San Rafael Swell, Fall 2007

With all this time off work, I’m having a difficult time keeping track of which day it is. I got home from the camping trip on Monday–I cut it short because it would have been pretty boring out there (mostly) alone for another couple of days.
I left home last Thursday after work, and arrived at the campsite literally a few seconds after somebody else had pulled into the spot I wanted. He was pulling a 5th-wheel camp trailer and a flatbed trailer loaded up with ATVs. I was just thinking I had the worst luck, missing out on my intended camping spot by mere seconds, but I went and talked to the guy and he let me have the spot. He was actually a geocacher, but he wasn’t there for our event. He knew we were going to be there, but thought we’d be in the next spot down the road. We actually went for a short ATV ride to find him another spot, and he came back the next day and we had a beer and bull-shitted for a while.
The first day and night there was boring. It was just Bradley and me, and we stayed in our camp most of the time, only leaving to put up some signs so our guests could find us. Traci was the first one to arrive Friday after getting Michael out of school, and then slowly everyone else started showing up after dark. We ate dinner and sat around the campfire until after midnight, and then a few of us decided to go for a hike by the light of the full moon. We hiked more than two miles and found two geocaches, and we didn’t need our headlamps for most of that time.
We got a late start on Saturday, but we loaded up 14 people in four vehicles and drove to the Wedge Overlook and Buckhorn Wash, finding all of the caches along the way. Several more people showed up that evening for a potluck dinner, and we spent the rest of the evening around the campfire again.
We did a potluck again for breakfast on Sunday, then headed out for some more caching and hiking off the beaten path. We hit Hamburger Rocks, Ghoul Gulch, Hambrick Bottom, and the MK tunnels. After a full day of more adventures, almost everybody packed up and headed home. Only my family and my sister’s family stayed at camp for another day. We spent Monday driving along the old railroad grade (which is a fun drive), then found another new cache after a short hike. After that, we broke camp and went back home.
Halloween this year was relaxing compared to previous years. In the past, we’ve always driven our kids all over the county to see relatives and trick-or-treat at their houses, but this year we stayed home and let them trick-or-treat in our neighborhood. Traci and I carved some pumpkins, and we just enjoyed the evening while we watched TV and passed out candy.

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