Annabelle at Almost Four Weeks

These pictures are in my gallery. Email me for the location and password. For pictures of Wells, please see Jamie's blog.

Sledding by Snow Basin

Here are some pictures of our sledding near Snow Basin on Saturday. The air was so clean. We forget how gunky the valleys are. Trapper's Loop is a beautiful road any time of year.

Chieko led the way. It may not look like it, but she is on a sled.

Jackson doing the jump.

I missed the shot, but Tanner ended up straddling this two-foot-wide hole that dropped down to a culvert under the road. I grabbed him just before the puma got his head.

Tanner and Jackson.

Jared taking the jump.

Jared's right foot isn't dragging in the snow because Jared and Tanner are about a foot and a half above the snow.

Michael in the fast lane. Not too bumpy, but fast and long.

Sara and Jackson at the bottom of the fast lane. This is also one fast tube.

These two drank a ton of hot chocolate, using a new cup with each drink. Later, when I was putting the thermos and cups in the car, Tanner said in surprise, "Is that ours?!" I guess he thought the refreshments came with the sledding hill.

Last Tahoe Trip

The Pony Express Trail seems like a fitting last-drive for the Tahoe. (I'm selling it as soon as I get it cleaned up so I can move into a Toyota Sequoia.) January 18 was Martin Luther King Jr Day, a holiday for some, so Randy and I took off on the evening of January 17 to go rabbit hunting. Well, not really rabbit hunting. More to drive the Pony Express Trail, starting from the Nevada side.

This is what the West Desert looks like in fog and snow.

This is what Randy looks like shooting poor, innocent bunnies in the West Desert fog and snow. Actually, other than the two rabbits I scared with a couple shots, we didn't do any harm.

We stayed at the Red Garter in Wendover. This casino has been there forever, but I never realized how cheap this place is. The room was $24, a very filling and good chicken-fried-steak dinner was about $8, and a large two-egg-and-large-slice-of-ham breakfast was $2.99. We both stuffed ourselves at breakfast and ended up with a bill under $9 for both of us, including tax and tip. Plastic eggs and felt pancakes at McDonalds cost more than that.

The Pony Express Trail starts about 57 miles south of Wendover. From Hwy 93, which goes from Wendover to Ely, NV, we turned southeast onto Ibapah Road after about 27 miles. This road heads back onto the Utah side of the border and then south. I think the Pony Express Trail turn-off is about 30 miles after turning onto Ibapah Road. If you're curious to see what's at Ibapah--I drove there once in the Astro Van just to see where the road went. When I turned around at the south end of town, the lone policeman stopped me to see why I was there. They don't get many sightseers, I guess.

In the five or six hours that Randy and I were on the Pony Express Trail on Martin Luther King Jr Day, we passed a power utility truck and a UPS truck. Those were the only signs of human life we saw all day. This road had had a vehicle or two since it snowed the night before, but we did travel on one road to Gold Hill where we made the first tracks.

There were some cows here and there, and they seemed to think they owned the desert.

The leftovers of a Pony Express stop. During the Pony Express days--1860-1861--there were stops about every 10 to 12 miles. The Pony Express was a financial disaster and was put out of business by the transcontinental telegraph, but it became an important icon of the Old West. White guys treated the native Americans along the route, from Missouri to Sacramento, poorly, and the Indians responded by killing a lot of the caretakers and others at the stops. The riders faired better, being on fast horses.

Gold Hill is an almost-ghost town. I think this is the last of the UFOs that landed here.

The Goodwin Mercantile in Gold Hill. A handful of families still live here with their bloodhounds and many other dogs.

These two dogs were so happy to see people that they wouldn't leave us alone.

If you take the Pony Express Trail from Vernon, which is south of Tooele, Fish Springs is about 60 miles into the trail. Fish Springs is a large group of fresh-water ponds that sits at the foot of some small mountains and attracts a lot of birds. Fall and spring are probably the best times to come, but there are birds here year 'round. Look it up on Google Maps. You'll be surprised how large these ponds are in the middle of a salt desert.

About three large hawks were hanging out in the large trees at the picnic area. Geese, ducks, and variety of other birds were also in or near the frozen ponds.

Some of the ponds are surrounded by tall reeds.

To the east of Fish Springs sits the town of Callao. It has a small school house, several log structures, some lived in and some abandoned, and a post office. It also has electric power.

Callao does not have a railroad. Don't know where this sign came from. Maybe it's wishful thinking by some who live here.

Despite electricity, a school, a post office, and even UPS delivery, Callao has to be one lonely, hard place to live.

Normally we'd head back through Simpson Springs (where the Powell guy supposedly took his two young boys camping in the freezing middle of the night his wife disappeared) to Vernon, but I'd never been to Topaz Mountain from this direction, and it appeared that if we turned south we'd hit a paved road sooner than continuing east, so we turned right here. The sky got pretty dark about the time we hit the paved part of the Brush Wellman Road, which took us past the Intermountain Power Project to Hwy 6 and then to Nephi. We made a stop at the Baker Hot Springs on the way so I could take a quick soak, and we got home about 11 p.m.

Sayonara, Tahoe.

Two Days, Two Babies

On Monday, January 4, we celebrated my dad's 84th birthday at Red Lobster, followed by Cindy-and-Paul-baked-or-just-Cindy-baked-I'm-not-sure yummy cake with pineapple filling, and ice cream. That was a good time.

