Shady Creek Lane: May 2010

Mother and daughters at Sugarhouse Park on Mother's Day 2010...cool enough for jackets, but at least it wasn't raining!!!

The fried chicken feast. Can you see the jar of mushroom-stuffed green olives? Delicious!

The red-less velvet Mother's Day cake with very fancy frosting courtesy of Airie. Yummmm!

2 Barker boys, Baron and the Colby Man

Soccer Time

Posey Pitch...Autumn was the winner with her classic style.

Brie's style was also classic...can you see the whirling blue posey?

On to frisbee and more great form...can you see the spinning white frisbee?

Abram, about to toss the green frisbee. We had 2 frisbees going, so it was lots of fun. Brie and Colby joined in.

The partyers. It was a great Mother's Day for me. I didn't have to do a thing. Everyone else made all the plans and provided all the food. I just showed up and enjoyed. It's great to be a mom...thanks everyone!!

The fam cheesing it up.

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The day before Mother's Day, Dad and I went to Tooele for a geocaching event called Geo-Poker. It was a nice day weather-wise and we had fun. There were 7 caches hidden around Tooele. Each cache had a deck of cards (each card in a sealed envelope) for players to choose from. Afterwards each person opened their envelopes and made their best poker hands. There were about 15 players total and prizes for the top 5 hands. Mom came in 5th place (there were some amazing hands from 7 decks) with a 9-high straight. (Dad had a pair of 3s...don't laugh, that beat some people!) Her prize was a great trackable geocoin. We met and talked to some new cachers and thought it was a great way to spend a few hours on a Saturday...yard work can wait.

auditcacher and eagle eye who organized the event and did all the work so we could have fun.

Mrs. Geo Idiot and Hot Mama (from Tooele)...found out they were Russell cousins!!!

Paula and prize

A closer view of the Trojan Horse trackable geocoin. Can you see the Trojan helmet "hiding" inside the horse?

Afterwards, we stopped in to see Baron at the Rent-A-Center in Tooele. Too bad he had to work all day.

Geocaching, Geology, Flora, Fauna, Southern Utah, Las Vegas, and oh, a conference thrown in there somewhere...

DAY 1:
10 Years! We each got one for our hats.

May 1st, 2000: Announcement made that "selective availability" was being turned off.

May 2nd, 2000: "Selective availability" was turned off.

May 3rd, 2000: First Geocache placed and found.

May 2010: World-wide multi-events for the 10 Year Anniversary of Geocaching are held.

Here we are at Barnes Park in Kaysville for the closest 10th Anniversary Event. (There were many (10-20) held up and down the Wasatch Front.) It was cold and windy and rainy, but when did that ever stop the true blue geocacher?

us on the end...

Pizza was provided for everybody along with a lot of potluck dishes. There was a drawing for prizes, which we didn't win, but it was fun to be part of the celebration.

Of course we had to pop ($10) for the way-cool commemorative coin. It is a trackable, but we'll keep this one for ourselves.

After the Geo Party we headed south to Cedar City for some geocaching and to get to St. George for my 2-day conference given by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Here's Dad at 3 Peaks Recreation Area in Enoch (a little northwest of Cedar.)

Lichen and cedar

Oogie Boogie Man

Mom at a cache at 3 Peaks

looks like some kinda trail in Enoch

Lots of sheep with newborn lambs

curious cute faces

DAY 2:

Sunday morning we woke up to a blizzard.

Great way to start the day.

We drove west out of Cedar City to take the scenic route to St. George. We drove along the Old Spanish Trail to New Castle and Enterprise and Pine Valley....places we've never seen before. The weather was cold and mostly cloudy and it seemed like every time we got out of the car it started to blow and snow (little pellets.) But we forged on and laughed a lot about putting our jackets on and off 50 times!

The Whomping Willow at Calf Springs.

Honeycomb Campground at Enterprise Reservoir.

The charming little town of Pine Valley...formerly a lumber camp, now mostly summer homes. Pines from this area were hauled to Salt Lake for the organ in the Tabernacle.

The famous Pine Valley Chapel...oldest LDS Church still in continuous use. We found several geocaches in this area for a total of 12 for the day.

DAY 3:

We woke up in St. George to 70 degree temperatures and lots of sunshine and blue skies. Since this was the Official 10-Years-of-Geocaching Day, we decided to go for as many caches as we could without succumbing to the easy ones. We actually spent most of the day hiking and by 11:00pm that night we had 15 caches and 4 Travel Bugs. Here's dad at the first cache in Santa Clara with Snow Canyon in the background.

Entrance to the Santa Clara River Reserve...nice trail.

View of Ivins and cliffs from the trail

Cacti and flowers along the trails...pink prickly pear

lavender sego lily-ish

Orange blossom cactus

Tiny flowers

Tiny flowers up close

Little purples

Sunny yellows

Split Rock and sculptures in Santa Clara close to the entrance of Snow Canyon, in front of a resort

View of white rocks in Snow Canyon from a ridge

Another view of Snow Canyon from above

One more view from up in the lava rocks

Starting down the White Rocks Trail

Dad on the Trail

Little lizard tracks in the sand. You can see the tiny toe prints and the line from the tail that runs between them.

Near the end of the White Rocks Trail

The white cliffs

Approaching the bowl of sand. At the end of the trail the sand was deep and soft and hard to traverse.

This hike was the highlight of the day. Here's a poem I jotted down the next day (the formatting/spacing will be off):

SNOW CANYON WHITE ROCKS TRAIL

Bone-white peaks reach into the cloudless canopy.

Winding through greasewoods,

clamoring over cross-hatched mounds,

reach the bowl where

sunbathing desert lizzards scurry away leaving swerving tracks

agaves burst at random with single shafts of pending blooms

mountains weather into fine-grained dunes.

Let sand slip though your hands almost expecting sounds of surf and seagull,

Noting time and dry winds soften rough edges.

At the Kit Carson Cache in Snow Canyon...his name (including the "son"!)was scratched into the cliff.

Can you see "Kit Carson" and "US Parks Service"?

Last photo in Snow Canyon. Sun was going down. We found 4 more easy micro caches after dinner between 10 and 11pm.

DAY 4: This is trista74 (from Minneapolis) at The Rio!!!

OK here is a funny story...only appreciated by geocachers. On Day 2 we received an automatic geocaching email stating that a couple (geo-named trista74) in Minnesota had picked up our Nuevo Jersey Travel Bug. This is one of the original 4 competing TBs sent out in August of 2004...one for each kid with a goal to go to their mission locations and return. Escargot (Briton's with 16,236 ,miles) made it to France and back to Farmington in August of last year. Futebol (Baron) and Taiko (Autumn) were eventually lost, and Nuevo Jersey (10,877 miles) has been back and forth after reaching New Jersey, but mostly on the East Coast. The log from trista74 only said "moving to Las Vegas." We didn't know if the cachers were moving to Las Vegas or going on a trip to Las Vegas or what and we certainly didn't know when. But I replied with an email to see if they might be there on Monday or Tuesday night. Sure enough they were!!! SO, after my day at the conference ended, we drove the 2 hours (I know, but we're not called Idiots for nothing) and met them at the Casino Royale Cache on top of the Parking Terrace at The Rio Casino and retrieved the yellow rubber magnet! Pretty exciting for us to see the TB after 5-1/2 years and bring it home. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory at Caesar's Palace, of course, and had the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake and had to take in 4 performances by the Bellagio Fountains which never cease to overwhelm.