch on the other, and water of indeterminate depth in the bottom of every little dip--that is, Chris drove ten more miles, very competently, under those conditions. But then it went even more uphill, and it started to sleet. We didn't dare stop because we couldn't have gotten going again. So we came out on top of the mountain onto some paved road between Price and Duchesne (the road was littered with rocks fallen from the roadside cliffs during the storm). We made it home about 6pm.

John said, after coming home and checking with Teh Google, that there are two roads between Nine Mile Canyon and whatever mountain road to Duchesne we eventually came out on, and the little map he was using showed the wrong one. Or something.

Chris is an excellent driver.