How far away does June 21 seems during the dark of December 21? Yet how fast does June 21 arrive once the Memorial day Milestone is passed each year.
Tom and Pat B and their son, Nick, will be coming to visit from Cottonwood, Arizona, this coming Sunday. They won't be able to spend the night but we plan to have a real nice brunch/lunch/etc. for their drive-by visit.
Tomorrow, we're taking off on our first "official" Marvie Road Trip. We plan to be back by Friday or Saturday afternoon. Our return date is a moving target. We're hoping this road trip is well over 400 miles and we'd be happy if it was 500 miles but we doubt we can get it up to that lofty level.
We're heading to a spot on our beloved East Fork of The Salmon River that would normally only take us 3.5-4 hours to drive to. However, for this Road Trip, we plan to take 2-3 DAYS to get there instead of a few hours. We're taking probably the longest, most circuitous route known to Mankind to get there. That's why we bought Marvie in the first place and that's why we've spent the past three weeks getting Marvie in shape for such stuff.
We don't plan on using Marvie much. At this point, Marvie isn't even going to be a "town truck." Marvie is just going to sit around and wait for "the call." Hopefully, we can get Marvie out on the Back Roads several times a summer. That's all we want and expect out of him, a trusty steed to take us places no other vehicle we own can do.
You might wonder why we aren't relying on the Samurai for such duty. Well, the Sammi is too small for us now. We like camping with more gear. Also, the Sammi is too slow when it's fully loaded to drive on the long paved roads needed to get to the choicest backcountry. We want something that doesn't rattle as much, has a smoother ride and carries more camping gear.
Bear in mind, we're not planning to camp as cushy as we do at Jenny Lake each September. Plus, Mrvia ain't no Annie & The Poptop, but Marvie represents a decent compromise between the Samurai and the Big Rig with the camper. We'd like to think we can still travel "light & far" in Marvie. This impending Road Trip is a "proof of concept" trip whereby we will know if your hypothesis is correct or if it is just another misguided fantasy.
Between working on Marvie, going to Salmon, Idaho, last weekend and shooting in three pistol matches in the past week alone, our life has been very busy with much less free time than we typically enjoy in the winter, early-spring season.
Susun has been real busy doing her volunteering at Habitat for Humanity and St. Vincent Depaul. She's also been The Social Butterfly partying with her girlfriends, attending cultural events and so forth. She's excited about the first Road Trip tomorrow.
We've been doing surprisingly well in our pistol matches. In our first match we finished 1st in overall accuracy out of 58 participants. This week we tied for 1st Place in accuracy out of 38 participants. Saturday we re-qualified at the Marksman rating in our national club and Sunday, we finished 1st Most accurate in the monthly revolver match. It is gratifying that all of our practice over the past two years is finally beginning to pay off.
So far, we've so busy, we haven't even played a single round of kiddie golf or put the canoe in the water. Looking ahead we're already just hoping we can clear our Idaho Season "to do" list before heading south to Arizona in late October! YIKES! It's becoming quite clear that the summer season isn't going to let us dote on this blog quite the way we do during the fall-winter-spring when the short day length keeps us confined to quarters.
July is already almost 100% booked. August is open (so far) and then we know how fast time passes once Labor Day rolls around again. We have a very long list of homeowners chores that have been languishing lately while we mess around with Marvie, lollygag in Salmon, Idaho, and visit the shooting range. Hopefully, upon our return after this road trip, we will have the better part of two weeks to attempt to get caught up.
We know that what remains of our Loyal Blog Reader Roster generally abhors Facebook and most of you refuse to go there. Frankly, we don't blame you. However, if you'd like to read what we're going and thinking and so forth, Facebook is where it's at. After months of attempting to resist FADD (Facebook Addiction Deficit Disorder), we admit to being thoroughly hooked and we no longer fight and struggle to escape.
The Salmon website is suffering from lack of attention much the same way this blog is, too. Everything's going on to Facebook. We're grown our Salmon River Facebook Friends to within an eyelash of 600 and fully expect to reach 1,000 during this second year of operation. We're actually operating a more efficient news gig on Facebook than we are on the website. We DO have to get back into that website and bring it current but we've been unable to do so because of the strong and relentless pull of Facebook. Alas, there's nothing we can do about it.
Anyway, here are our two Facebook addresses. We know you would enjoy them should you care to dabble there. Just be careful and don't let Facebook suck you in like it did me.
https://www.facebook.com/johnrandyparsons
https://www.facebook.com/salmonriveridaho
For those who may be curious about tomorrow's Road Trip, the graphics below explain it in a general sort of way:
A is Pass Creek Pass north of Arco, Idaho. B is Sawmill Canyon, our destination Tuesday night.
A is Sawmill Canyon and B is Double Springs Pass in the shadow of Idaho's tallest peak--Mt. Borah.
Both Pass Creek and Double Springs passes are well over 8,000 feet.
From Double Springs Pass we have to wind our way through the semi-wilderness to get over to The East Fork. We will visit with Heather at The Dream Ranch and then go to The Jammin' Salmon to help Golde W. find creative ways to market her property there. Afterwards, we plan to visit Old Sawmill Station and then our Dear Friends Natalie and Stephen before heading home to prepare for Tom, Pat and Nick's visit.
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