I did yard work today for the first time this year, and I'm already way behind. The grass in my back yard was over a foot tall in some places, but it looks much better now that I've mowed it.

I still haven't done anything with my front yard since we had the sewer line replaced--this is what it looked like right after that, though it's a little better now. I plan on repairing the sprinkler system on the two sections of grass closest to the house (should only cost about $30 for new pipe and fittings), then I'll place sod on those two parts. For the parking strip, I'm going fill most of it in with large red sandstone rocks, then I'll plant some really low ground cover to fill in the rest. I'm also going to put some small boulders bordering my yard and my neighbor's driveway so those douchebags won't be able to drive into my yard anymore.

My main priority now is getting the garden ready in the back yard. It's amazing how well some of our plants are already growing. Traci had to move the corn from the small starter pots to some much bigger ones--the roots grew longer than six inches within the first two weeks. I've still got to figure out how far apart everything will need to be planted before I can lay out the garden plot and till the ground. The weeds are already two or three feet tall back there, and cutting them down will be my first order of business this weekend (when I'm not out playing).

We decided that, despite the increasing chance of rain tomorrow, we're still going to Buckhorn Wash for part of the day. I don't really care if I get wet or muddy, and I'm sure the kids will enjoy that. I don't think getting stuck will be an issue because the road is very well maintained and gravelled. My sister and her family still want to go as well, so at least we won't be alone just in case something does happen.

I upgraded my site to Movable Type 3.16, and new comment email notifications work again. I kept thinking it was the new server that Solo moved to, but after the move I installed MT 3.15, which apparently broke email notifications on some servers. Comments should now be approved much more quickly, and I no longer have to manually check for them every so often.

I found out a few weeks ago that the BLM and the Forest Service have places throughout the state where the public can excavate their own landscaping rock. The places near Price have a going rate of $5.57/ton, which sounds pretty cheap to me. If I ever get around to landscaping my yard, I'll try to hit one of the places down in the San Rafael Swell.

Speaking of the Swell, I've got plans to take the family down to Buckhorn Wash for the day Saturday, hopefully with my sister's family too. I'd like to have a picnic here, and see the dinosaur footprint and pictographs in the area. There's also a rock formation I'd like to place a geocache on, but I don't even know if it's accessible without climbing equipment. Either way, I'd like to do some climbing--the cliffs and ledges down there are very inviting.

I had a great weekend. I was among the first to arrive at the event Friday at the base of the San Rafael Reef, but I sat my chair down around the fire ring and felt right at home talking to Dewayne and Vickie. Many more people started showing up after that and slowly the circle grew larger and larger until there were about 35 people there. It was strange meeting all these people who I felt like I already knew but had never met before in person. I especially enjoyed meeting the DeViDes, Chris of Dorkteam6, the Bassets, the Cach-U-Nuts, BunkerDave, UtahJean, and of course it was good to see Scout Master again (and I'm probably forgetting somebody else).

Most people went to bed a bit early, but I stayed around the campfire talking with BunkerDave and Chris for quite some time before finally retiring sometime after midnight. I slept in the back of the Mazda, which wasn't very comfortable, plus it was pretty cold. I got my best sleep after the sun rose and it started warming up. I finally got up just after 9:00, ate breakfast, then headed out on a hike. I'd planned on finding all seven caches that were set up for the event, but I only got three of them before I just couldn't go any more. I'm not sure why, but my body just couldn't take the heat, even though I've been hiking in the same area in hotter weather and didn't have a problem. I found one more easy cache on my way back to camp, then I crashed in the back of the Mazda for a little rest. Slowly, over the next couple of hours, the slight headache I had turned into The Worst Headache Ever®, and I was starting to feel like I was going to vomit. I didn't want to leave, but I didn't want to sit around being sick either, so I threw all my gear into the Mazda and said my goodbyes.

I slept for 10 solid hours last night, and I woke up feeling fine this morning. I have yet to unload all my gear from the car, and I probably won't as long as it's wet outside. It might be just as well that I left yesterday, because I'll bet they didn't escape this rain either.

I finally got sick of my sore throat and went to the doctor. The strep test came out negative, so she said it's probably an allergy problem (but I've never heard of allergies causing a sore throat). So I've got some drugs to help me get over it, and it seems to be getting better.

I'm leaving for the San Rafael Swell as soon as I get off work tomorrow. I might even start work early just to get down there earlier. I built a stake bed from 1x4 pine on my utility trailer, and I'm using it to haul all my camping gear and a bunch of firewood. I'll be sleeping in the back of the Mazda, which probably won't be too comfortable, but I'm not really going down there to get much rest. :) There are several caches I haven't found in that area, and I don't think I can get them all in one weekend, but I'm going to find as many as possible.

