Tuesday August 1st 2017

Today’s blog isn’t going to be a page turner. When I don’t do anything interesting, the blog reflects it well. It got to 95 degrees today and the next couple of days are predicted to be warmer. The monsoon weather is forecast to return over the weekend to cool things off. Until then the air conditioning will get a workout.

Mountain view in the evening lighting.

Since today was the first of August, I started to look more seriously at my plans for the fall. I’m not sure where the summer is going, but it seems to be half over already. The month of August is pretty clear. I’ll be touring the national parks of Utah. There are parts of northern Arizona that I’d like to visit during September. In particular, Grand Canyon National Park, the Verdi valley and Sedona AZ are on my list. The problem starts when I look for available campsites before it gets cold enough to snow at altitude.

As I look at the planning process, I have one known date and one strong desire. I have a reservation in March of 2018 in Florida to see Grapefruit league baseball games and the strong desire is to settle in one place for a month or two. In April, I thought I’d spend December in the Lake Havasu AZ area. Further investigation didn’t identify a good place or as much to do in the area as I expected. The next thought was to spend December in San Antonio Texas. I’m still working on that idea. I’ve identified a possible campground and confirmed that there is plenty of things of interest in the area.

There is a lot of territory between where I am now and Texas. There is also several months to cover the distance. The next step is to fill in the gaps before I change my mind again. The trick is knowing enough of my itinerary so I can make reservations with some confidence.

Rainbow behind the campground.,

Where’s the pot of gold?

This afternoon I made another attempt to visit the Territorial Statehouse State Park in downtown Fillmore. This time I found the grounds filled with little tents. People were setting up awnings and cooking facilities. The parking facilities were filled with cars, trucks and trailers parked across multiple spots. Other than the tent city, which was probably boy scouts or something similar, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. I drove slowly around the block trying to decide if I wanted to get out of my air conditioned car. I concluded it wasn’t worth the walk from the available parking well away from the tent city.

Still no pot of gold.

This evening a big black cloud passed through the area. It generated a lot of wind, but no rain. There was moisture in the cloud, because a very distinct rainbow was visible between here and the mountains. Since I could see where it intersected the ground, I was tempted to go in search of the pot of gold.