Category: Uncategorized (Page 11 of 207)

I’ve taken up a new hobby. Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

Ben and I were watching an anime and eating Cupbop, a Friday night tradition we started during the pandemic. This night it was 5 Centimeters per Second. Though the movie wasn’t great (it was an early film by one of our favorite writer/directors, Makoto Shinkai), I was struck by inspiration. The protagonist practiced archery and I remembered again how cool it looks and that I would love to add it to my arsenal of skills. Plus it would be great to have an outdoor sport to enjoy with Ben.

Ben has dabbled in archery for several years. He even has a membership to the Golden High Country Archers range. So that weekend he took me to his range and let me try out his bow. Yup. Very fun. I wanted in.

We had to wait an interminable three days for the local archery store to open after the holiday weekend. 😉 The salesman was very helpful and even gave me an impromptu lesson. I got a Samick recurve bow with a 20 lb. draw weight, a half dozen arrows, and an armguard (I had quickly whipped up a mighty bruise on my forearm with Ben’s bow).

I’m a total beginner. Tonight I got all 6 arrows on the target board, huzzah! Usually 2-3 go over/under. It’s great fun and I hope to make it a regular weekly activity for us. Ben also seems to be renewing his fondness for the sport. We might take the kids with us tomorrow. Sam has been using the child bow at home, and Jack can share my lightweight bow.

Here’s our first trip:

And here’s today with my full kit (quiver and glove came midweek via Amazon). This is my 4th time shooting.

We celebrated a chill holiday. Not a lot of patriotic joy, but we enjoyed the nice weather and traditional cultural activities.

We picked up sandwiches and took some boardgames to the park.

They boys have both taken up whittling. Jack is working on a Wizarding World wand. Sam is learning on soap bars, which he shapes into “bones.”

We had dinner of hot dogs, corn, watermelon, and potato salad. We make s’mores in the backyard. I took some gooey pics to share with my penpal overseas.

Later we walked down to the elementary school field to watch the local fireworks display. There were many bats swooping overhead that were fun to watch too. It felt like a bigger crowd than the past several years. I wonder if the neighborhood is de-aging. Many seniors have sold their houses to younger families during this real estate spike. Or maybe more people are ditching the official, more crowded, field for our unofficial viewing spot. It was certainly a festive atmosphere. The boys were aghast and impressed by all the illegal aerial fireworks that folks were setting off around us in the park. At least we’ve had enough rain that we aren’t on high wildfire risk status.

I dyed my hair for fun. I was aiming for an indigo-black. Sometime more subtle than the candy-colors everyone is wearing. I think it worked? The blue changes a lot depending on the lighting. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I don’t like it.

I think the blue is already fading after just a couple washes. I’ll have to add some color back in. It’s been years since I had bright hair. For fun I went digging through my blog.

We got going a bit earlier than expected and went to check out of the hotel.  We were surprised by some simple breakfast items in the hotel office so I brought them back to the kids who happily munched on them in the car.  There was a place called “Moqui Cave” that I wanted to check out, but it was not up until 9, and we were there at 7:45, so we kept going a bit further down the road to the “Dragon’s Belly” tunnel.

The Dragon’s Belly was really cool, even though it shouldn’t have been!  Basically, it seems that it was a culvert blasted from the sandstone under the highway.  But even though it was such a simple functional thing, it was kind of magic and we all really liked it.

We continued north, headed for a town called Panguitch.  I had told the boys that I wanted to see the quilt statute there and that it had saved the town or something.  They thought I was goofing, and so I’m not sure what they expected to see there.  It turns out, I wasn’t goofing and there was a little park dedicated to a statue of a guy with a quilt.  The story is that there were some pioneers stuck in the snow.  They prayed to figure out how to survive and the answer was to walk on the quilts.  It’s a serious story and it obviously means a lot to Panguitch, but it also made us laugh at the pure silliness of the idea.  

In Panguitch, I also took the boys to their closest equivalent to a toy store so they could get something to fiddle with in the car since this day was going to be a little more boring than the others.  They found a cube that they could transform into lots of different shapes and so grandma, via grandpa’s wallet, bought it for them.  They had lots of fun fiddling with their cubes for the rest of the day!

No one cared about seeing Butch Cassidy’s childhood home, but we pointed as we drove by.  My main goal for the afternoon was to get some pickle pie from SunGlow motel.  Susan had told me about this culinary experience from her last trip into this area, but I guess she didn’t get to try it, so I was determined!

We passed through some pretty lonely, but beautiful country and stopped in a tiny, tiny town called Koosharem where I had hoped to call ahead and order my lunch.  However, there was absolutely no cell service (for us) there.  We did pop in the little store and I bought some honey that I gave to Will because it said it was a monofloral type and I thought it might be edible to him.  