After an exhausting three days of watching both of the boys while Traci was up in Sandy doing her thing, I spent today relaxing on a 3.2 mile, 3 hour and 20 minute hike. :) I started in Spring Canyon at the old townsite of Peerless and hiked up to the Peerless mine. They've done some reclamation work in the canyon, but there are still railroad ties, rails, rusted cables, and various other pieces of junk scattered everywhere. There were even a few structures intact below the mine, this one being the most interesting--it's hard to get a sense of scale from the picture, but the door is only about three feet high. Because of the way it's built back into the surrounding bedrock, I think it was a dynamite shack.

The mine itself and what appeared to be a few other exploratory shafts were all filled in, but just above the mine and to the east was a tunnel dug back into the hillside that was covered with boards. It can't be seen from near the mine--you actually have to hike up the hillside southeast of the mine to see it from a distance. Considering that the boards haven't been disturbed, I'd guess that the reclamation workers missed it, and apparently so has everybody else that's been up there (hunters, drunken locals, etc). I didn't see it until I was on my way back down from finding a geocache that was another half mile further up the mountain. If I hadn't been too tired, I would have climbed up the hill to check it out. But then again, places like that spook me out, so maybe being tired was just an excuse.

Getting FTF on the cache was nice--it's been sitting there unfound since December--but it was in such a random place. The guy who placed the cache didn't even hike in from Peerless--I saw his footprints in the snow leading away to the east, so I think he came all the way in from Castle Gate, which is a much longer hike than I did. Most of my hike was up the south slope of the mountain, but once I reached the top and started heading down the tenth of a mile to the cache, there was knee-deep snow to contend with. After finding the cache, I skirted around the top and avoided the snow.

There's one other cache in the area that nobody has found yet, and I'm hoping to find it someday this week after work. I've already tried once, but it was too cold and windy, and I think my approach was the wrong one. This time, I'll bite the bullet and take the long way which should be about 2.5 miles round trip.

Traci and I planted our garden a few days ago. We've got 50 plants starting in a planter box in the dining room, and they should be plenty mature when the time comes to move them to the back yard. I'm going to try to get the soil ready soon, then I can work on keeping weeds out of there between now and transplant time. We tried planting seeds directly in the yard two years ago, but that was a joke. We learned a little last year with our nine tomato plants. This year, we're going to grow tomatoes, corn, jalapeños, bell peppers, onions, squash, watermelon, and a few other vegetables.

My neck has slowly been getting better this week, but I've gotten a really bad sore throat to make up for it. I have, as usual, been putting off going to the doctor for my sore throat, but the last time I did that I ended up having strep and getting an ear infection to go with it. Oh well, some people never learn.

I placed a new geocache in Price more than two days ago, and I'm surprised nobody has tried finding it yet. I put a lot of time, effort, and money into making the cache container, but after all that I was hesitant to place the thing just anywhere. I needed to find the perfect spot, somewhere were it wasn't likely to be stolen, but somewhere where it could blend in and not be too obvious.

This cache is something more like you'd see in Salt Lake City rather than a rural area like Price. It's also the county's first "micro" cache. Nearly all the caches in Carbon County are hidden outside of any towns, and they're usually under junipers or rocks. Mine is between an oil change place and a tire store, sitting in plain sight on a strip of land that I believe is owned and maintained by Price City. It's also right near an exit on US-6, and I'm sure it'll get more visits from travelers than from people who live around here.

I normally get first-to-find on any new caches in this area--I suppose nobody else is as rabid as I am when it comes to geocaching. But since this cache is one of my own, it could potentially sit for a relatively long time before somebody gets FTF.

I drove to Provo yesterday with my mom to see Sahara, and I was surprised at how good it was. I've read most of Clive Cussler's books at least twice, but I wasn't sure how well they could pull off a movie based on any of them. I went into the theater with very low expectations (just so I wasn't let down), but I left thinking it was better than I'd hoped. There were a lot of things done differently in the movie than in the book, but I think most of the changes were necessary to keep the movie flowing and keep people interested--you just can't fit that much detail into two hours. Matthew McConaughey wasn't even a bad Dirk Pitt.

One interesting thing is that IMDb lists Dayna Cussler as playing Kitty Mannock, but that part must have been completely cut out of the movie. Kitty's part in the book was not very big at all, but the land yacht part was pretty big and memorable, and they devoted only about a minute or two of the movie to that entire part. It was pretty disappointing, actually--I liked that portion of the book, it was very much akin to Flight of the Phoenix.

Another thing I didn't like was that they way overplayed Dirk's hunt for the Civil War ironclad ship. They made it seem as though it had been his lifelong crusade to find something that nobody else believed could exist, especially in Africa. In the book, the possibiliy of the ship existing there was something he happened to stumble upon by chance near the beginning of the adventure, not something he'd devoted half of his life trying to find.

