I’ve gotten behind on keeping my blog up to date. Between working a lot, and getting ready for this camping trip, I haven’t spent much time on the computer.
Last Saturday, I went for a pretty sweet ATV ride. I’d spent all Friday evening and even part of Saturday morning trying to decide what I was going to do, and finally I made up my mind to ride around the Woodside Anticline. I have never been too far off the main road through that area, and just recently it became safe to leave vehicles unattended there, so what better time to explore it? I couldn’t talk Traci into coming and I ended up riding solo. I spent seven hours there and rode a total of 55 miles. I did something that I haven’t done since I got a GPS–I went down there without having planned out my route beforehand. Normally I spend some time using my mapping software or Google Earth to decide where to go, but this time I just parked the truck, unloaded the ATV, and started exploring. I went down a couple of trails that dwindled down to singletrack trails and I had to backtrack, but eventually I found my way to Summerville Wash. There, I found an old stone cabin–one of two that I now know of in the area.
After crossing the entire anticline from east to west, I was on another main road that would eventually take me back to the truck, but I still had plenty of riding time left. I rode south past El Rancho Not So Grande and followed the old abandoned railroad grade to Cottonwood Wash. There was a geocache there that was placed months ago, but nobody had yet found it. I had no idea that Cottonwood Wash was so awesome. It’s a canyon that cuts through what is technically a part of the San Rafael Reef, though the uplift in that area isn’t nearly as spectacular as it is farther south. The formations in the Navajo Sandstone are awesome, though, and I’m sure I’ll go back to play around some more. I found the geocache there easily, but I wasn’t able to find the petroglyphs that are nearby. I ended up hiking about a mile up the canyon before turning around and heading back to the ATV, then I sped back to the truck. Here are a few photos from the trip, and here is a Google Earth .KML file that includes my GPS tracklog and a few waypoints.
I spent Sunday getting a few things ready for the camping trip, including an hour and a half of splitting firewood (my back and shoulders are still sore). On Monday I went on a hike with some other geocachers to the geocache that I placed last year on the mountain above Kenilworth. Tuesday (yesterday) evening I worked for several hours loading all of our camping gear into the truck and trailer, and I did a lot more of that today. We left town at around 4:00 pm and got to our campsite a little before 6:00 this evening.
We were, as usual, the first ones here. I’m in the Swell now, sitting in the camp trailer as I type this, after having had a bit of excitement after dinner. I had grabbed the boys’ helmets out of the truck so we could go on a short ATV ride, and when I got back from the ride Traci asked my for my keys to the truck. I told her that they were in the ignition and she could have gotten them at any time, to which she replied that the truck was locked. Shit. I guess out of habit I’d locked the doors, but my key was in the ignition and Traci’s keys were in the truck too. My cell phone was in the truck, Traci’s phone battery was dead, and her laptop (with wireless card) was also in the truck. We don’t even have a spare key at home, so being able to use the phone or internet wouldn’t have been of much use. After considering all of our options, we tried breaking into the truck. I wanted to avoid breaking a window, but using a screwdriver to pry at the rear sliding window and attempting to break the interior latch made it feel like the glass was going to break. I tried to gently force one of the lock cylinders to turn with a screwdriver, but that didn’t work. My next idea was to force a piece of wire through the weather stripping on the wing window to try and hit the power unlock button. I couldn’t get enough downward force on the wire to push the button, so I used pliers to form a small hook on the end of the wire and tried pulling up on the “Lock” side of the rocker switch. The wire was too thick to fit between the gap around the switch, and Traci suggested that I try hammering the wire to thin it out. After setting the end of the wire on a rock and giving it a few blows with a hammer, the hook on the end was much thinner. I managed to slide it in between the gap around the switch, then I pulled on the wire and the doors unlocked! It’s a good thing I had all of my tools with me on this trip.
So, the plan for the rest of the weekend is to just chill. I’ve been working a lot of overtime at work, and I really need a vacation. More people will be showing up here tomorrow, and I’m sure we’ll get out for a lot of ATV riding and hiking and, of course (my favorite) sitting around the campfire and bull-shitting.