(written on the 19th from notes taken yesterday)
I was grateful to get good sleep last night and also to have a night that featured almost no pain. 🙏
Rover began heating up very quickly in the morning Sun, so I didn’t hang out for very long where I was. I did a several point u-turn, not wanting to explore further down the road I was going on and having stopped last night at a place where I felt like I could turn around because the surrounding land was on roughly the same level as the dirt road without big rocks in the way.
As I got back on the road, I stopped for pictures here and there–at a fun rock formation named Turtle Rock, at beautiful view where the Green River cozied up to some sheer cliffs on its far side.
We have a very beautiful planet. 🙏
I stopped off to at look at some more petroglyphs, pulling up behind a very young couple with “Just married” written in their back windshield. I offered my congratulations to them as I passed them on the trail to the petroglyphs.
Though I’m generally not one for civilization, after hours and hours and hours on really rough dirt roads, without any real stopping to break up the constant jarring and shaking, I’ll admit it was nice to get back to a paved road. 🙃
The next stop was the official Dinosaur National Monument visitors center.
Interestingly, because I had come from the absolute middle of nowhere on back roads, I had never passed a pay station, and probably only 100 ft from the entrance to the parking lot for the visitors center was the pay station for those coming the “normal” way.
There was no exit pay station for those coming from my side.
🤔
I stayed out in the parking lot for a fair bit to spend time writing my journal entry for yesterday, as I don’t want to get too far behind.
Though still not disciplined enough to write my journal entry before I go to bed, I’m making progress toward that goal. 🙏
After finishing my journal entry, I headed inside to the visitors center and chatted with one of the people behind the counter, asking if they had any idea what kind of fly that was that was terrorizing me in swarms yesterday.
They didn’t. 🙃
They did say that if the flies were swarming and not landing on anything or eating anything, then they were probably mating.
Apparently, they considered me an Anniversary Inn. 😅
While I was waiting for the little tourist video to end, so I could catch the next one, I saw the free shuttle pull up that takes people to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, so I decided to head that way first, as it seemed like good timing to just be able to hop on the little shuttle and go.
The fossil wall at the Exhibit Hall was enormous and… wow–quite the sight to behold. 😲
I think there were something like 1,500 fossilized bones still there in the large layer of exposed rock, leftovers after years and years of painstaking excavation that yielded some of the most complete skeletons ever found.
Super cool.
Like many others, I loved dinosaurs as a child. It’s fascinating to see the bones of gigantic creatures who lived gazillions of years ago.
Back at the visitor center, I watched the video, which had several shots of places I had been to throughout the park. That was kind of cool.
After the video, I stopped off at the counter to ask one of the employees what I should do about having entered the park from the side without a pay booth. With no exit pay booth for those who came in on my side, it would be easy enough to drive away without having paid a penny.
But that’s not honest.
The person behind the counter said that I could by the day pass, or I could also buy the America the Beautiful Pass. As you know, mine had lapsed at the end of April when I used it on its very last day of usability to go to Grand Teton National Park.
Though it was $80 as opposed to the 25 for the day pass, I decided to just plunk down the $80. I may not use it again this year, but then again, maybe when I go back to South Dakota after this little detour in Utah, maybe I’ll swing by Grand Teton again and then Yellowstone, since the entrance to the park where I was remained closed because of snow.
I stopped off in Vernal to grab a handful of gallons of gas before heading up to Flaming Gorge. Gas was expensive in Vernal, but even more so up at the Gorge. I decided to buy 5 gallons to make it up to the gorge and back and then hoped to find cheaper gas at the Walmart Supercenter wants back in town.
For the second time in I think just a few weeks? when trying to put only a handful of gallons in my tank, I managed to get the machine to stop exactly on the thousandth.