After driving up the nearby mountains, I got cell service and called SunGlow while my dad poked around outside the car looking for survey corners.  He didn’t find any success, but I did get my order in!  They were a little surprised and amused that I was calling in an order and they didn’t even take my name; “Just ask for the call in” they told me!

So we headed down the mountain through Loa and Lyman to Bicknell.  We were passed by a road rally called “Vertical Mile”.  It was funny seeing them hit exactly 30 mph as soon as they entered Bicknell.  

I got my hamburger and pickle pie.  The hamburger was really good, and it came with sweet potato tots that were amazing.  The pickle pie was not my favorite, but it was good.  I was a little disappointed at how “normal” it tasted.  It was basically a sweet bean pie but with bits of sweet pickle in it.  The pickle gave it a little bit of a zesty kick, but I think I prefer my sweet bean pies without that kick.  

We then went to plot our route, and while I had expected to backtrack a bit to go north to I-70, I was happy to see that going through capitol reef was just as fast!  So we got to drive through another national park.  It was really pretty to me, but the boys, having been apparently traumatized by monument valley, were jokingly moaning about the red rock hurting their eyes.

We arrived in Hanksville for gasoline and some fizzy drinks and I was pleased to see that there was a gas station carved out of a giant rock.  So I finally got to go in a building carved from a rock on this trip and I felt complete!  

The road between capitol reef and green river (the next piece of civilization after Hanksville) was very desolate and wasteland-like.

The boys were eager to get back to Grand Junction so they could help Grandma with her video games so they didn’t even want to take a quick stop in Green River.  So we, continued on.  We made a brief stop at a truck pull off because my dad said there was a tunnel that went under the highway and I wanted to check it out.  Unfortunately, it seems the tunnel had been gated off so we continued on quickly.  

We arrived safe and sound back in Grand Junction and the boys immediately dove into video games.  

We started the day as early as we could with breakfast from the Hogan restaurant attached to the hotel.  It was pretty good, but normal breakfast which the boys ate slowly while watching “Big Citiy Greens”.  

We then headed out toward the Grand Canyon.  It was very much desert until we started to climb toward the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  First, it was a scrappy juniper forest which led us to our first view of the grand canyon at the Desert Point view area.  There was a cool old tower, which was closed, but we did get to see a stunning view of the canyon.  Seeing it in person triggers a minor vertigo response which makes it all the more amazing.

We continued along the entry road and the forest soon turned to ponderosa and lodgepole pine.  We stopped a couple more view points, but then we noticed a watch tower in the distance.  We looked it up on google and were once again led along a scary bumpy road, but it was much more tolerable than the road to the dinosaur tracks.  We got to the tower and were surprised to see we could climb it!  We all climbed up and it was really cool.  It was really windy at the top and Jack discovered he was a bit scared of heights.  

From there, we continued on to the visitor center and watched a short video about space for some reason :-D.  Then we walked out to the main viewing point and I forced everyone to walk to the geology muesum about .7 miles along the rim trail.  Sam was slow and grumpy, but we soon learned he had some blisters forming so he deserved to be slow and grumpy.

I walked back alone and brought the car around to the museum to pick everyone up.  Then we headed back toward Cameron back in Navajo Nation.  The boys seemed very tired and I was getting pretty tired too.  We had lunch at Burger King for convenience and continued on to Page.

We got some ice cream from a local restaurant and enjoyed it at a park with disturbingly healthy grass.  Then I wanted to see the lake, so we went to the Glenn canyon dam visitor center.

I was REALLY impressed with the dam and the view.  I think it is the coolest thing I’ve seen so far on this trip!  

We continued on through a very dry and boring piece of country to arrive in Kanab.  It’s a delightful little town.  We’re staying in a very retro and charming hotel.  

They had closed the pool because of high winds during the day, but they opened it just for Sam.  However, he swam for like 5 minutes.  Luckily, my dad chatted to the innkeeper for about half an hour 😉  He recommended some great local restaurants, but I wasn’t able to actually order at any of them due to being put on seemingly unending hold, being closed early for fathers day weekend or not being able to make dinner for us until 8:45.  So… I ordered… pizza hut.

We got on the road about 8:30 in high spirits.

We first stopped at Rabbit Valley for a quick dinosaur hit (Sam is suddenly very interested in dinosaurs).  After Rabbit Valley we stopped in the ghost town Cisco.  I was really impressed with a piece of art we saw

And then we visited the new store there called Buzzard’s Belly.  It was not a useful store, but it was a cute store and the owner was so friendly.  She seemed to really care about what she was doing and loved to talk to us about the history of Cisco.  I bought a yeti cup with their logo because I was so charmed 🙂

We pressed on to the dinosaur tracks near Moab.  This was our first real adventure!  I blindly followed google’s directions instead of the posted signage which led us on to a two-track “road”.  It was mostly just bumpy, but there were a few arroyo crossings that were a little more than I would have liked to move my car through.  It was fun, if I ignored the “this is a bad idea” feeling, but they boys were horrified.  My dad was having a blast though!  

