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.