CuRVWander

  My writing about our adventures in fulltiming have gotten woefully behind.  I'm going to compress some time with this post. May 2023 We had a very welcomed resident in the volunteer campground.  A Great Basin Gopher Snake.  This guy and a companion did a good job of keeping the rodents at bay.  I didn't have a single mouse get under the hood of the truck or in the camper all season. Spring was long, cold and wet.  It made for some gorgeous flora. Cyndee at the Swett Ranch taking in the perfume of a giant lilac bush. Notice the long sleeves and vest. We had been photographing so many small, delicate flowers in the  desert that coming across all these large flowers really got our attention. More yellow flowers amongst some very uncommon long, green grass in the high  elevations of the Uinta mountains. The first mowing of the yard of the Swett Ranch. Growing conditions were so perfect that mowing was needed  every week for the first six weeks....

  Flaming Gorge, named by John Wesley Powell on his epic trip down the Colorado River.  Upon floating into the gorge and seeing the red canyon walls illuminated by the sun he wrote that it was as though the gorge was on fire and that he and his crew agreed that the name Flaming Gorge was the right name.  And we get to live here for four months. Actually, Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area is a relatively small area within the 1.2 million acre Ashley National Forest .  Everything we do is associated with the recreation area.  And while it may be dwarfed by the size of the forest, the rec area is plenty big.  Our short commute to work is 12 miles round trip, the long one is 30 miles round trip. May/June 2023 As previously posted, we arrived on May 19th and almost immediately set to work in getting all the interpretive sites that the volunteers were going to operate in appropriate condition for opening beginning the week leading up to Memorial Day.  ...

  Okay folks, this is a departure from my normal lauding of fulltiming life.  We've had a bit of unpleasantness that life can bestow.  Beginning in April, while still in the Austin, TX area, Cyndee was struck with some serious gastrointestinal distress.  Long story short, her problem was traced to difficulties with her gallbladder.  It was either hyperactivity, blockage or stones or any of a number of other things that interrupts the normal flow of bile. Fine, we're in a great place medical services wise.  We'll do the Dr. visits, sonograms, X-rays and whatever in the three weeks remaining before we had to depart for our Utah summer gig.  Wrong!  Couldn't get an appointment for a Dr or any imaging service.  When they tried to get us set up for four or five weeks out for the first appointment we would tell them about having to leave in three weeks.  Upon learning that they simply declined to complete the diagnosis or provide treatment....

  May 19, 2023 Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area Red Canyon Road We made it!  Seven months after leaving our extended stay service with the Corps of Engineers at Allatoona Lake we're here.  Our experiment of traveling with a truck, trailer, SUV, and cargo trailer has been better than anticipated with the exception of said SUV going tango uniform (see previous post).  We covered almost three thousand miles as a caravan, driving separately but close enough together that a pair of little family channel walkie-talkies kept us in contact.  Even with the limited range of the little radios they were far superior to cell phones since we were traversing long stretches with no cell signal whatsoever. From our position in southern Utah there was really only one, practical path we could take to our destination on Red Canyon Road and that was via Vernal, UT.  The mapping apps predicted a four hour drive, which means at least five hours for us.  We'll stop in V...