Magazine 2

And look who's on the cover of this
month's Young Model magazine!

Magazine

Look who made the cover of Kitty
magazine!

Fans

Even the buses are Cards fans!

Merkle/Vista Trail

Due to time constraints and the cool weather we've hiked the Merkle/Vista Trail at Usery Park the last couple of days. It's one of our favorite short hikes. We can do it in half an hour and still enjoy great views and a decent work out. Here's a couple of pictures from yesterday's hike.

	Karen on the Vista Trail. The hill in front of her is the top of the Vista Trail. The mountain with the light colored line of rocks across its face is Pass Mountain.
	Karen and Ross's sister Lee at our Xterra in the parking area for the Merkle/Vista Trails.

Papago Park

A couple of days ago we visited Papago Park in Phoenix for the first time. It's in the same area as the Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden, both of which we have visited in the past. Ross's sister Lee came with us. The park has quite a few hiking trails but the most interesting is the Hole In The Rock Trail. The hike is up a large rock formation to a hole that has been eroded in it. For such a short hike (less than 1/4 mile and about 200' elevation gain) the views at the top are very good. After that hike we hiked out and back along one of the flatter trails. Next time we visit the park we may bring our bikes as all the trails except for the Hole In The Rock Trail are bike accessible.

	The Hole In The Rock at Papago Park in Phoenix. Note the people on top of the rock formation. You have to do some off trail scrambling to get there. We didn't go up there.
	Karen at the hole and the view from the top of the hike.

Visitor

Ross's sister Lee, who also has a
place in Sun Life, is in town for a
couple of weeks. Great to have her
here!

Centipede

After attending one of Ranger B's brown bag lunch talks yesterday (the topic was desert tortoises) we spent a few minutes looking at some of the critters in the visitor center. Here's one of them, a centipede. This one is probably 6" - 8" long. Like most things that live in the desert it's poisonous. We're not sure which end is the head.

	The centipede at the Usery Park visitor center.
	A closer view of the centipede.

Desert Discovery

Check out our desert discovery.

Motorcycle

We've always wanted a motorcycle. Well, maybe Ross has. Now our dreams have come true! Check out our new motorcycle:




Pretty cool, huh? And it was free! Ross found it just sitting on the side of the road while we were out biking today.




Well, it's a motorcycle, isn't it???? :-)

Yikes!

Ross's backpack ate Jake!!
Luckily it threw him up later.

New Phone

Karen was in need of a new
"GoPhone" (a pay as you go phone)
so we shopped around and found this
Samsung phone on close out at Best
Buy. It was $30 but came with $50 of
time! Basically they paid us $20 to
take the phone.

Snake Video

Today we went to Usery Park for one of Ranger B's brown bag lunch talks. The talks are now being held in the park's new visitor center. After the talk (today's was "All About Our Sonoran Desert") we visited with some of the animals on display. Not only was this rattlesnake in a glass cage but the cage was locked in a room so there were 2 panes of glass between the snake and us. Here's a video of the rattlesnake.

NOTE: If you're squeamish about snakes you might want to skip this one!

YACP (Yet Another Cat Picture)

The cat's IN the bag.

Microsoft Store

Today we paid a visit to the new Microsoft Store at the Scottsdale Fashion Square. We had never been to the Fashion Square and found it to be a VERY upscale mall. It's so upscale that they don't even call it all mall! Upon walking into the Microsoft Store my first thought was that I was in an Apple Store! Microsoft has basically copied an Apple Store. The layout is the same (although the Microsoft Store was a little bigger). The workers were dressed in the same colored t-shirts and had the same style name badges as in the Apple Store. They copied the Apple Genius Bar with their help desk. It even had a display showing appointments like the Genius Bar. They did have something different, large screens set up on tables that highlighted Microsoft's touch gesture technology using their Virtual Earth (think Google Earth) program. Very cool! But Apple had the same technology on the iPhone almost 2 1/2 years ago.

Disclaimer: OK, I'll admit it - I'm an "Apple bigot." :-)

The new Microsoft Store at the Scottsdale Fashion Square.

Guess Who!

Bike Ride

We're out for a longer (10+ miles) bike
ride today. Our first stop was the
library. Now we're at "Gyros Place" for
lunch. Excellent Greek food!

Picture: our bikes outside the
restaurant.

Bike Ride

Coming back from a bike ride to
McDonald's. It was "only" in the upper
90s. At least we create our own breeze
while riding.

Super Scorpion Search

Last Saturday evening we went to Usery Park for a "super scorpion search." We had purchased a UV light ("black light") in order to see the scorpions in the dark. Scorpions have a chemical in their bodies that causes them to glow under UV light. There were probably 75 people that turned out for the hike. It was just 1/2 mile out and then back. Along the way we saw and counted 9 scorpions. They were all either bark or tiger scorpions and were very small. In Arizona the general rule is the smaller the scorpion the more dangerous! The small bark scorpions are the most dangerous. If stung they're generally not fatal due to the small amount of venom they inject but you'll sure wish you hadn't been stung! What could be more fun than searching around in the dark for dangerous creatures? :-) We had a great time!

