Week-end Warriors

Saturday July 16, 2011
Utah Lake State Park
Lake Shore Campground #25

I was up and out running by 7:00.
Today, Saturday, was VERY different from
running on Thursday morning. 
I ran the same lovely route but
today the boats were streaming into the park,
and there was what I was told was a
“mini triathlon” happening on
the river and the Provo River Parkway.

I was amazed at the number of people up and
out at 7AM trying to make sure they made
the most of their 2 days of freedom.
I’d actually sort of forgotten about that
although I recognized the behavior right away.

David was still in bed but was heading out
by the time I was coming back in.
The heat doesn’t bother him as much
and he has that addiction to black sludge.

I didn’t get pictures of the pairs of
folks involved in this effort who were in costume.
One pair of girls had on all white running clothing
and their bridal veils were flying in the breeze.
I offered congratulations to them as they
passed me going out as I was coming in.

Another pair had on cut off jeans, some sort of red
bandanas tied around their heads, red T-shirts with
some sort “hillbilly” motto on the back which
I couldn’t catch since they too were going the other way
But I did notice when they smiled that
they had blackened their teeth.
;-)

Bikes everywhere, at least a dozen canoes on the river
power boats on the lake, walkers, runners………..

Wish I had a camera I could take running with me
but I’d have to have it in my hand all the time
and that just doesn’t appeal.

David has pockets in the shorts he runs in
and doesn’t mind stopping for pictures so
he got some of the waterfowl doing their ducky thing.

Here’s a better shot of the interesting headgear
the white one on the left above was wearing.

Looks like a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat doesn’t it??

Every swamp, wetlands has its blackbird.  We’d been
hearing those familiar sounds but couldn’t get
the little, well not so little, bugger to stand still.
But here he is.   We have the Red Winged Blackbird
in Virginia.   This is the Yellow Headed Blackbird of Utah.

Everyone, folks and fowl, seemed to be making the most
of the day.

Once we both got back, stretched and cleaned up,
we had another one of “those breakfasts”.
mmmmmmm good

We steered clear of the “facilities” for
the rest of the day and let the warriors have at it.

Instead we worked on the solar question.
More research, more talking to Terry via email.
Still don’t have it down to exactly what we think
we need and where to get it.
But we are making progress and hope to have it
all settled in time to have things sent to us
at Grand Teton National Park.

One of the first questions is, what’s the shape of our
current house batteries?
To answer that,  David took the house batteries out
and drove them to Auto Zone to have
them load tested.  They both passed so apparently
our way of boon docking for up to 16 days
at a stretch hasn’t hurt them so far.
That’s good to know.
But we’d like to be able to do as much as 3 weeks
before we have to find shore power.

Got up to 94 here today so I was very glad
we weren’t outside in that and that we
had hook ups for AC. 

After dinner we popped up a batch of popcorn
and rewatched Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets.
A very rare occasion for us
usually I’m too tired not to fall asleep in movies.
But this is and was very funny.
Nicholson is just great in every role he plays.

We do plan to go out in the morning to
get on the river hopefully before the troops get up.
I’m remembering that after a big Saturday,
Sunday is a little slower.
Hope so!!