It's been kind of a blah weekend, but that's ok because I was hoping for some laid-back times. I spent all day yesterday geocaching in Sanpete County and found 42 caches. In order to not get frustrated like I did the last time I spent the day in that area, I decided not to spend more than five minutes looking for any particular cache, and to avoid those placed by people who tend to have poor hiding techniques. I'm approaching 1,000 geocache finds, and I'm trying to get very close to that number by the time we go down to Sigurd to hang out in a couple of weeks. I'll need to find quite a few more around here in order to reach that goal.

Anyhow, today was a very lazy day. I woke up late and didn't eat breakfast until nearly lunch time. My mom and Samantha & Mark came over to wish me a happy birthday, and we spent quite a bit of time visiting. In the late afternoon my family and I found a couple of geocaches close to town, then returned home to have a late dinner of fried eggs, bacon, and french fries (since I wasn't feeling up to fixing a big breakfast this morning). Afterward we watched one of my favorite movies, Grosse Pointe Blank, which Traci had gotten me for my birthday. Now that the weekend is over, I'm ready to get started on all the work I've got to do in order to get ready for some more campin'.

This year's geocaching get-together at Potter's Ponds was pretty typical, meaning that it was a total blast. I pulled the camp trailer up there on Thursday afternoon and set up camp, then spent the evening just hanging out and enjoying being in the mountains. I tried some fishing using lures but didn't have any luck. I didn't know that the guy in the campsite across the road from me was another geocacher or else I'd have invited him over to share my campfire. One other cacher showed up briefly to drop off his trailer and UTV, but then had to go right back home for some stuff that he forgot to bring.

The next morning, I ate breakfast and enjoyed my morning coffee outside in the cool air, then rode my ATV over to one of the ponds and did some fishing. This time I used PowerBait and caught a nice 13" rainbow trout after a short time, but couldn't get any bites after that. After lunch I rode my ATV up to Skyline Drive, found a geocache there and made a phone call (since that was the closest place I could get cell service), then went back to camp for a short nap. I did some more unsuccessful fishing, but when more people started trickling in to camp, I went back and stayed there for most of the evening. A group of us did try more fishing, but I spent most of my time there helping Traci fish and chasing my kids around. That evening around the campfire was pretty crazy, with the obligatory trip (or three) to the nearby night cache. I'm surprised we've never been kicked out of the campground with as much noise as we always make. :)

On Saturday morning everybody got a slow start, but around 11:00 or so a group of us finally rolled out of camp on ATVs and headed up to Skyline Drive. We found a few caches along the way, then, after having to stop and ask directions, found our way down the Reeder Canyon trail. The trail was dusty as hell and pretty slow-going, and not one of us escaped being totally coated in a thick layer of dust. Once we finally got to Joe's Valley, we were able to haul ass up Miller Flat Road. Back at camp, we shared a potluck dinner and enjoyed a much quieter night around the campfire, though we still stayed up until nearly 2:00AM much like the previous night.

We had a potluck breakfast the next morning, after which everybody began packing up in preparation for heading home. After I changed a tire on the trailer which had gone flat while it was parked, I went for a short ATV ride. I'm glad I got at least some riding in, because shortly after I got back the rain started coming down. Traci and I were the last ones at camp, and while I was loading the ATVs into the trailer it really started pouring, so a fair amount of rain came into the trailer and I tracked some mud in with the ATVs. As soon as I got them loaded and tied down, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The drive toward home along Miller Flat Road got the trailer all muddy, but the the rest of the drive on the highway through more rain cleaned it all up.

I had such a good time that I forgot to take many photos (just like last year), but here are a few that I took over the past few days.

Despite the weekend getting off to a bad start, I finished it up with a really good day on Sunday. The kids and I headed up to Potter's Ponds in the morning where we were planning on meeting the Hunt family. We got there pretty early and did some fishing, though I spent more time helping them cast into the water and keeping their lines away from logs, rocks, and weeds. I probably only threw my line out into the water about ten times, and though I could see a few albino trout hanging around the deeper water, they didn't want what I was trying to feed them. After getting bored of fishing, we ate lunch at a picnic table near the ponds, then the boys just played around for a while we waited for the Hunts. They showed up shortly after we finished lunch, then we drove around while they checked out the campsites. They're planning on coming up for the big shindig in a couple of weeks and wanted to scope the area out. After deciding that the spot I'd already reserved would work for both families with plenty of room to spare, we headed north along Miller Flat Road and found a lot of geocaches. Once we hit UT-31 we turned west and kept caching along the highway, and I found my 900th geocache along the way. It was getting late when we reached the Eccles Canyon/Skyline Drive turnoff, so we parted ways and went down our respective sides of the mountain toward our homes. As I drove past Cleveland Reservoir I figured that I had a little more daylight left for fishing, so I flipped a u-turn and took a steep dirt road down to the water's edge. This time I let the kids play along the shore while I fished, but I still didn't have any luck. Although I didn't catch anything, it was a peaceful end to a good day.

