5:45 am: Wandering

 In case you didn't know what it looks like, 5:45am.

Jax and I are just wandering on this morning. Looking for little canyons and crevices where we haven't been. Temps have began dropping. Instead of 102 to 106 every day it's 98 to 100 and the difference is noticeable. It's doesn't heat up during our morning hikes for an extra 15 or 20 minutes that we didn't have before. Sun is coming up one minute later every day and going down one minute earlier in the evening. At night with the cooler on I have to pull the blanket over me occasionally.

The channel is still on my side of the river and it's turned into about a four foot drop off to get in the river. It's a bit of work to kayak to the sandbar. I dropped by the boat ramp a few days ago and it's nice with three sand bar beaches just 30 or so feet offshore and only ankle deep water to get to them. I'm thinking I'll move the kayaks over there. It's a drive for everybody but it's so pleasant. Last night guests were sitting outside and I heard a lady say. "So there we are, on a beautiful beach, standing in the epic Colorado River, and there's nobody around. How does that happen? How? It's incredible. Look at this sky. I don't know when I saw the Milky Way last. What? Are you kidding me?"

Jax is so happy each morning when we go hiking. He runs around me in circles, jumps up in the air nipping at my fingers, he's a force that can't be resisted. I sit down and finger fight with him. He almost always draws blood but it's soooo worth it. Maybe an hour later we'll be hiking along somewhere and he'll do it again. I remember the first day Michelle showed up and opened the door of the truck she was driving and a designer dog jumped down with a sweater and ribbons on him and a collar. He's all desert dog now. I haven't heard from Michelle since she left after dropping him off a month or so ago.

At the end of May, with 70 something cancellations I was down $75,000 over the same time last year. I don't think I'll quite catch up by the end of this month but I will in October somewhere. Even without $20,000 to $30,000 in movie and commercial location fees that I got last year I'm going to catch last year's revenue numbers which were a record for 13 years out here. There is a location scout coming sometime in the next two weeks so there's still the possibility though getting kind of late in the year to actually happen this year.

River is really shallow. Stuck on a sandbar and time to get and push.