Oh, and I really wish they'd have shown Dirk Pitt's aircraft hangar/apartment!

Anyhow, after seeing the movie we did a little shopping, and while walking into a store, I suddenly felt a slight twinge in my neck. It quickly changed from a twinge to all-out pain and stiffness, to the point where I could barely move my head without shooting pain all throughout my neck and shoulder. The pain has stayed pretty bad ever since--it's been almost 12 hours since it happened, but I have no idea why it happened. It feels like the same problem I've had with my back in the past, where some muscles go into spasm for no apparent reason. I took a Zanaflex and a Percocet before going to bed, and I woke up about a half hour ago (2:30 am) and was wide awake. The pain is still there, but I think the Percocet just makes it so I don't care about it as much. :) I hope it goes away soon, 'cause it really interferes with everything I do.

Ryon sent me this link last week: Hack your OnStar box and gain access to its GPS data (not that I would ever own a Chevy). You can hook up your laptop and track your position using whatever software you want.

These are the first comprehensive pictures I've seen of the Wilcox Ranch on Range Creek (here's the MSNBC article if you've never heard of the place). They say that someday the area will be open to the public (probably several years from now, if not decades), but I hope to someday visit.

While I was researching my route to Moonshine Wash last week, I came across these circles in the TerraServer aerial photos of the area. I wanted to see what in the hell they were, so I marked waypoints for all of them (six that I could find) so I could locate them while I was out there. Each of the circles is about 375 feet in diameter. Because of a screw up with my GPS (ExpertGPS will allow multiple waypoints with the same name, while my Garmin eTrex Legend will not), I only ended up with just one of the waypoints stored in my GPS, and it was just too far away from the road to hike to. I did, however, manage to see the semi-circle inset in the upper-right corner of the image. Here is the picture I took of that area. The rock looked completely natural (well, not influenced by man, anyway)--it was uplifted toward the outside of the circle, and the ring is the same thickness and diameter as the other whole circles. It appeared to be half-buried by a sand dune, whereas the others were on completely flat ground. I can't explain the straight lines running through the other whole circles, but the partial circle I saw in person sure looked like it could have been a meteor impact crater.

I did a lot of searching online and couldn't find any mention of impact craters in that area, so I'm not entirely certain that's what they are. I'm hoping to go back there for some hiking in Horseshoe Canyon in another month or so, and I'll definitely visit the other circles to try and explain them.

I just uploaded 38 new pictures, most of them taken in the San Rafael, and all of them while geocaching. They were all taken within the past month, which makes me realize that I've traveled to a lot of places in a very short period, and there's no end of that in sight, at least not for the next few weeks. Next weekend I'll be in Provo/Orem, the weekend after that I'll be stuck at home with the kids while Traci goes to the scrapbook expo, and the following weekend I'll be camping out in the Swell with a big group of geocachers. After that, I don't have any solid plans, but I've got many ideas.

Mike's and my hike to Moonshine Wash yesterday was pretty cool, but not nearly as awesome as I expected. We made it to the cache without much difficulty--there were two drop-offs where we had to stop and determine if we could climb back up if we continued down. After finding the cache, we tried hiking further down into Moonshine Wash, but we were stopped short by a narrow slot and some deep water. I would have really enjoyed hiking in the areas pictured on the cache page, but neither of us were really prepared for that kind of adventure.

Today, I half-jokingly suggested that we should drive to Green River and check out Crystal Geyser. I'd been there a few weeks earlier and stayed for a long time but didn't get to see it erupt, and everyone else still seemed up for it, so we went. Traci even managed to borrow her mom's Expedition, so we packed my family and Mike's family into one vehicle and headed south. We got there and hiked around a bit, then watched the geyser sputter a bit just like I'd seen the last time, but it stopped without ever really doing anything. After being there for 45 minutes without any eruption, we decided to leave. However, we'd brought stuff to make sandwiches, and I needed to eat before driving home, so we stayed long enough to make a few sandwiches. During that time, the geyser started sputtering again, but this time it all-out erupted. I'm glad I finally got to see it go off, and it made the trip completely worth it.

The weather has cooperated all week, and it looks like my trip to Moonshine Wash is a go. Mike is coming down tonight, and we'll probably leave early in the morning (if we don't stay up too late). I want to visit Moonshine Wash first, then do some more exploring in the area during whatever time we have left during the day. It's supposed to get up to 70° in Green River, and we'll be about 20 miles south of there, so it should be perfect. I only hope there's not much standing water in the bottom of the canyon.

We'll drive about 75 miles just on dirt roads tomorrow, so I'm bringing two spare tires. When I got that flat tire near Buckhorn Wash a few weeks ago, I had about 30 miles of dirt road between me and Castle Dale (the nearest paved road), and I didn't feel good about driving it without a spare. I hope I won't need either of them tomorrow.