Gratefully, I had another undisturbed night at the Orem Planet Fitness. 🥳
I even stayed a little too long, I think not getting up until a little bit after 7:00. 😅
From there, it was back up to my little spot at the Bridalveil Falls overlook, where I once again went back to sleep for a bit.
No mountain goats today. 🙃
I had planned to hike today, but I remembered that I also needed to work today because I haven’t done much work at all this week, much like last week. I’ll likely get bumped down this week because I haven’t worked enough.
I guess we’ll see, at least.
So I tried to answer some questions, but I just, wasn’t really in the mood. I wanted to do a little hike into the mountains and enjoy the mountains and not just work.
Also, there wasn’t much coming in the way of new questions. That’s fairly normal during the day, and because just answers time zone is set at I think Greenwich mean time? My day, for statistical purposes, ends at 6:00 p.m. mountain time.
Usually on weekdays, regular questions don’t even start to pop up until after 5:00 because the guys who are working during the day call it a day, and there are fewer of us fighting over questions after the normal work day is over.
Anyway, so there wasn’t much to get even if I sat waiting, so I went ahead and drove over to the tunnel where I had my bathtub and shower years ago.
I had thought about climbing bridalveil falls, but I figured it was probably not very smart to go by myself, and I think I remember the last time when I was coming down from the top having come up from a different part of the mountain, I think I remember seeing signs telling people to not climb up the falls.
So I figured it was both smart not to go by myself and respectful, just in case there were signs saying to not climb beyond x point.
Interestingly, I did, just as I was leaving the parking lot, see a small group of people coming down from having climbed up the falls, and a couple of people heading up.
That’s the first time since I’ve been back in Utah hanging out at the parking lot there that I’ve seen people actually trying to climb it.
I did a bit of morning gospel study today, which was good. I think I had a pretty decent little conversation with The Big Guy.
So anyway, after studying what not, I headed over to the slide Canyon drain pipe, put on my Sun gear come a long pants come a long sleeve shirt, and my massive sun hat, and I headed up the tunnel and started hiking up the dry creek bed.
Once again, my efforts to extend the creek down to the tunnel were stymied by natural causes. I realized that I had left at least one of the places where the creek splashed down mostly as a pool of water instead of a continuous cascade.
Apparently, that particular pool of water leaked so much of the water that the creek never went beyond it after it had recovered from the previous deluge of water that I had given it last time that made me think I’d gotten the water all the way down for good.
But here we were, probably 100-150 ft from the tunnel dry again.
So what did I do? 😅
Yep, I put down my water bottle, and I started right back in working on my Creek. 😆
This time I was a lot more thorough in making sure every single part of the creek was at least a small Cascade, no big pools forming anywhere.
Cory called while I was working on the creek, and so we chatted a bit. I had been listening to gospel stuff when he called, and we went ahead and kept chatting about gospel stuff.
We were talking a fair bit about faith. Faith is a bit of a nebulous concept for me, so I was working on trying to better understand it during my gospel study. I had also worked on my list of spiritual experiences over my life, evidences of God and the gospel, etc.
Corey mentioned something that brought a new spiritual insight that I don’t recall having ever learned before, so that was cool. I’ve been taking notes on the little bits of inspiration that I’ve been getting over the last handful of days.
Good stuff.
Anyway, I worked on the creek until I had successfully turned every pool into a cascading slope, and narrowed down the creek even more to get the water to make it all the way back to big under-highway drainage pipe.
This time I succeeded so well that it wasn’t just a little trickle making it all the way back to the pipe, it was a pretty decent little run, probably about as much, possibly more, than what I had to shower with 15 years ago.
Of course, the Avalanche completely took out the huge stone wall that I built so that the creek was tall enough to actually be a shower and not just fill a bathtub like I had originally designed it to be.
So there wasn’t a rebuilding of the shower, as that would require a heck of a lot of effort moving rock and silt that’s piled up over the last decade plus.
My poor little body doesn’t carry rocks that big anymore. 😅
Although it was a little tempting to try to rebuild my shower. 🙃
I would have rebuilt it even better this time. 😎
🙃
Anyway, I chatted with Corey for a good while, hiking my little butt all the way up to the small-house-sized boulder that broke away from the cliffs above not too many years ago.
That’s where I started running out of reception, so I just sat there and chatted with him until he needed to go, and then I hiked up only a little ways further before deciding that I didn’t really want to go any further. Usually I like to go all the way to my favorite little waterfall up there, but I’m a little more careful nowadays hiking alone.