Hiking And Biking

One of our favorite short (about half an hour) hikes is the Merkle/Vista Trail in Usery Park. We hiked it today for the 3rd time since getting back to Mesa. It's been getting easier each time as we try beating our bodies back into hiking shape. But it was really hot today under the sun! Still a great hike but we'll probably wait until it cools down a bit before doing much more hiking.

We've also been riding our bikes more and more since getting back. A couple of days ago we rode almost 10 miles. Tomorrow we're planning on riding to the library and then to lunch. We LOVE riding our bikes around town!

New Rug

After a lot of looking around we finally
decided on a new rug for our park
model. Southwest pattern of course!

New rug - same cat.

HOT

103.1 degrees at 11:34am today.

New Friend

Karen made a new friend while we
were in Vegas.

Back In Mesa

We're now back in Mesa, AZ for the winter.

BIG WIN IN VEGAS!!

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on
you. That's $4.00 we won on video
poker! We're on east street now!

Lunch At Times Square

In New York (New York) on the Vegas
Strip.

Las Vegas

We're now in Vegas for a few days
before heading to Mesa for the winter.
We're staying at the Sam's Town RV
park.

Springdale, UT

Right outside the entrance to Zion
National Park.

Postings

We just noticed that the number of postings to our blog has very roughly doubled each year since we started in 2006:

2006 = 9 postings
2007 = 16 postings
2008 = 27 postings
2009 = 58 postings

Ross whipped up a quick C program on his Mac to project what would happen if that trend continues. Here are the results:

year = 2009, postings = 58, per day = 0.2
year = 2010, postings = 116, per day = 0.3
year = 2011, postings = 232, per day = 0.6
year = 2012, postings = 464, per day = 1.3
year = 2013, postings = 928, per day = 2.5
year = 2014, postings = 1856, per day = 5.1
year = 2015, postings = 3712, per day = 10.2
year = 2016, postings = 7424, per day = 20.3
year = 2017, postings = 14848, per day = 40.7
year = 2018, postings = 29696, per day = 81.4
year = 2019, postings = 59392, per day = 162.7

As you can see by 2019, a short 10 years from now, we'll be making over 160 postings to this blog PER DAY. We'll be very busy posting - but you'll be very busy reading too. :-)

Zion National Park

We're now at Zion National Park after spending 5 days at Bryce National Park. It's less than a 2 hour drive between the parks. This is our second time at Zion; we were here last year at the end of September. We're staying at the park's Watchman campground and got here early in the afternoon. We were told that we couldn't go into our reserved site because someone else was in it. Turns out that those people were supposed to move to another site today but the site they were going into was occupied, so they decided to just go hiking all day! They finally got back around 3:30pm, moved and we were able to setup in our site. Takes all kinds... Tonight we attended the Ranger Program at the campground's auditorium which is a 30 second walk from our site. This talk was on fossils. Not too bad. After the talk I took some time exposure pictures of the mountains and the sky. Here's one of the resulting pictures.

Zion National Park at night.

Ruby's Inn

We're staying at Ruby's Inn RV park
just outside of Bryce Canyon NP.
Here's a picture of home for the next
5 nights.

Bryce Canyon NP

Inspiration Point - Wow!!

Fillmore, UT

We're spending the night at the KOA
here in Fillmore. The county is named
Millard - really!

On The Road Again

Rest break off I80 in northeast Utah on
our way to Bryce Canyon National
Park.

Summer's Over

Yesterday was our last working day of the 2009 summer season here at the Bear Lake KOA. We are, like almost everyone else who works here, exhausted. We're sad to be leaving the new friends that we made but we're really looking forward to getting back to Mesa. We'll be taking about 2 weeks to get back there. We're going to spend some time in Bryce National Park, Zion Nation Park and Las Vegas. Today we'll be packing up the Casita and Xterra and tomorrow morning we hit the road.

	The outside of the campground's office (duh) where we spent most of our time this summer.
	On the left side of this picture is the registration desk. The 2 computers are where we would check in arriving campers. Over the course of the summer we became VERY familiar with KOA's software, Kampsight.
	A group of our fellow workers in the backroom of the store. In front is Elise, in the back (left to right) are Tashina, Shelby, Tawai, Alicia, Brandon and Parker. These are just a few of the large crew we worked with this summer.

Stuck Skidster

A few weeks ago Curtis (one of the owners of the KOA) decided to use the campground's new Case skidster to dig up 3 bushes next to our Casita. That would create a nice parking space for a vehicle next to us. When he went in for the middle bush the skidster's wheels dug into the soft ground and it got stuck. He used the campground's Farm All tractor to pull it out. So what did we learn?

1) Don't use heavy machinery on soft ground.
2) Have a rescue plan ready.
3) This campground has some REALLY COOL machines!!

	Curtis in the stuck skidster. The main concern was not damaging the water supply pipe (which we use for our Casita!) right next to it. Happily it didn't get hurt.
	Pulling out the skidster with the Farm All tractor.

Yellow

Yellow is the color of KOA.

