The Toadstools......

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8:21 am - Wednesday - November 1st - Lone Rock - 51º F, humidity 56%, wind 8 mph out of the west.....forecast high for today is 74º F in paradise.....clear blue skies.  Woke up this morning to a 90% state of charge on our house batteries!

We were up a little later than normal Tuesday, but that's okay, right?  We're retired....we have no schedule.....at least for another week (we begin working our new job November 7th).  We have kept ourselves on Utah, or Mountain Time even though we are less than 1 mile from the Arizona border.  That means sunrise is not until after 8 am, which, in turn, means we usually don't get out of bed until after 8 am.  So, you might be wondering why we don't just switch out clocks over to Arizona time and get it over with.  Well, we have been living under Mountain time since mid June and we just hate having to adjust our internal clocks any sooner than we must.  We will be moving the Newell into Page, AZ on Wednesday, and driving the VW to SoCal on Thursday for the wedding I wrote about yesterday, so until then we are still on Mountain time baby!

Driving south on US-89 a week ago we passed a turnout called the 'Toadstools Trailhead'....I remarked to TLE that we should drive back there later in our Lone Rock stay and do the hike and see what the 'Toadstools' were all about.  Well, Tuesday became that day.  The trailhead is about 17 miles north of Lone Rock, and we arrived there in less than 20 minutes.

The Toadstools Trailhead is part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  According the trailhead sign the round trip hike to the Toadstools is 1.6 miles.....essentially an 'out and back' hike.  

Within minutes of entering the trail you notice the stratification in the surrounding hills....rarely do we see stratification like this......all the layers are pretty much parallel to the surrounding terrain.....usually we see it on the diagonal......

.....basically, after the first 100 yards the trail mostly seems to follow a dry wash as it twists and turns through the canyon gradually gaining altitude.....our total elevation gain was about 150'.  The other thing we noticed almost immediately is it was very hard to follow the trail.  It appears that people just walk wherever they wish making it very difficult to figure out which trail was 'THE' trail.  All that being said, no matter which trail you followed you would end up at the same place eventually.  

Within 20 minute we arrived at the 'Toadstools'........

.....yup, they do look sort of like 'toadstools'.   Here's my take on this hike.....if we hadn't just spent 3 days hiking in Bryce Canyon I think we would have appreciated this hike more, but frankly, Bryce Canyon is chock full of 'hoodoo' features just like these.  Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable hike, and the weather was perfect.  My Strava program showed we hiked just over 1.7 miles round trip.....no doubt we were off 'THE' trail on a few occasions....:-)

We arrived back at the coach around 1:30 where we both sat down to do some more reading.  Around 4 pm we decided to take our 'out and back' hike out to US-89, but limited it to just 3.3 miles since we had already hiked 1.7 miles earlier.  We tried to time our hike to arrive back at the coach in time for our 'happy hour' fire, but by the time we returned the wind had picked up nixing that idea.

After watching Game 5 of the World Series until almost midnight Sunday night I decided to not watch game 6, but keep track of the game on my smart phone.  As it turned out the Dodgers prevailed 3-1 and have sent this years 'Series' to game 7 Wednesday night.  It was much less stressful not watching game 6, but I am sure I will be tuned in Wednesday night for game 7....winner take all!

We watched more 'Mad Men' episodes until about 11 pm before heading to bed.....Wednesday is moving day!

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The daily reader......

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8:58 am - Tuesday - October 31st - Lone Rock - 59º F, humidity 33%, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest.....partly cloudy with a forecast high of 75º F.  State of battery charge was 87% at 8:40 am this morning.

After the marathon game 5 of the World Series which had our TV on until almost midnight our batteries were at 88% to begin Monday.....the lowest they've been since we arrived at Lone Rock.  On top of that the forecast, for the first time, was for partly cloudy skies meaning that getting back to 100% on our house batteries would be iffy.  Now, even when there is total overcast our solar panels will still put some charge into our batteries, but getting back to 100% is not going to happen under those circumstances.  Nonetheless, we did get back to 97% by 3:30 pm, and that is as far as they got.

For a change we did not take a walk, and we did not go into town......we just sat home reading all day long.....well, let me revise that a little.....TLE read all day long.....I spent the morning cleaning our bug spattered windshield, cleaning bugs off our air horn 'trumpets' and our front cap, greasing the wheel bearings on our 26' enclosed car hauler trailer, vacuuming out the back seat of the VW (we hauled 4 bundles of firewood from the local gas station the other day), checking the oil and coolant levels in the VW for our upcoming trip back to SoCal for the wedding of our dear friend Amanda, and finished by sweeping out the trailer.  By that time it was around 1:30 and then I spent the rest of the day reading. 

It's the end of October and the National Park Service folk are beginning to winterize the facilities here at Lone Rock, which means turning off the water very soon.....we are hoping the water stays on at the dump station until after we depart on Wednesday, November 1st.  If it is turned off before we leave then there is a place in Page we can dump, but it's not nearly as convenient, obviously.