5.000 gallons. 🙃
I think I’ve only tried to do that two or three times during that span, so that’s a pretty good success rate. 😆
Too bad there are no prizes for a perfect cut off like there are in some game shows. 🙃
My main interest in going to Flaming Gorge, other than that I’d never been there before was to see if I could do a little bit of fun cliff jumping. Marked out a few spots on my Google map that AI had recommended as good jumping spots, so I headed first over to Cart Creek Bridge.
Looking down at the water, I couldn’t tell how far down it was. I thought it looked about the same as Hokitika Gorge on the south island in New Zealand, but then I also remembered having measured from O’Sullivan’s Bridge, thinking that it was shorter only to find out that it was a good bit taller.
I wondered if I had a means of measuring, thinking about it for a while before remembering that I had brought back the paracord with me from New Zealand!
So I went looking for it, gratefully found it relatively quickly, grabbed it, my tape measure, and a long stick, and headed over to the bridge.
Tying the stick with the same Slipknot that was still in the paracord from New Zealand, I dangled the stick all the way down to the water, marked the spot on the Paracord that matched the railing of the bridge, pulled it back up, measured, and found that it was just shy of 60 ft.
Sans back problems, I probably would have taken the leap, but there’s a big difference between 60 ft and 43ish ft. That’s a fair bit of extra speed in those extra 17 ft of free fall.
After measuring the drop, I decided to make future measuring easier by putting a knot in my paracord every 10 ft. That proved a little more difficult than I anticipated, as I had so many feet to pull through the knot loop that multiple times I ended up confusing which loop I was pulling on and ended up pulling out the very one I had just started.
That was a little annoying. 😒
Not willing to jump from 60 ft up, or even 56 if I climbed over the railing and then stood on the road level, I decided to head over to a campground that supposedly had jumping spots ranging from like 10 or 15 ft all the way up to 50 ft.
The drive to the campground past over the dam, up the other side and back around toward the water, and there were several lovely photo op spots along the way, which I took advantage of. 😊
Unfortunately, the two additional cliff-jumping spots listed by AI turned out to be behind paywalls, so to speak, and I wasn’t interested enough in jumping that I wanted to pay for the recreation use fees of the areas that had those jumping spots.
So I turned around, deciding that maybe I would just go for a swim down by the dam visitors center.
As I parked and then walked toward a little spot that looked like it had a decent, maybe 20-ft cliff, I noticed one of the signs entering the area mentioned that it was illegal that particular County in Utah to cliff jump above 10 ft.
😶
10 feet? Really?!?! That’s… not even cliff jumping. 😅
I really dislike it when lawmakers tell you what risks you’re allowed to take. If they involve other people, fine. You can’t drive 100 mph going down the road. Got it. You can’t go shooting guns in random places. Got it.
But if I want to jump off a cliff into water, that should be my prerogative.
If you want to make a law about people having to pay for rescue/expenses incurred because of such choices, I’m all for that.
But don’t tell me that I can’t jump off a cliff into water. Don’t close caves, because people make poor decisions and get stuck and die.
Let us make our own decisions and live with our own consequences.
End rant.
Anyway, I did enjoy a few jumps from a spot that was probably 10 or 12 ft off the water (no I didn’t get my tape measure to figure out where exactly 10 ft was 🙃).
From the dam area, I headed over to Red Canyon viewpoint, having seen on Google Maps that it had stellar reviews. Gratefully, I got there after the visitors center was closed, so presumably, when there were fewer people. 🙏
And yes, it was a beautiful sight to behold. 😊
While still at the dam, I had made a reservation to attend the 7:10 endowment session at the Vernal temple, deciding to do that one over the 6:00 session, as I didn’t want to rush myself.
Choosing the 7:10 session turned out to be absolutely perfect. 🙏
I’ve been feeling the darkness creeping in so quickly lately, almost universally because of my superficial concerns that, as unimportant as they are in the grand scheme of things, are actually terrifying to me right now.
So powerful are those fears that after going through the endowment, hanging out for a good long time in the celester room and coming out of the celestial room full of peace and light, as soon as I saw myself in the mirror… the darkness started to creep in, and by the time I got to the Walmart Supercenter just down the road a bit from the temple, I was already back in fearful darkness.
