Oh, this weekend went by too quickly. Traci and I spent all day yesterday working on the kids’ playset, and got it 90% complete. The kids actually played on it until it was too dark, then we finally headed into the house and ate a very late dinner.
I spent all of today driving around and hiking. I moved my geocache up in Kenilworth to a different location, still pretty close to where it was. That took quite a long time, because I wanted to find the perfect location, but I had to settle on something not quite as good as I was hoping for. I damned-near hiked up the old railroad grade to the mine, but it probably would have killed me, not to mention anyone who went after the cache.
After that, I headed home and traded my truck for the Taurus, then drove up to the end of Consumers Road. While I was scouting a location for a new cache, a nasty thunderstorm rolled in quickly, so I decided to book it the hell out of there. I drove from there straight to East Carbon, then up Whitmore Canyon. I wanted to go to Grassy Trail Reservoir (which I’d seen on a map), but the road is blocked by a gate and I couldn’t get past. Instead, I turned up Water Canyon and found a very interesting aerial tramway that is still in good shape (after nearly 80 years). All the wooden towers are still standing, and the tram cables are still suspended and there are still a lot of tram cars hanging from them (I’d sure like to have one or two of those–maybe a midnight run up the canyon in my truck is in order).
While I was up on the hillside placing the cache near one of the tram supports, some guy drove up the canyon (dirt road in the middle of nowhere, mind you) in a Grand Cherokee (older body style). I was about 600 feet away from the road, and more than 100 feet above it, so I had a good vantage point. My Taurus was parked well off to the side of the road, but he drove really close to it and slowed way down as he passed. I kept a sharp eye on him for a few seconds, but he picked his speed back up and continued on up the road. Then, after about 10 or 15 minutes, I heard him coming back down the canyon. This time, he actually stopped right next to my car, and even backed just a bit. I just kept thinking, Oh great, I’m gonna have to fire a warning shot at this guy to keep him from breaking into my car. Elk season (rifle) started this weekend, so there was a fair amount of traffic on this road (which leads to Bruin Point), so I just couldn’t understand why he was showin so much interest in my car. Luckily (for him, and probably me as well), he only looked for a few more seconds before pushing on.