Tracks

On Sunday night a bunch of us are sitting in the living room watching the Broncos/Chiefs game and a mountain lion runs right by the window ON the back porch. Today Rachel, Elsie, Jax and myself are out looking for tracks. Elsie and Jax aren't quite as focused as Rachel and I are.

Tuesday Evening

Thanksgiving Weekend

Full and overflowing so also used Last Hurrah next door.

The Little People

It's day time and the little people are sleeping. Shadows grow longer and the sun continues it's travel southwest. Evening comes and little people stir. The sun falls behind Dead Horse Point and little people are stretching, sensing the air outside their dens for any indication of a predator before emerging. With darkness the first planets are visible. Stars fill the sky, so many that if one falls another takes it's place. It's quiet, all quiet, everywhere. The little people are gathering around Base Camp and some of them are pretty funny. Cometh the hot dogs.

Mama They Crazy

The annual base jumper Turkey Boogie is a secret of sorts event. If it's official they have to get BLM permits, insurance, and I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff so nobody takes credit for it or claims to be in charge. You've got to be "in" or it's hard to find out what's going on. I'm clearly not in. While previously always on Thanksgiving morning at the Tombstones this year I'm at the lodge picking up all the leftover solar stuff on Wednesday afternoon when guests check in and tell me the Tombstone parking lot is full. Checking online sure enough it was from 2 to 5pm on Wednesday instead of Thanksgiving morning. So this morning I head over and do find about 15 guys still jumping during the 30 or so minutes I was there but after the first two apparently my GoPro shut off so all I got was two jumps. Unfortunate because I saw my first double forward flip today before pulling the chute.

Ringtails

I thought I currently had four, plus the real young one that showed up recently. Last night all four showed up at the same time and I saw the baby later. Despite seven gray foxes sitting out in the parking lot they all four set perched high in the front porch rafters and seeming not all that concerned about the foxes though they did spend most of their time watching them.

Jax, Desert Dog

Jax, of Michelle and Jax, minus Michelle, has returned to Base Camp for an unknown amount of time. It's a long story so I'll skip it.

Almost Time

Driving back from Moab this morning I saw cars in the parking lots at three places. It's almost time for Turkey Boogie. While most people are thinking Thursday is Thanksgiving and a day off work, here it's hundreds of base jumpers converging in Moab for the Turkey Boogie. In the second picture where you see the lone figure at the top of the Tombstones there will be hundreds of parachute jumps into a chalk drawn picture of a turkey with the top ten getting prizes. If you go back on the blog for the last three or four years I've been to every one taking video of the jumpers.

Stuff

Days are much shorter and the Anti-Cline that use to light up so much in the evening hardly has any sun on it as sunset with the sun moving further south. There are 11 gray foxes each night and at least half of them hang around all night making the skunks and ringtails prisoners at Base Camp. I'm feeding the foxes just one time in the evening and then not putting any more food out for them hoping they'll drift off and look for something else. Both bowls of Kit&Kaboodle still get emptied twice a night. Once by the foxes there are so many of them now and once more by the raccoons early in the mornings. Each day the parking area requires two small shovels of scat to be hauled off. Twice last week I heard the howls of coyotes in the basin that I haven't heard for ten years but so far no tracks showing them coming to the lodge. After the first snowfall I expect I'll be seeing signs of the female mountain lion that comes down from the Anti-Cline twice each year to take a deer or big horn.

Wednesday Evening

It's Finished

All the solar work is done and it's clean. It's nice to see the reading at 97% all day and still around 90% in the morning.

Almost Time

Scat

Each day there are 10 to 15 new fox poops in the yard I shovel up and throw in the hole. Doing so I can check to see if there's any hair in them that would establish I lost a ringtail or skunk. There's not though I see rabbit and white-tailed antelope squirrel hair occasionally. But mostly they are bird seed, sunflower seeds, and hot dogs.