This is really doing a number on me. 😞
From a different perspective, I’m getting one of the opportunities I asked for, to understand what it’s like to feel what other people feel, and I know there are people who have felt and now feel and will feel in the future as I’m feeling right now.
It’s hard.
I chatted with my sister Heather for a little bit, did my grocery shopping, bought gas for a little bit cheaper than what I had paid for it when I grabbed the 5 gallons before heading up to Flaming Gorge.
I may or may not have bought a tub of ice cream to drown my sorrows. 😅
As I was driving up the hill on the main road out of town, I saw a young man, hazard lights on, hood up, on the side of the road.
I was really struggling at that point, darkness invading from all sides, so it was nice to have a service opportunity.
Whenever I’m hurting on the inside, focusing outward is a blessing to everyone, including myself. 🙏
The young man’s vehicle was overheating, and unfortunately, I think it’s because of significant transmission issues.
The transmission fluid was dark dark brown, was definitely burnt, and had apparently gotten hot enough to be spraying nasty dirty transmission fluid out the vent tube onto his fuse block. 😶
I grabbed my scanner and ran the codes, and he had two codes related to transmission issues. Almost certainly, he’s got a bad transmission, but there’s a slim chance that he could flush the fluid and perhaps buy himself some time.
Generally, with fluid that nasty, you just leave it in because it means the transmission is shot, and removing it might well lead to the transmission slipping because the grit suspended in the fluid is no longer aiding in the grabbing of the clutch discs.
I gave him instructions for what I would suggest he do, and then I headed out.
Crossing my fingers for the young man. 🤞
I felt a lot better after having spent time in service, but unfortunately, it wasn’t too long before the darkness started to creep back in. 😞
Apparently, not having had enough of rough dirt roads, I decided to take another one, leaving the main road somewhere near Stawberry Reservoir, and heading up into high Alpine Hills between Stawberry Reservoir and 5th Water Hot Springs.
I had toyed with the idea of making the hike over to the hot springs, but it was late, and probably not all that smart to hike alone in the dark. I may have bear spray, but… being smart doesn’t just mean carrying a can repellent.
Also, in my current state of fighting on-again-of-again darkness, perhaps the last thing I need is to up the chances of fighting off additional darkness by tempting fate at a hot springs where bathers regularly enjoy their experience sans clothing.
I’m a little over two months clean from porn garbage, but I’m feeling very weak, having succumbed to the powerful darkness of superficial fears and battling them, but what battling the deeply carved neural pathways that immediately search out some form of diversive, consumptive escape… or just calling it quits, deeming my life not worth living anymore.
Powerful pathways. 😕
And from such a silly catalyst. Enormously potent… but silly. 😞
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I rolled into a perfect little camping spot, by myself at the beginning of a trail, chuckling to myself that somehow way up here, I have reception.
With a darkness returned, I succumbed to that diversive drive, the gratefully only with neutral consumptive stimuli (Tesla news, Ukraine news, Michigan football news, etc)
Better than the stuff that cankers my soul…
But I’m at heavy risk for that stuff now. The last couple days, I’ve noticed triggers pushing thoughts that direction.
Darkness, from whatever source, is a powerful destroyer. I never would have guessed the biggest bringer of darkness for me right now would be my feelings about the image I see in the mirror.
I don’t remember exactly what time it was that I called it a night, but it was after 2:00 in the morning.
With the morning Sun beginning to bake the van quite early, I knew I was in for another short night’s sleep.
If I’m going to get a good night’s sleep over the summer, I’ve got to get myself to bed earlier.
Of course, it would also help if I put my bed on the floor instead of up high where the heat impacts the quickest. 😅
I need to figure out how to beat this darkness back. I need to figure out how to accept my appearance… let my fears go, and embrace the new opportunities for humility and strength.
[sigh]
Lift the world.
And…
Uh…
…Bring it on. 😬
~ stephen
Lift the World 