We were outside enjoying happy hour by the fire by 5:15 pm.......with the cloudiness there was not the usual light show, but we thoroughly enjoyed the view, nevertheless........

.....we got a little bit of color just after 7 pm, but that was the extent of the light show for the evening......

......since I no longer watch the NFL, and the only thing on Monday nights that we would, in the past, have watched was Monday Night Football, so we decided to spend the evening watching a few more episodes of 'Mad Men' Season 3......I love 'Unlimited Data'!

We were in bed before 11 pm.....thanks for stopping by!

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Homeward bound......

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9:08 am (MT) - Tuesday - October 10th - 44º F in Livingston, MT with humidity at 44%, and wind at 15 mph out of the south......partly cloudy, and not as frigid as I had anticipated!  Arrived home from SoCal last night around 1:50 am after a mostly uneventful flight home.

Monday is a work day for my daughter and son-in-law so we began to hear them stirring around upstairs around 5:30 am.....so glad I don't have do to that anymore for at least a month!  Nonetheless, we were up by 6:30 and beginning to plan out our day.  Our first flight out of John Wayne International was not until 4:25 pm so we had a lot of time to kill before that flight.  We could have gotten a flight out much earlier in the day, but that would have meant fighting morning rush hour traffic, and leaving Ontario before 6 am......not going to happen on my watch!

We did leave around 9:30 am to make the drive down to Orange County and a Verizon store near John Wayne Airport for TLE......she has been due for an upgrade for about a year, and her existing iPhone's storage capacity of 16 gb was not cutting it anymore.  About half way there we noticed a brush fire beginning in the Anaheim Hills.....thankfully we got past it before they closed the freeway!  We arrived at the Verizon store near John Wayne Int'l around 10:30.....about an hour later we left with a new iPhone 8+ for TLE with 64 gb of storage.....I'm sure she'll find a way to fill up that extra space.

So, it was 11:30 and we still had 5 hours until our plane left, but good sense told us we should be there around 2:30 to get our tickets, check our luggage and work our way through security, so make it 3 hours to kill.  We were near the South Coast Plaza and there is an Edwards Theaters multiplex there so we thought we might take in a movie, but as it turned out none of the movies we had interest in would start until almost 2 pm, so that idea was shelved.  All things being equal we opted to find a Rubio's Coastal Grill for some of their original fish tacos.....we found one just a mile from the Plaza, and were there within minutes.  By this time the plume of smoke from the Anaheim Hills fire was casting a pall across the previously clear blue skies......

.....we placed our orders and quickly found an alfresco dining option outside.....

......by the time we finished our leisurely lunch it was 1:15 pm, and we still had over an hour to kill before our arrival at the airport so we next located a Goodwill.......by 1:45 pm we had decided there was nothing there without which we could not continue living so we hopped back in the Toyota Corolla and made our way over to John Wayne....by the time we had dropped off the rental car, and walked a block or so to the Delta ticket desk it was nearing 2:30.  Good thing we did get there early as the bag we were checking weighed in at 58 pounds!  How could that be?  The surcharge for an overweight bag is $100!  Just a few days before it weighed in at 48 pounds!  Then it occurred to us.....we had added 3 bottles of single malt scotch for our return flight......doh!  After quick repacking we got it down to 51 pounds, and the nice lady let us skate even though we were still 1 pound over.  By 2:50 pm we had made our way to gate C3 and settled in to wait for our boarding call for our 4:25 pm flight to Salt Lake City......

 

.......about 3:30, just before they would begin boarding an announcement came over the PA system advising that VP Mike Pence's Air Force 2 jet was getting ready for takeoff and there was a hold on all ground traffic until his plane took to the friendly skies......ultimately our flight left about 50 minutes late at 5:15 pm.......not a problem as we had a 3 hour layover in SLC before our next flight, which was now just over 2 hours.....no complaints here......

.......nevertheless, the Delta flight crew provided adult beverages free of charge to somewhat ameliorate the inconvenience of those who had 'tight' connections in SLC......

....as we winged our way northeast to SLC we were treated to a beautiful sunset......

.....our flight out of SLC actually lifted off a few minutes early, and we arrived in Billings, MT, back where we started, almost 20 minutes early at 11:30 pm.  By the time we had collected our luggage from baggage claim, and walked 2+ blocks to the VW in the long term parking lot it was just after midnight.  We were on I-90 flying low at 75 mph by 12:15 am, and back at the Newell by 1:50 am.  The temperature was in the high 30's, but it was (and still is) windy, which made it feel much colder.  Thankfully I had left (intentionally) our fireplace heater set at 62º F in our absence, so the interior was very hospitable.  We soon had the bedroom and bathroom heaters going to remove what little chill there was.  We were in bed and drifting off to slumberland by 2:15 am.

All in all our day was very uneventful, and now I sit back in my familiar morning seat looking out the passenger side window in our salon while composing today's missive.  We are tired, but I know there will be a few naps for me today in between all the things I need to do so we can once again roll our wheels Wednesday towards new horizons and new adventures.

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