By the Case

While I was at Village Market getting a case of hot dogs for the skunks, ringtails, and my ten new gray fox friends the manager came up and said he was glad to see me. They had been puzzled how hot dog sales had gone up so much but hot dog buns stayed the same.

Ben

Every year I get a four to ten wanderers that are hiking either The Discovery Trail or the Hayduke Trail. Usually 20 to 40 years old and determined. Generally they are tired and worn out by the time they get to me. Today on the drive to town to pick up firewood I met a guy named Ben walking to the top of Hurrah Pass and again on the way back from town where he was hiking in towards Moab. Ben is doing The Discovery Trail which starts in Delaware and goes to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I ask Ben how he was doing the whole trail by himself. Most that I run into come out the year before and scout the difficult sections and then bury water and food setting GPS coordinates so they can find the stuff on their hike. Ben said he's doing the trail both ways and expects it to take him of course twice as long. Usually it's about 15 months. Ben walks in 10 to 20 miles and then walks back to his vehicle. Drives up to the end of where he turned around when he was walking and repeats the process the next day. Sometimes, like around here going down Lockhart Basin it's pretty much impassable from my end with a vehicle. So he parked at the impossible part, walked in 15 miles and then hiked back. The next day he went down to the other end and did the same thing the next two days so in time he's getting every bit of The Discovery Trail and doing it in both directions. Ben is 71 years old. Was nice to have met you Ben.

Trick or Treating with Kobae: Courtesy Linda

Kobae and I trick or treating together with daughter Heather and cameraman and reporter from San Diego Channel 10 News.

Kobae Needs a Drink: (Courtesy Linda)

After being followed by hundreds of people off and on while walking through the streets of Moab, Kobae needs a drink.

The Peaceful Place

Lucy and I spent Saturday at the Peaceful Place eliminating all the weeds.

The Baby Skunk

The Nightly Ritual

Solar Work

The new array is up and bringing in 2.5 times the collection power of the old one. Still some work to be done but should be finished in a couple days.

Still Crazy

I've had one ringtail for about two years now that is crazy. Add to that the baby, probably three or four months old that showed up last week and that makes two crazies in the rafters.

The Nightly Ritual

My Favorite Petroglyph (Thought hard to see)

From Amasa Back

New Guy

The video is going to always be a little dark while feeding the hot dog as I don't want to blind them but as they turn away I'll get pretty good video. The new guy (baby) is the second one to show up each evening and all the other ringtails are curious about him as everyone else visits him briefly just to exchange smells. He seems happy to be here as he's here when I feed before going to bed and again around 4:30 to 5:30am when I go out to check on everyone.

Elsie's Stick

Never got a straight beach this year. There was always this 10 or 15 feet of knee deep water between the bottom of the stairs and the actual beach and I've notice that the beach moved a little further south this year.

From the Basket on 14

Lot of disc golfers this weekend. The weather has been really good. Mid to high 60's during the day and high 30's to mid 40's at night. I probably should have kept Kobae one more week. We could have hiked all but one of these days. Was weird going to the grocery store and not getting romaine. However if I'd have kept him one more week we wouldn't all be movie stars. Course that deleted cost has been replaced by the new night little people at the lodge. I've never seen more than six gray foxes but last night there were nine at one time. Usually I have two ringtails in the evenings and two in the early morning but starting Friday night a third one showed up in the evenings and it's very small, not much more than a baby. So last night with five ringtails, two skunks, and nine gray foxes it was a 52 hot dog night. An average night is in the 30's. There are still nine raccoons but they have broken up now with the guys all coming together and the girls coming up later so twice a night I fill both bowls of Kit&Kaboodle. It's a bag about every other day. Once the raccoons show up the foxes won't come to the food bowl. I was nervous that feeding hot dogs to the foxes who were previously eating out of the food bowls would keep them around all night and I'd lose my ringtails and skunks but I'm up one ringtail and one skunk and around 3pm in the afternoon I have a bunch of rabbits I never had before. It's all confusing.

Redo

Construction going on for the next week or two as the entire solar system to include panels are all being replaced.