I had a good start to my weekend. Yesterday after work, I took off to find a couple of geocaches close to home. I found the first one atop a cliff overlooking the golf course, and on my way to the second one in south Price, I cut a sidewall on one of the truck tires. I was on a dirt road within 0.16 miles of the cache and was turning the truck around in order to park it off the road, and I ran over a metal fence post that was broken off about six inches from the ground. There was a huge *whoosh* and a big cloud of dust when the air rushed out, and it left a two-inch tear in the sidewall. I changed the tire, then parked off the road and walked to the cache. When I got back to the truck I noticed that the spare tire wasn't holding much air, but I drove on it anyway to the nearest gas station and aired it up. This morning I went to Grako's to get a replacement tire, and it ended up costing about $225. I only paid $175 apiece for those tires originally, but this time I didn't have the time to order a new one online and wait for it to arrive while I drove around on my crappy spare tire.

My plans for a hike in Tie Fork Canyon this morning were scrapped so I could get a new tire, but I may be able to do the hike tomorrow instead. The Hunts are going to be in the Potter's Ponds area scoping out a campsite for the geocaching event that's coming up in a couple of weeks, and I'm planning on meeting them and doing some caching and possibly some fishing. If I have time, and if the kids are up for it, I'll stop on my way home and do the hike in Tie Fork.

I had an awesome weekend, and I'm just now beginning to wind down from it. I only worked about half a day on Friday, and as soon as I got off we jumped in the truck and hauled the trailer down to the Hunts' place in Sigurd. I was very nervous about pulling the trailer over Salina Canyon, and although it wasn't as bad as I expected, there were times when I was only doing 35 MPH up one side, and I got a bit of sway going down the other side that really freaked me out. The truck burned nearly a full tank of diesel by the time we got to Salina, so I stopped there to fill up. I figured my fuel mileage and I only got about 8 MPG.

We got to Sigurd and hung out at the Hunts' while they finished getting ready to go, then we convoyed south on Highway 24 toward where we were going to camp on Monroe Mountain. It wasn't a terribly long (distance-wise) drive on the dirt road east from Greenwich, but it was pretty steep and winding. We found a very nice spot to camp between the lower and upper Box Creek reservoirs. After setting up camp, we tooled around on the ATVs, sat around the campfire, and just enjoyed the evening.

On Saturday, all nine of us (plus four dogs) piled into the Hunts' Dodge truck and took a tour of the mountain while finding several geocaches. We saw a ton of wildlife, including several deer and a few bull elk. That afternoon we went for a 25-mile ATV ride, then went fishing in the evening (without catching anything). Chris showed up while we were fishing, and we went back to camp where Cort cooked us up a nice dutch oven dinner. We spent some more time around the campfire, and as per usual Chris and I were the last ones to turn in well after midnight.

Sunday was much the same as Saturday, with another 25 miles on the ATVs and some geocaching, then some fishing. It was later than I'd planned by the time we started loading up to go home, but I was having too much fun to care. It was after 7:00PM when we left camp, then we followed the Hunts back to their house where we spent quite a bit of time talking and saying our goodbyes. I fueled up in Salina again and this time averaged 8.9 MPG in the truck. We didn't get back on the highway until after 10:00PM, and finally pulled into the driveway at midnight.

I still haven't taken the trailer to the RV dump, and we just barely got the fridge emptied out today. I'll probably unload the ATVs tomorrow then back the trailer into the driveway so that I can actually drive the truck again. It won't be long before we're loading everything back up and heading to Potter's Ponds for the annual geocaching bash there, and I'm really looking forward to it this year. It also looks like we'll be going to Richfield for another geocaching event in September, and I'm sure we'll go camping at least a couple other times after then, so it's going to be a busy fall.