On Tuesday, January 5, Mialisa delivered Baby Wells. He weighed 6 lb, 15 oz and was 21 inches. He may look a little like Caroline.

I stole these Wells pictures from John and Misa's blog, so if you want to see the originals or some more pictures, go there.

Misa and Wells.

Proud dad.

On Wednesday, Sara delivered Annabelle. She weighed 6 lb, 9.5 oz and was 19-1/2 inches.

Shortly after Annabelle's birth with medicine in her eyes.

Sara and Annie on delivery day.

Proud Grandma Chieko and Annie.

Sara's room at the new Intermountain Medical Center.

On Thursday, January 7, Annie was a little less newbornish, but asleep the whole time we were there. Jared has better pictures that you can probably see on Sara's blog, but you'll have to wait until she gets a chance to post them.

I just have to say, we (Chieko and I) are very happy. For the new additions to our family and for the health of the babies and their mothers. Waiting nine months for babies to be born is a little worrisome, because one never knows whether mothers and babies will be healthy. I know I'm not the only one who worries, since the first news most people give when a baby is born is the baby's gender and that the mother and baby are doing well. We were especially concerned, because Misa was touch and go for a while.

These deliveries are answers to many prayers. And I thank my Heavenly Father for the blessings these two babies are, as well as the eight who preceded them and for their parents.

Arches in Winter

When I visited Delicate Arch in October, a group on a photography-magazine-sponsored tour was there. On the way out, the leader of the group, who was from Phoenix, said he'd like to come back when there's snow on the arch. I thought that sounded like a great idea.

So last week, with New Year's coming up, I thought this weekend would be a good time to take a trip to Moab. I called the Park Ranger for Arches and Canyonlands to see if Delicate Arch had snow, but all she would tell me was that the trail was clear (more on that below), but she didn't know whether the arch had snow. She said, "You'll just have to go up there and take your chances."

Well, I invited Randy, and Friday morning at 7:30 we headed to Moab in the Tahoe. The Weather Underground said Friday would be mostly cloudy, and Saturday would have a 30% chance of snow in Moab. That certainly wasn't ideal picture-taking weather, but we went anyway under cloudy skies, which got clearer as we travelled south.

Just before Helper (which is just before Price), there's a vein of coal in the mountain where it's been cut away for the highway. If I ever run out of heating fuel, I'm coming down to chip coal out of this highway--if I can get gas for my truck to get down here.

A ways past Wellington, which is just past Price, is this Christmas tree in the middle of nowhere. By the way, for something fun to do, call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), and ask for a number in Wellington, Utah. We tried this a few weeks ago, and the computerized operator kept saying, "Ok, Wellington, New Zealand" every time I said, "Welling, UTAH." Maybe the Google guys have fixed that by now.

I've never been to Arches in the winter, and we discovered that it is really beautiful in snow. I was surprised, first at how much snow there was--it must have snowed just a day or so ago--and how stunning the red rocks are under a white blanket.

The highways from Salt Lake to Moab were clear and dry, but the roads inside the park were snow packed and sometimes icy.

Red-rock mountain under a blanket of fresh snow.

Wow!

Once we got off I-70, everything south was in a fog bank, so it didn't look like we were going to get much of a view at Arches. But the fog cleared while we were goofing off in Moab, and there were just a few high clouds.

The bushes and sage brush were also encased in frozen fog and snow.

The trail to Delicate Arch was snow packed, but the only place that was icy was a stretch next to a rock where the sun had heated the rock, which melted the snow, and then it refroze. The steep slick-rock portion of the trail was also snow packed, but it wasn't icy, so hiking in wasn't bad at all. This is the end of the trail just before we turned the corner to Delicate Arch. (This is Randy's picture. That's me at the top of the trail.)

Even though we had all day to get here, we dilly-dallied in Moab quite a while and ended up getting here just in time to take pictures with the sun low in the sky. If you look closely, you can see people on the flat part of the rock on the right. That's where we took most of the pictures of the arch from. A lady who was here when we arrived warned me that getting to the spot where I took this picture from was "unnerving." You can see where the rock gets steep and snowy on the near right side. "Unnerving" was a good term.

This is the picture we came to Arches for on a snowy New Year's day. It turned out to be a nearly perfect outing.

It was also very, very cold. We dressed in layers and were fine, but an Indian guy who was here before us said he'd been here for three hours waiting to get a sundown picture. About 15 minutes before the sun got to its lowest point, before it went behind a cloud bank, he said he couldn't stand the cold anymore and left. He had waited three hours in the cold and missed the best 15 minutes of picture-taking. I offered to let him borrow my coat, since, after heating up on the hike in, I wasn't wearing it at the time, but he was too shy. And then I was glad he hadn't, because within 10 minutes the air cooled and added a light breeze, and I had to put my down coat over my fleece pullover, pull the ski mask up over my face, and trade my light gloves for ski gloves. A Chinese couple from San Jose was next to us. The guy also got too cold and headed back without his girlfriend, who endured until there was no more sun.

After the mile-and-a-half hike back to the car, when it had gotten pretty dark, I took off my fleece ski hat-mask and discovered it and the top of my fleece pullover were covered in heavy white frost. Thank goodness for the wicking power of modern fibers.

If you like Arches, and you ever get a chance to go just after it's snowed, I highly recommend Arches National Park in a blanket of snow. Beautiful scenery and few people. It doesn't get any better.