Bike Rack Solution

Normally when we want to take our bikes somewhere we use our bike rack which fits into the hitch receiver on our Xterra. But when we're trailing our Casita that isn't an option. We explored ways to take our bikes with us when traveling in the Casita and most ideas we came across were either too expensive (like a roof top rack for the Xterra) too involved (like welding a receiver on the Casita's bumper frame) or too unstable (like a dual receiver adapter.) After some thought and searching we came up with a good solution for us.

We purchased 2 bike fork mounts at our local bike shop in Mesa. These are meant to be bolted to the bed of a pickup truck but we used them in a slightly different way. We got a piece of pine wood that was about the same width as the mounts. The piece was long enough that, when cut in two, it would serve as bases for the two mounts. We needed the mounts offset otherwise the bike handlebars would interfere with each other. After cutting the board in two it was a simple matter of bolting the mounts to the board. The front wheels of the bikes are removed and the forks are attached to the mounts. We then run a nylon strap through the bike frames and attach it to the seat post. The bikes are very stable and do not move at all. The total cost of making this mounting system was less than $60.

We used our bike mounts to take our bikes with us from Mesa to Garden City, UT via Las Vegas, a trip of 860 miles without the slightest problem. The bikes are a bit of a pain to get into the rear of the Xterra and their forks mounted but we only use this system when hauling the bikes long distances.

	The bike fork mounts with the forks attached.
	The bikes mounted in the rear of the Xterra.

Beach Trip

We're at the beach right now having
lunch. Karen went in to wade around.
I stayed on shore to document the
Excitement.

New Experience

We got to try something new today, ATV riding. ATVs are VERY popular in this part of Utah. We'd guess that about 1/3 of the campers that stay here have them. The campground owns 2 ATVs and was kind enough to loan them to us for the day. While fairly simple to operate they still do require some knowledge that we only partially possessed. After a few minutes of getting used to the shifting and throttle operations we took off into the hills behind the campground and spent a couple of hours exploring. At the top of one of the hills we climbed we found a huge concrete storage tank (don't know what's in it) and had lunch next to it. By the end of our time out we felt very comfortable operating the ATVs. One surprise is how fuel efficient they are. After riding for a couple of hours they only took 1/2 gallon of gas - together!

We enjoyed riding the ATVs and really enjoyed the new experience. But we doubt we'll be buying any soon. It's a good way to get from point A to point B quickly, but we prefer hiking. By the end of the day we had had enough of the noise, dust and vibrations.

	Karen on the yellow Honda Recon ATV.
	Ross on the red Honda Recon ATV.

Carp 'N Llama

A few days ago we rode our bikes to the Bear Lake Marina, a Utah state park, which is only about 1/2 mile from the Bear Lake KOA. It's a nice place to ride around and look at boats. We walked down to the floating dock that has a restaurant on it and were amazed to see dozens of large carp following us! They all came to the edge of the dock and stuck their months out of the water in anticipation of being fed. We didn't feed them but we did take their picture.

On the ride back we saw that one of the llamas from the farm behind the KOA had jumped the fence again and was grazing on the other side of the road. This same llama keeps jumping over the fence and even ended up here in the campground a few weeks ago!

	Carp at the Bear Lake Marina begging for food.
	Our neighbor, the llama.

Shhhhh!

Strange camera angle. Jake's paws aren't really that big.

Bear Lake Boat Ride

On Tuesday Curtis invited us for a boat ride on Bear Lake with his wife Rebecca and their 4 children. They have a ski boat that comfortably held all of us. Curtis and Rebecca each skied for a few minutes. They both wore full wetsuits which tells you how warm Bear Lake gets. The water near the surface was actually not too cold. We were out on the lake for about 2 hours and had a great time. Thanks for the boat ride Curtis and Rebecca!

Curtis, Rebecca and their 4 children out on Bear Lake. Notice how blue the water is.

New Casita A/C

The air conditioner on our Casita died. The compressor would try starting but would cut out after a couple of seconds. Today we took the Casita to a Camping World in Kaysville, UT, north of Salt Lake City and about 100 miles from here. They installed a new A/C on the Casita in a little over an hour. We now have cold air again - yeah! It's like electricity - you don't really miss it until you have to do without it.

	Our Casita, on the right, with a slightly larger RV, on the left, waiting to get a new A/C installed.
	Our Casita with its new A/C back at our site at the Bear Lake KOA in Garden City, UT.

Facebook

We're now on Facebook as Ross Goldman. Take a look and become our friend! Because of Facebook we won't be tweeting on Twitter anymore. It's too time consuming and, really, who cares what we're doing in real time? We'll continue updating this blog.

Harold Goldman 1929-2009 RIP

Very sad news to report. Ross's father, Harold Goldman, passed away on Thursday, July 2 after a brief illness. We traveled to Detroit from Utah and were lucky enough to be able to spend a couple of days seeing him in the hospital before he died. We've stayed on to help out Ross's mother and are planning on heading back to Utah on Thursday.

	Dad was very proud of being a US Marine so we were very happy that a Marine Corp Honor Guard was at his funeral.
	Flag folding ceremony.
	Marine Corp bugler playing taps.