Some Good Stuff

The batteries at the lodge were guaranteed for six to seven years and that's what I got. New ones showed up and the installation was quick. In and out in about four hours. Lot more capacity now and the time was good. There was a five day film crew here and again the infrastructure got tested to the max. In addition to coolers and air conditioners most every plug in the place had something sticking in it re-charging camera or drone batteries.

One guest saw nine baby skunks walking out to the big rock in the back yard, the nursery of big horn sheep has returned, I saw my first baby ringtail in the rafters in a couple years. I went to give it a hot dog and it smelled the hot dog and ran. The first bunch of baby raccoons have showed up with mom and her five kids and today I saw to lizards so small they would fit in your fingernail if not for their tails. It's the baby time of the year and they are all so cute. I'll try and work the Go Pro the next few nights and see what I can get.

This morning Tami was walking by the east cistern that collects water off the roof and she doesn't know why but lifted the lid to look in there and a baby skunk had fallen in and was swimming around. Years ago when I got here I'd find drown lizards and the like in them so I decided that whenever I or we change the environment and sometimes it's detrimental to the critters that lived here before I should mitigate it as much as I can. Lizards and white-tailed antelope squirrels drowning was not something that was done before we got here, at least not here so I put boards in the cistern attached to empty with lid on gatorade bottles so that the board would float and leave me just enough room to put water containers down there and water the vegetation. Anything that fell in would land on the board. A few of the air containers have come over the years and the board was starting to sink some. I reached in and grabbed the skunk who was happy to see me and kept it's tail down with my second hand, placed it on the ground and it ran for cover. Tami and I attached four new bottles and it's floating right again.

For the last several days the commercial crew that was filming out here a few months ago and got run off by the locals returned and we closed the place down just for them. They absolutely refused to do any filming off the property for fear the Punk Ass Weenies would get involved again and it's not like Moab has gotten friendlier since then, if anything it's worse. We had to get creative to find places that fit everything they wanted the filming to do for their commercials but we did it. There was a medic here everyday, they wore masks in 106 degree heat, got their temperature taken daily and were as careful as you can imagine especially for the brutal temps they were dealing with. They were so professional. I'm glad they came back and trusted me. Moab doesn't deserve them. Man they were good. Jax and I drove around a little bit and raked up the few tire tracks they missed but it's all back to normal. Feels so good they were able to finish. Was a military operation somedays with the new models in the middle of Jeep convoys being protected from being seen by anybody. At an intersection one Jeep would peel off and block the road from vehicles coming just in case and another in a different direction. Was fun to watch. I have some great video of the stuff but promised not to show it until the commercial is released and I'll have a link to the web site at that time.

Tami had an incredible effort yesterday. The whole production crew moved out of everything we had and the two houses, two hogans, and two rooms re-rented the same day. It was a 12 hour shift for her but she pulled it off.

As one production crew was pulling out yesterday I was on the phone with another one talking about filming a series out here. As usual they non-disclosure me to death so can't say much of anything more until and unless it's a done deal but when we got done I said do you have any questions and she said she has a list of things they needed and during our conversation she had checked off every one of them.

On Wednesday I got an email from a running company. They do one week seminars on running and the environment asking about putting 25 people up for a week and doing a clinic out here and I'm all in. The future looks promising as most always and sounds like there will be no shortage of interesting.