We finally made it to the parking lot and trekked up to the prints.  They were pretty cool and Sam was happy to send a picture to his dinosaur pal back home.  

After driving back on the actual road, we continued on to Moab where we had lunch on a shady bench.  We had a very good hamburger and the boys got some ice cream.  Moabites seemed to be giving us serious “what the heck is wrong with you” looks for wearing masks.

Continuing down the road a bit, we arrived in Monticello.  I actually lived in Monticello for a week in 1985, but I didn’t remember it at all 🙂  We visited the tiny temple and got drinks at the Maverick.  

The next time was Blanding, where I was wanting to visit a tribal museum, but the boys saw an ad for a dino museum that I hadn’t seen on the map.  It was really cool!  It seemed a little small and lame at first, but it kind of just kept going.  They had some incredible displays, including a giant feathered dinosaur!  I also enjoyed that they had movie posters all over the museum from old monster movies.  It seemed like a real labor of love and we all had a blast.

The next stop was a petroglyph panel just outside of Bluff.  It was 103 degrees and Sam was OFFENDED by how hot it was.  It was a cool petroglyph though.  The boys were running out of steam for rocks and stuff, but we continued through Monument Valley anyway.  I was amazed by how red everything was and loved the scenery but they boys seemed to hate it!

When we finally arrived back in civilization, we got some gas in Kayenta, which is in the Navajo Nation.  We were shocked and pleased by their very serious mask laws.  After Moab, it felt like we were back amongst our people 🙂  

The final leg of this day was to Tuba City further in to the Navajo nation.  It was a fairly boring road, but we listened to music and chatted.

When we arrived at our hotel, we checked in without issue.  Jack kept talking about how amazing the hotel is, and it is nice, but it is pretty “normal”.  I think after so much remote rural stuff, it felt like a “real city hotel” on the inside, which was nice for them.  We got dinner at the hotel restaurant.  I got a navajo taco and they got a pizza.  The restaurant forgot to cut the pizza so my dad let us use his knife to get it cut up.  I thought the navajo taco was pretty bland, but I’m super glad I got to try one.

We see a lot of smoke from the fire near Flagstaff.  I’m worried that the views at the Grand Canyon will be disappointing, but I expect to have fun anyway.

The boys and I drove to grand junction.  We had an uneventful trip over very familiar territory.  We talked a lot about video games and played lots of car games.  

I suggested playing a game where we told a story by saying one word each at a time.  The stories inevitably turned to poop.  We laughed a lot, but it was short lived.  Sam then suggested playing A to Z.  We did A to Z groceries, video games and Pokemon.  

The boys were road weary by the time we arrived in GJ and I was nervous about their tolerance for this trip.  We went to the Waterhouse’s first and they swam for a few minutes.  Then we went back to the masons to teach Grandma how to play Zelda and went to bed.

Our amazing kid was honored at the 6th Grade Awards Ceremony. He was invited up a few times: for Chamber Orchestra, for maintaining a 4.0 GPA all year, and for the Drake Award of Excellence.

In this video his homeroom teacher explains why he was chosen for this award. My heart glows when I hear the cheers from his friends and peers as his name is called. I’m so proud that my son is recognized for his kindness and integrity.

Jack turned 12 years old this year, and he is looking every bit his age! He’s become a sweet, gangly, smart kid. He’s made many new friends this year and grown so much with his middle school experience.

He agreed that a low-key party sounded fun this year. He had two friends over for the afternoon to play video games, watch cartoons, and eat pizza. That may not sound very exciting, but I think it’s the first time he’s had a friend over since his outdoor party last year. Everyone took a covid test in the morning, so they could relax mask-free together.

He asked for the same cake as last year – chocolate with strawberry frosting 🙂

I mentioned the musical briefly earlier, but I wanted to post just a little more.

It was such a joy to make and teach dance again this year! In 2020 we were working on Rock of Ages before everything shut down and the performances were canceled. 2021 there was no show. This year Amanda and Becca invited me to return to work with them on Bye Bye Birdie.

It’s a lot of work for little pay, but so much fun. I love to teach kids to dance. I love working with Amanda and Becca. I love coming to class and hearing “It’s Ms. Mason! Hi Ms. Mason!!” over and over. The kids are so excited to see me and I try to return their energy.

This year the kids did pretty good with dancing. I probably made the choreo too difficult, like usual, and I need to remember to scale back. I always wish I had more rehearsal time (and a mirrored studio)!

Here’s some in-action pics that a parent took during dress rehearsal:

And here are two songs I thought turned out the best: