No trespassing

 Oh hello Elder Reeeeeeveeeeedddaaaa,

We had cheeeeeele verrrrrrrrrrde for dinner on Friday, we were having fun with that.

How’s the new area? That picture you posted to Facebook said so much to me. You look lean and mean, your face is maturing, you look confident, you look happy, you are super handsome. That’s a huge comfort to me. I want you to be all of those things and I want you to have a mission experience that strengthens you for life. Probably a lot of expectations to pile on you, but if I thought the mission would do anything less, I’d probably been indifferent to you guys serving or not. I cropped and posted your picture to my Facebook wall, you may have seen it. It got a ton of positive response. I think people identify with your raw look. You look like a veteran, you look like you’re working, you look purposeful. The first guy that committed was the guy from work that we had to lay off from work for Covid. I thought he was either not a member or even an anti from some of his Facebook posts. He said “There were days like this I wish my parents could have seen when I served a mission.  It’s hard brother!” he still has those memories. Those are the important takeaways from a mission, the work, the sacrifice, the hope that you can lose yourself in the service of others. On this trip and anytime Ben tells mission stories the energy and volume of his voice goes up, more than anything else he talks about. Joe listens intently, it’s so great. Your letter was also awesome. I loved your ending. You’re 100% right. I can’t wait to talk to you tomorrow to find out more about your new area.

I’m starting this letter on Saturday night again, maybe that’s why I’m so sappy. Today was back to normal after our trip. I’ll give you a day by day summary later in this letter. The highlight of the day was that mom’s friend Ashley finally got baptized. It was the simplest, quickest baptism I’ve ever been to, all in a good way. There were maybe 10 people there, no hymns, no talks. Only prayers, I got to give the opening. The baptism, mom was one of the witnesses. The confirmation, Ben and I got to be in the circle, and the bishopric member gave a brief thought. It was really nice.

After we did our normal shopping, chores etc. Ben and I mowed the lawn. We met Joe for lunch at Cafe Rio. The weather is weird again, cloudy, really windy, dusty, and warm. There was the tiniest sprinkles of rain, but not the cloud burst I was hoping for.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, yippee.

My eyes are closing, so I’ll finish tomorrow.

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We just got off the phone with you, then we played that Uno game on our phones for a few minutes before everyone left. Mom made goulash…holy freak was that good, I’m so dang full I feel sick. 

This morning mom and your brothers made me breakfast, scrambled eggs, French toast with homemade syrup, and bacon. I got a small table for welding and cheese balls for Father’s Day. I think I may have lost weight on that trip, but it’s back plus today. At church they had pie for the dad’s, I was not in a social mood, so I left. 

Now for the trip report.

Monday — departure to the Alvord Playa

We decided to get a semi early start so we agreed to meet a the Flying-J in Tooele. The Cooper’s were behind, which I expected. I figured we were driving all the way to Winnemucca so they would have time to catch up, he drives faster than I do. It was raining pretty hard as we left, but it mostly dried up by the time we got to Wendover, but there was a brutal head wind all the way and we got terrible gas mileage. We stopped for pictures at the Salt Flats and topped off gas. Gas was over $5/gallon the whole trip, with a big shock on day 2. Between Elko and Winnemucca I started noticing all these little nuggets on the side of the road. I honestly could not tell what they were. After a while the got so thick they were staining the road where the tires ran in each lane. After a while I asked Ben who was talking his turn in the front seat if the little nuggets were moving. He was wondering the same thing. We saw those things most of the trip but didn’t figure them out for sure till day 3.

We finally got to Winnemucca early in the afternoon. By then the Coops had caught up. Do you remember when we stayed there on the way home from the PAC-12 championship game? Let’s just say it didn’t look any better in the day or in the Springtime. We got gassed up, filled the gas cans, and ate lunch at Subway. I wasn’t going to stay in that town any longer than necessary. 

The next stop was a place called Propeller Meadows. It was reported that a WW2 B-24 bomber crashed after the war. At some point I n recent history there were still remains of the plane there. The nearest town is this teeny place called Denio Oregon. There was not even a gas station in that town, and it was FAR from anywhere else. Aaron thought he had a route from Denio to Propeller Meadows, but his so-called route started at a private residence with a prominently displayed NO TRESPASSING sign at the gate. In they went and we’re prepared to drive right through till I called them on the radio and told them I wasn’t going to trespass. About that time one of the owners came out and was thankfully friendly. She said there was no way to get to Propeller Meadows from their place. I had pinned Propeller Meadows in Google maps and downloaded the area to my phone. Luckily Maps plotted I nice rout to our destination and off we went. 

There was an open mine claim on the way up. The Cooper brothers know quite a bit about geology and minerals growing up with their mine engineer dad. It was cool how they explained the minerals prospectors search for when they are looking for gold. The rest of the road wound quite a way up the mountain. It was barren up there but green and lush with spring grass and sage brush. The road wasn’t too rough but it was definitely a Jeep road. There were cows everywhere and your brothers were having fun mooing at them. When we got to where the crash was supposed to be, there were no visible signs of wreckage other than some white PVC pipes sticking out of the ground on the hillside. It was so pretty and clean up there. It was getting late so we wanted to get to camp before dark. I read later that the crash debris had been recently cleaned up.

We returned back through Denio on to the next small town which really wasn’t a town at all. It’s called Fields Station which consisted of an ancient gas pump, two outhouses, I tiny store, a two room hotel, and a primitive RV park. It was closed when we got there so we knew we’d have to backtrack in the morning as it was going to be a bit of a haul to the next town with a gas station. We drove another 30 miles to the Alford Playa. This is a dry lake bed about half the size of Utah Lake. It was past nine at that point but it was still light. We camped about a quarter mile from the shore on the dry mud. It was so cool to be out there. Your brothers set up the tent while I busted out dinner. We had our first dry soup meal of the trip, it was also a giant fail. It was chicken noodle soup, and even though I followed the directions the noodles were completely crunchy. Joey and I just sucked down the broth and dealt with it. Ben has the ability to not eat so he was fine. That night was a full moon, called the Strawberry Moon for some reason. It was so bright on that dry lakebed you could see very clearly. I took some cool pictures by moonlight before we went to bed. It was pretty cold that night so we struggled to sleep. I got up twice to pee, and it was cold out there. I had bought a new sleeping bag last winter. It was warm enough but just too small for me. 

Day two: Alvord Playa to Cow Lakes

We got up later than I prefer that morning, but the best sleep of the night was in the morning when the early sun started to finally warm up the tent. We got up and had “breakfast “. I had freeze dried multi grain cereal and wow was it horrible. Then I tried the granola cereal and holy crap it was even worse. So we just ate snacks and boiled eggs. We got our stuff down and packed pretty quickly. That orange gazelle tent goes pretty quickly. The Cooper’s on the other hand work on a different timeline. I’m not criticizing, because after all, we are on vacation. They were crammed into that Jeep with Aaron, his brother Coray, Max, Abi, and Corey’s ten year old son in that Jeep that’s even smaller than ours was. They loaded most of their stuff in a cargo bag on the roof rack. It took four of us to lift it up there every morning. 

We backtracked to the Fields Station for gas. It was $7.20 a gallon and since we were pretty low on gas it cost $110 to fill the tank. Annoyingly, we spent over an hour there and I’m not sure why it took us so long. It may be because after we were done filling up the coopers ordered $7 milkshakes. I hope they were good at that price, and that the took 45 minutes for them to come.

There wasn’t a ton of off road driving on this day. But the drive around and over the Steens mountains mountains was insanely pretty. We passed this place called Frenchglen that was a really old but well kept old west hotel. We didn’t stop but it seemed so charming and isolated. I’m sure I’ll never be back in that area, but it would be a fun place to stay. 

Our next stop was the Diamond Craters. Once again Aaron’s directions were confused and lead him to a locked gate in a bird refuge. We decided to go around and the craters were only a few miles of the road on a well marked Jeep road. These craters were formed by not so ancient volcanoes. It was fun to wander around them because since they were not a National park or monument, you could wander anywhere you liked. The volcanic rock was very rough and brittle, not unlike Noah’s Hershey bar. There were caves, lava tubes, and interesting formations everywhere. As I was walking around taking pictures though, my toe got caught on a hook of lava and I lost my balance. Things went into slow motion as I tried to find my balance. I was worried about my camera, the I was worried about my body because the ground was craggy and sharp. Unfortunately I did go down, fortunately I mostly caught myself and suffered only a scraped wrist and skinned knee, I didn’t even rip my pants.

The next stop was the unplanned delight of the Round Barn. It was a barn, that was round, in the middle of no where. It even had a visitor’s center, complete with a model of….the Round Barn. Luckily the bathrooms were clean, though I got a scare when I flushed and it didn’t go down. I was looking at the plunger dreading my next obligation when, thank heavens, it went down. I washed up and got out as soon as I could.

There was a long haul to the next gas station in Rome Oregon. This town unlike the Fields Station had some additional abandoned buildings and gas was only $5.60 a gallon, what a bargain. The gas station had a grill with some pretty good burgers and some amazing giant homemade cookies. The guy there was full of stories, none of which I believed. He said he ended up there two months ago when he ran out of gas and money. It was a good story but he sure acted like he owned the place. He also told uncle Aaron that the road to our next stop had been washed out in the rain. That was a disappointment because it would have been epic, old restored ranch houses that you could camp by and some cool gorges to drive through. It was getting late or we would have tried to find our way to our intended site. But it was late so we took a backup campsite at Cow Lakes. Yes, it’s some lakes with some cows here and there. It was a bit of a let down but it was pretty in its own way. We got to make a fire for dinner and s’mores. Your brothers warmed up some chili with hotdogs and i rehydrated some beef stroganoff. Both were a giant improvement from the night before. It was still cold that night but this time I was smart enough to wear a thick hoodie to bed and it made all the difference. I slept really well. I even only had to get up to pee once that night. When I was up I heard something breathing really deeply and loudly. It had to be a cow, even though I could not see any cows under the bright moonlight. It also could have been a chupacabra or a werewolf because of the full moon, but I didn’t want to find out so i took refuge behind the nylon walls of our orange tent.

Day three: Cow Lakes to Silver City 

That morning was extremely slow getting going, it was about noon before we got back on the road. A good hour of that was Abi braiding Aaron’s hair. You read that right. At one point he was wearing a flamboyant nylon sun hat, a tight purple t shirt, tight navy shorts, and pink and baby blue tube socks up to his knees. He had no idea. He let his brother Coray drive that day and I said something about letting the husband drive. Ben caught it but hopefully no one else did.

We were going to try to find our way back to the ranches we wanted to stay at that night. Aaron was convinced he had the route, but right of the bat we were passing through another NO TRESPASSING sign. I called out on the radio that I did not intend to trespass. So we rerouted and found another so called road. We decided to air down the tires at this point because I thought we’d be on rough roads for a while. This road it took us through a plowed field that for some reason Max called a pond. Then we took a rough two track rout that ended at a gate, with a NO TRESPASSING sign on the other side. Aaron then wanted to go through another gait that obviously led to a working ranch house. Once again I refused. So I found a no gated route that took us right back to Cow Lakes. Oh brother.

So we decided to give up and make our way to the next stop, Jordan Valley, the small town where uncle Aaron and Coray grew up. It was interesting to see where they came up, it explains a lot about their strength and independence. We went to their old house and the walked all around. No one was home but I must admit that it was once again uncomfortable to be trespassing. We stopped by their schools and heard stories. It was fun. There were no restaurants in town so we got some crap at the local convenience store. Apparently, there used to be video games at that store, fascinating.

The next stop was awesome. Silver City Idaho is a ghost town from the late 1800s that was pretty well preserved. The road was nice most of the way up, but there was a fork in the road about half way up with giant letters that said NO TRESPASSING, MINE CLOSED on it with a small sign pointing to the left clearly spelling out SILVER CITY. The Jeep was far enough ahead that I couldn’t tell which way they went, I made the silly assumption that these highly educated men could read. But as we meandered up the road there was no sign of them. Also, I couldn’t raise them on the radio. I wasn’t going to worry or wait because I knew I was going the right way and wasn’t going to backtrack. Silver city was right on top of the mountain and it really is the coolest ghost town I’ve ever been to. There was a nice free campground there with fire pits, clean bathrooms, trash receptacles, a bubbling stream, and firewood. The town was all private property and there were people living there, but they were more like using them as cabins or summer homes. Some were being restored and some were pretty dilapidated. There was one small shop open with gifts and treats, I bought a sticker to go along with the one I got at the Fields Station. Finally, I raised the Cooper’s on the radio and they couldn’t have taken a more wandering route to the town if they had tried. We explored town together for a while then came back to set camp and eat. 

Day four: Silver City to Craters of the Moon 

We got up not super early the next morning, had breakfast and wandered around some more. We hadn’t decided if we were going to stay another night or make one more stop. This was supposed to be our last night stay but since we missed the ranches we were early. There’s a couple of places I’d wanted to visit in Idaho since we took that first trip in the red trailer. One is Craters of the Moon National Monument and the other is that nuclear power plant museum that Ben visited when he was in that chemistry class at the U in high school. The Cooper’s were game so we headed out. Before we left, Aaron had borrowed Artie’s drone, he set it up outside the little gift shop, directly under the ONLY power line in the entire town. You can guess the rest, luckily, there was no permanent damage to the drone, but it was pretty funny. On the way out we finally stopped to air our tires back up for the drive home. Aaron pulled over right next to some people camping, so it was a little awkward but also fortunate because Aaron’s compressor broke after only filling two tires and mine wouldn’t fit because of his wheel design. Luckily the campers has a compressor on their truck and helped us out. Also at that stop we’re those little wiggling nuggets that we saw on the first day. Turns out they were Mormon crickets, and the only come out every several years at specific times and temperatures. I guess we were pretty freaking lucky to see them.

It was a really pretty drive across southern Idaho to craters of the moon. We stopped at McDonald’s for lunch and maverick for gas in Mountain Home. We got to the park about mid afternoon, the visitors center was closed because, as the rude female the ranger explained, the were out of power. Ummm, okay? The campground was first come first serve so I got in a hurry to find a spot. We probably got one of the last three spots. I was worried that the coopers weren’t going to get one because they once again weren’t in a hurry. They got the last spot and luckily they weren’t too far away from us. The boys set up the tent to claim our spot then we were off to the park. It was awesome. There were caves, splatter cones, cinder cones, lava tubes, hikes, vistas, wild flowers, and deer. It was gorgeous, my pictures don’t do it justice. 

It was warm there and my fourth day without a shower, yuck. We also finally got used to our freeze dried and canned dinners and actually enjoyed them. Since it was wam, I just used my sleeping bag as a blanket and slept like a wee baby. 

Day five: EBR-1 Museum and home 

We got up and going pretty early that morning because we didn’t have to wait for anyone. We stopped in Arco Idaho for breakfast. The only open restaurant was called the Green Pickle. It was a small town restaurant that has probably been the same since the sixties. We just had breakfast and it was pretty good. We got gas and headed the 20 miles to the museum. The museum was really cool and much more than a museum. It was the first operational experimental nuclear power plant in history. It was pretty much 100% intact and super informative. Outside they had the experimental apparatus that the used to try to develop nuclear powered aircraft, crazy, awesome and immense. The stuff of science fiction. It was a very cool museum. 

Then home, we fought a headwind all the way home just like the trip out. We got home early afternoon and got everything cleaned up and put away. it was an awesome trip Jacob and you were sorely missed.

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Well kid that’s the story, I think Ben already sent his story to you. I sure love you and look forward to a letter and a chat tomorrow.

Pops