The Last One

I've been informed I'm aging and due to this natural occurring process I celebrated my last birthday for the next 6 years or more. From here on out I will be 29.

For the weekend we went to Cedar Mountain to try to escape the heat, like everyone else in Nevada, and had a great misadventure. The weekend could really broken into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. Last night (my actual b-day) as we were going to sleep Jed leaned over to me and said "Happy Birthday-today sucked."

Let me explain...

The GOOD

We left Saturday morning, stopped at Panguitch Lake and rode a 10 mile trail. It was very picturesque and we happened upon a beautiful meadow of wildflowers. I don't think I've ever seen the hills so green in July, it truly was gorgeous.

The meadow AND where I plan on taking up my summer residence to escape the heat. Jed always told me he wanted to live in a shack and have ten kids. I'll take the shack.

OR better yet...

An ice cave. One of the trails we rode led to an ice cave where you could actually see your breath and throw chunks of ice at your brother's head while "ice skating.." The cave is bigger than the shack so it may be the better choice.

That little Jack LOVES to ride, as you can tell by the supreme joy radiating from his face. He will happily go boneless, leaning back on Jed and ride for miles and miles and miles, without whining, fussing, moving or anything else he does in the car, like hucking his sippy cup at my head.
The other picture is all of us on a hike to see an invisible waterfall. The park service went to great lengths to create a look-out spot for a spout of water coming out of a hill a million miles away, so we took the opportunity to pose for a family pic. You've witnessed the good, now...

THE BAD

Trailer tire blow-out before St. George, in the right lane, with mucho traffic. Jed looks at me and the first thing he says is "Time Me!" And that right there is one of the many reasons I love this man. Optimism in the face of adversity and a great sense of humor to go with it! If you haven't seen "Christmas Story" you might not find this as humorous. By the way, it only took him 20 minutes. I was impressed, he was a little disappointed. It would have taken me that long just to read the manual on how to operate the contraption.

Now on to...

THE UGLY

So, as we were discussing how lucky we were that we didn't have a blow-out coming down Cedar Mtn. or in the gorge POP. You guessed it, another tire blew, you see we were only half-way through the gorge. In case you are uninformed about the gorge, it is a 20 mile death tunnel of curves and guard rails. However, the one place it widens and is open territory was where we were at when KABOOM. Nonetheless, everything went down-hill from there. No more spare tire, no cell phones (did I mention they both died and both of us forgot chargers)115 degrees.

How we feel at this point. Especially when the kids and I have to leave Jed in the gorge, with the trailer of 4-wheelers, (all we need at this point is someone to steal them) drive to Mesquite to replace the tire, and then drive back to Jed, sitting in the heat on the side of the freeway.

We left at 2 and got home at 7. A three hour journey extended to 5 hours. The kids were done. Jed was done. And I was DONE. My birthday long winters nap sacrificed.

I won't tell you the rest of the incidents because PDub is on vaycay and I don't want this to leak to him (he is the owner of the equipment) but sufficient to say Jed wasn't kidding when he said

"Happy Birthday-Today sucked."

I know I don't like that word either but what do you do when there is no other way to put it?