Six Day Break

6:42 AM, November 10, 2021

Hard to believe it's been six days since I did a blog post.  Alas, 'tis true.

As usual when we arrive in Rimrock, our days are filled with the minutiae of every day life.  Nothing seems particularly noteworthy so therefore nothing gets written about.  And all those little things add up to days on end.

Looking back to our arrival, nothing really stands out..well, except for the last few Light Shows. One of The Top Five things we Love about living beside Montezuma Well National Monument are the Land-O-Light Shows. We don't have them in Idaho Falls.   We're too buried in the city to see the glorious dawn and dusk light shows.  Yes, they DO exist in Eastern Idaho--we just can't see them from our vantage point.

1876 Williscraft photo of our homesite at left edge of photo.

It's a different story here where the Eastern horizon and landscape hasn't change since pre-settlement days. We have an 1876 photo proving it looks today just what it looked like when the first Anglo settler set up shop here.

6:45 AM, November 10, 2021

The colors always tend to shine their brightest only for a few minutes.  Right now in the morning, the Light Show peaks between 6:40 and 6:45 AM.  Believe me, it's worth getting up for.  We haven't yet pinpointed the peak viewing time in the evening but it's probably in the same time frame.

Most of our time has been spent fighting daily battles in the annual Weed Wars.  When we were younger we could go mano-y-mano with the weeds for hours at a time.  Now, we're lucky if we can put in two solid hours before burnout (pun intended) and exhaustion set in.

Our much-anticipated teen age weed ninja showed p on time yesterday at 3 PM and he performed as advertised.  We aren't overloading him so he only did two sections as agreed.  It's so nice to have the nightshades and their minions knocked down.   We've made pretty good progress on the tumbleweeds.  However, the goatheads are still in control of their sector of the battlefield.  I know God had a purpose in creating everything but, for the life of me, I can discern the purpose of goatheads.  They are wicked, vile, evil and extraordinarily painful when you step on one in the middle of the might.

The Hite Wedding, Sept. 17, 1946, in the middle of The Colorado River.

Perhaps our most fun activity of the past week has been studying Hite, Utah.  It's a long story, of course.  The "Hite Project," as we call it, has occupied many hours.  Once the daily session of Weed Wars is concluded, we settle down to our Hite Project.  It is a truly mesmerizing and bottomless Hare Hole and one that we feel honored and privileged to visit.  Many more hours remain to bring an interim finish to the Hite Project. 

We did attempt to take a Ma & Pa Sunday Drive.  Boy, that sure backfired.  What we call The Well Road is in atrocious condition--definitely a bone shaking experience.  We thought it would be better on Forest Road 618.  HAHAHA!  Not only was the unpaved road in terrible shape but the nature of the traffic there is dramatically different.  The UTV's are traveling somewhere between 40-50 miles an hour.  One old Nissan SUV was hurtling toward us only in tenuous, marginal control by the driver.  I thought seriously about bailing off the road in fear of a head-on collision.  So we bagged that idea and we've totally swore off even thinking of driving any of this area's once-delightful unpaved roads.

Speaking of traffic, ALL of our local roads are overloaded and congested with people driving way-too-fast. It's like a plague of heavy metal locusts.  But it's what to expect in a state that's grown to well over 7-million people.

We're still very grateful and happy with our humble home here beside Montezuma Well.  It's the best possible place to spend the cold months.  We own it free and clear and it costs practically nothing on an annual basis.  Property taxes, homeowner's insurance and propane are all about $300 each a year. Total annual expenses for this place are less than $1,800 a year, including internet.  Speaking of  the internet, it finally got it's act together and is working.  Despite being slow as molasses, we consider it adequate and we are pleased to have it.

Anyway, since we only live here six months a year, our monthly expenses are less than $300. In this day and age it would be truly impossible to find any RV park in the state for $300 a month, let alone a place like this. 

So, all-in-all, Life is Good and we are Happy Campers.

The Tuesday Evening, November 9, 2021, Land-O-Light Show.