February 3, 2023

Well, it’s still winter, but temps have gone above freezing a few times so some of the snow here has been melting and we are seeing more people out and about exploring the monument over the past week.  The urge to adventure is a bit contagious as it has led several of us at the visitor center to begin planning adventures of our own.  I just planned a hike for this weekend and I’m hoping that it works out well for us and it’s not too slippery or cold.  I think we are all at the point now where we are over the snow.  It was pretty for awhile, but now we are itching to go outside to hike and the dirt roads are too muddy to travel on and the hikes are slippery.  I may be an adventurer, but I’m still a somewhat cautious one.  Probably those into skiing, skating, snowshoeing or other winter sports will not agree with me here in wishing winter to end soon.

We started the week with another birthday celebration for Luke and our friend Curtis.  Our friend Marian made a delicious prime rib.  This is not something we get very often and she is an excellent cook so it was a treat for us.   I still wonder at how nice it’s been and how fortunate we are to have been able to make such good friends while we long-term nomad it here in Escalante.  I hope we always live in the kind of place that takes the time to welcome and get to know newcomers like this town does.  

I have continued to take walks around the neighborhood and sometimes bring my camera to take photos of things that capture my interest along the way.  Here are my favorite images from this week around town.

     

I follow someone on Mastodon with the user name The Masked Nebraskan who tends to put google eyes onto everyday objects to make smiley faces.  I was delighted when I saw this and ordered a pack of google eyes for myself.  I hadn’t used them until this week when I found the perfect place for them right in town.  You have to look closely, but you can see my google eyes just above the half circle/smile cut into the fence cloth.  Sometimes it is the simple things that bring delight, like this local jackass I met on my walks.

Our friend Russ has his new side by side and is excited about getting his website up and running so asked me to go out to capture some photos for him to use.  Despite the cold, we drove into a wash nearby and ripped it up in the snow.  We had fun and Gabby joined us for an afternoon out and proved to have good ideas for creative compositions for us.  You may remember Gabby from last spring and summer.  We are glad to have her back in the area.  Here she is along with one of the cool shots we captured that day.

 

I finished a puzzle this week that my friend Kelley gave me as a going away present when we left.  I figured this may be my only chance for a while to have a table big enough to build it on.  I passed it along to a nomad friend who leaves for Florida next week and maybe she will pass it along to another nomad when she finishes it…it’s the traveling puzzle.

Now that the puzzle is done I have started to build a new miniature kit.  This time I’m working on an ice cream shop.  I have to paint a lot of the little wood pieces before I glue them together so I think it will take me more time than usual to finish.  I also have plans to make a big batch of Hungarian Goulash to freeze and share.  By next week I’m sure I will have some photos of some of my mimi ice cream shop pieces to share and hopefully I’ll also have some frozen waterfall photos if the hike goes as planned this weekend.