Even though we only spent the weekend in Sigurd, it felt like a vacation, and it was nice! I had Thursday and Friday off work and spent that time getting ready for the trip. At around 11:00 a.m. on Friday I hitched the trailer on to the truck while Traci was just getting ready to get the kids out of school early, but when I lowered the tongue of the trailer down onto the hitch, one of the rear tires on the truck suddenly looked a little flat. While inspecting the tire I saw a screw sticking out of the tread very close to the sidewall, and I knew I had to get it fixed before we pulled the trailer for two hours along the highway. The repair set us back about an hour, but at least the guy at the tire shop was nice and didn’t charge me for it (even though I’d bought that tire elsewhere). That makes three flat tires in about a month–hopefully that’s enough to last me for a few years!
We left town at around 12:30 p.m., got stopped in construction twice, and made it to Sigurd by 2:45. After setting up our camp trailer in the Hunts’ driveway, a few of us guys took off on ATVs to do some geocaching. Friday marked my sixth year of geocaching and I wanted to hit 1,000 cache finds, but since not everybody was in town yet, we found enough to get me up to 999. Once a few more people arrived in town later that evening, we all went out for find #1,000, then started the party. Cortney had made a firepit in his back yard, and everyone spent the evening and well into the night moving between the house and the yard.
We got a late start the next morning, but eventually everyone ended up at the Utah Association of Geocachers event a few miles away in Richfield. The event was uneventful, though it was nice getting a chance to talk to some folks who I rarely see. Once the event was over and we went back to Sigurd, Cortney and Chris and I set out on ATVs and covered about 40 miles while finding three geocaches. The first one was on Carter Peak, and the road going to the top was incredibly steep with a lot of switchbacks. The view from up top was awesome though, and from there we could see Squaw Ledge a couple of miles away and decided to go for the cache up there too. We didn’t realize there would be a hike involved, but we hit a dead-end on the ATV trail about 0.6 miles short of the cache, so we huffed it the rest of the way and were rewarded with an awesome view as the sun was beginning to set. We found one more easy geocache on the way back to Cortney’s house, but the sun had gone down by then and the ladies back home were getting worried about us. We cruised back and got there just in time for a delicious dutch oven dinner made by Shawn. After dinner we spent more time around the campfire, and then had a glowstick fight (ugh).
The next morning we were once again very late in getting up and starting breakfast, but while breakfast was being made, Bradley managed to get himself into trouble. He was playing on Cortney’s boat and he slammed his fingers in a hatch under the bow, which tore two of his fingernails off. His fingers were bleeding badly and one of the fingernails was still partially attached near the top, so Cort drove us to the hospital in Gunnison to have it looked at. I regretted going almost as soon as we showed up, ’cause all they did was put some antibiotic cream and a bandage on his fingers, without even cleaning the wounds! He’s healing up well so far, and hopefully in a few months he’ll have some new fingernails.
We got back to Sigurd and ate a late breakfast, then a few of us went out and found several geocaches while some stormy weather rolled in. After getting done with that, Traci and I spent the afternoon getting the trailer loaded and then headed home. The roads were wet for the drive home, but it didn’t rain and traffic was light. We got home just in time to get the kids cleaned up and put to bed, then Traci and I turned in early ourselves–the late nights had taken their toll on us. It was a really fun time though, and I just wish we lived a bit closer to our friends. About halfway through the weekend I did remember to take some photos (I usually forget when I’m having so much fun), and I’ve put a few of them here.