I guess that fear of mortality is a bit more effective in my 40s than it was in my 20s. 🙃
Came down, texted with a handful of different people, finally did answer maybe three or four questions before 6:00 rolled around, and they wouldn’t count any more for this week’s payout level determination.
Stopped off at mountain View Park to dump some trash. I picked up a little bit of trash around the little shoulder parking area that I park when I’m going up the tunnel.
Trying to get back to that habit of striving to leave every person and every place better than I found them.
It’s amazing how self-centered I’ve been, even when I’m trying to help other people on a regular basis, I’ve just been so much more self-centered, and I can feel the difference, a very significant difference, right now.
Anyway, said my goodbyes to Provo Canyon and drove down University avenue from Provo Canyon all the way to the freeway, stopping for a little while at the Home Depot on the south end of Provo before jumping on the freeway.
Cory had figured out that the reason my power cord wasn’t working was that it had a blown fuse. The connector looked like it wasn’t disassemblable, but Corey figured out how to disassemble it, and yes, as made sense, there was a fuse inside, and when I tested it, it was bad, so I stopped off at the Home Depot to try and get a replacement fuse, so I could be charging my power station via my cigarette lighter port on the drive down.
But there was no such luck. They didn’t carry the size that I needed, and good gravy, they are proud of their little glass fuses. Two fuses was nearly $7, had they had the correct size, and for that same $7, or so, you can get a pack of 20 fuses off of amazon.
You pay a heck of a lot more money for the convenience of having something today.
Of course, they didn’t have the size I needed, so I couldn’t get it today anyway.
Start of the drive down south. I was going to stop off at the Springdale Walmart, but I’m so used to starting that Drive South in Orem that it snuck up on me so quickly that I just drove right on by it without realizing it until I had already missed the exit.
So I figured I would just keep right on going, which I did, stopping for gas I think around Beaver, and then finally stopping at the Walmart in cedar city.
Listened to gospel stuff on my phone during the drive, talked to my dad and stepmom a bit, talked to my sister Heather affair bit, my brother-in-law haunts a bit, and I had a few voice chat conversations with a couple of friends of mine.
Good stuff.
I was supposed to have sold all the ammunition while I was in utah, but I didn’t even create a classifieds listing while I was up in Salt Lake and Utah counties. 😅
Now I’m realizing how big of a blunder that was because I won’t be allowed to take the ammunition into Canada, and I have no idea how hard it will be to sell while in california, oregon, or Washington.
So I made an ad tonight right before going to bed offering it up for sale in St george. Hopefully I’ll get some bites tonight or tomorrow morning before I make it to St george.
Otherwise… ugh.
Not very smart thinking on my part procrastinating getting those ads up.
Double ugh.
Anyway, I’m crashing for the night at the Walmart parking lot in cedar City because there are enough RVs and campers and other van lifers in the parking lot for me to not worry about anybody caring whether or not I’m sleeping overnight in the parking lot. I didn’t even bother to look for signs about whether or not I could park here because there were so many other people parking here. Hopefully we’re all fine. 🤞
Gratitude:
- Though completely unimportant, I’m grateful that I was able to get the water to flow not only back down to the pipe again, but so strongly that it was actually able to flow over the waterfall leftovers, enter the pipe, and even had enough flow to make it all the way to the end of the probably 75 yard long pipe that has several cracks in the bottom where water just goes right underneath the pipe instead of staying in the pipe.
- I’m grateful to have made it to cedar City without any vehicle issues. Rover was starting to idle badly in the Home Depot parking lot, but I just sort of… ignored it and drove away anyway. 🙃
- I’m grateful to be able to have gospel conversations with so many different people. I chatted with my friend Chris a bit as well. Good stuff.
- I’m grateful to have the strength to write in this journal every day. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the habit, and I don’t want to count my chickens before they’ve hatched, but I’ve been doing pretty well. Hopefully I can keep it up.
- I’m grateful that I have the time and the means to circle back all the way down to Nevada again, since it didn’t work out timing-wise on the way out to Utah.
- I’m grateful to have had the desire for sugar and junk food pretty well plucked out. I had the thoughts pop in to buy some ice cream or some pastries or something, and I just didn’t care. 🥳 Hopefully I can keep that up.
Success:
- I recognized a poor reaction during one of my conversations today, and I think I was able to push past that reaction to a better perspective.
Improvement:
- I can feel the distracted driving temptation pummeling me quite a bit. 🙃
Love and hugs!
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 