San Diego

Jax and I get into San Diego Tuesday morning early. Was a straight through drive. While we have a room to ourselves Jax finds a bed he likes better.

I brought my computer with me as I was getting six to ten reservation requests each day. Jax got up on the table to assist me.

Linny shows up and Jax jumps right up with her.

Bad weather coming to the mountains of Utah. Maybe if I get to St. George by nightfall I can beat the storm. It's raining all the way and we get held up in traffic and when we get to St. George it's snowing which means the next 200 miles will be ugly We spend the night and we're back to Base Camp early afternoon. Weather mostly sucks. Kobae climbs down out of the truck with the suitcase ladder we made for him, walks aroung for 20 minutes and heads to the laundry room. Came out twice to see what the weather was like and went back in to the landry room which is where he has been for nearly 100 hours now.

Stuff

Jax and I do a little hiking around the property. As it gets warmer more traffic out our way.

Then we head to town for Jax's haircut, he needs it, but he don't like it.

While Jax is getting his haircut I tell the guys at Nations I'll be heading out soon to go get Kobae but the truck battery is dead. As they are putting in a new one somebody sayd just get to St George before the big storm hits. I check the weather and it says Cedar City will get a lot of snow and 70 mile an hour winds. They finish installing the new battery and Jax and I are heading for San Diego. The following day we're hiking with our friend and missed the blizzard.

Base Camp Hiking

The Propane Story

For maybe 12 years or so Amerigas was my propane supplier coming out roughly twice a year. To my knowledge there was never a problem. The street people that drove and maintained the trucks were excellent. The administrative people were a nightmare. They would bill me say $2.39 a gallon for the two 500 gallon tanks that were here at the lodge. Then bill me $3.39 a gallon for the two 500 gallon and one thousand gallon tank on the north Last Hurrah side of the property. When I'd call the Green River office the lady told me it was because they had to drive farther and more wear and tear on the trucks. It's one mile from the south side of the property to the north side and the road is good. It was a constant battle with administration.

One day I'm in town at the Feed and Grain store getting critter food and I see a guy from Farrell Propane filling up the feed store tank. We talk, he says he can do much better than Amerigas. I switch, close out my account I think it was around 2018, maybe 2019. Tell them to come get their tanks. One of the 500 gallon tanks was a rental. A year after I cancelled them they sent me a bill for the 500 gallon tank they hadn't picked up yet. I called Green River and they cancelled the bill. The next year it happened again. I called Green River and they cancelled the bill, then the next year, then the next year. Each time they told me they had closed the account and cancelled the propane lease and somebody would come get it. They never did. Last year they sent me a bill again and I called the Green River office but got forwarded to the National office. I had to call four times, about once a month and each time they said they'd cancel the bill. Then I got a notice from a collection agency. They were going to put it on my credit report. I called Amerigas again and they said they really took care of it. I called the collection agency and they said it was taken care of.

Ferrell kept delivering and it went pretty well. Then on one of their trips on the way back they blew two tires on the truck. A year or so later one of the gages was wrong, I thought I was almost out of gas so I called Ferrell and they said they don't deliver on weekends. There's a guy in Blanding Diamond Propane. He's delivered a couple times before and he's great. I called and he said he'd see if he could move some things around. Not too long after that Ferrell calls and says there in Moab and on the way out. They drove from Colorado. I hurry and call Diamond but can't reach them so I leave voice mail and email sayig Ferrell is here don't come. Ferrell delivers and then heads back. What I didn't find out until later they got a flat or flats on the way back and spent the night in Moab.

I felt bad for Diamond but I can't make Ferrell drive three hours each way, two people. and not deliver the propane. When he did his first delivery Tami who worked here got a call saying her vehicle which was being worked on at Nations was ready. I ask Diamond if he can drop her off on the way back. He says yes. When Tami gets back she says she needed a few other parts and he went in the auto parts store to make sure she got the right stuff and he paid for it, then dropped her at Nations. In these days that's a hard story to believe. Not many people like that anymore. I've spent my whole life working to be surrounded by people you can count on. If Ferrell and I have a fallout I'll do business with Diamond.

Ferrell calls me a few days later and says they've had flats the last two times they've come out. They'd prefer not to do it anymore. If you're losing money I can't blame them. I email Diamond and tell them I'd like to fill everything up but before they come out let me see if I can get the county to come grade the road to make sure there are no issues. I'm back and forth with the county and they are trying but they are buried in work so I email Diamond to keep them updated. County comes and grades the road, I email Diamond to tell the road is graded and whenever they'd like to come out let me know and I'll be here. Then I realize they haven't responded to my last four or so emails. So I email and the response is roughly they had a truck hang two wheels on Hurrah and then I cancelled the last delivery so they don't want to do business with me. I'm stunned. I'm a good guy and care about the vendors. I stretched my relationship with the county to come grade the road to makre sure there were no issues with the truck getting here. They don't want to do business with me. They moved some things around to make the last deliery and I cancelled it. Don't want me as a customer. I've never to my knowledge had somebody that didn't want to do businesx with me but I got one now. I sent one more email and never got a response. Stll if he thinks I'm a loser that's his call and I still think they're great. Now it's been a couple months and I'm getting low on propane. I'm thinking I'm going to buy a propane truck and deliver to myself, fill everything up, then go fill up the propane truck again, park it here and I'll have a reserve of 2,500 gallons. Amerigas still has two tanks here. I call them to see if I can buy them and then I'll have an extra 500 gallons at the lodge and Last Hurrah. The lady comes back on the phone and says I haven't done a delivery in quite awhile. I tell her the account is closed and I just want to buy the tanks. She says the account was never closed and do I want an order. I say yes, hook up the two tanks that are yours and then fill all of mine up. They say they'll be out Tuesday or Wednesday. They never do. I'm almost out of propane. There are only three companies and none of them are coming out here. Then I hear about a company way up in Roosevelt thinking about expanding. I call them on Friday and they say they'll be here Monday.

On Monday I drive to town and wait at McDonalds where you turn off to come to me. I hardly slept the night before, the road had deterioraed since it was graded a couple months ago and the weather sucked. Here comes a Mountain West propane truck around the corner. I wave, hand him a walkie and tell him to put his tires where I put mine, it's going to be an hour and two turns are narrow you might have to take your mirrors off. As we're going up Hurrah it's not a blizzard but it's getting there. We get to the two corners I think are going to be an issue and he goes right around them barely slowing down. Everything goes well and I'm full at both places. In a propane truck it's about a five hour drive to me and the same back. He drove ten hours. I escorted him to the other side of Hurrah during the storm and I thanked him for ten hours of driving to get me propane. He said "Thank you for the experience."

Hiking

The Front Porch

This bush falls down every winter. I think it's reaching for sunlight. The first few years I tried to lift it back up but no need. Once the sunlight hits it, will pop right back up.

The Desert Willow is the centerpiece of the front porch. Somewhere between May 10th and May 14th a single flower will bloom, the next day 10 more, and the following day hundreds more followed by six to ten hummingbirds at any one time. At the base of the Desert Willow in the afternoon the side blotched lizards will move about five feet up the trunk of the tree and hang on head facing the ground. When I water all the bugs runs up the tree straight into the mouths of the lizards.

Pretty Funny

Linda sent this. I know the sign on the Pot Ash Road and I think I know the Indian.

Khe Sahn

Jax and I are walking around Kobae's pen checking to see what he could hurt himself on or how he might escape when he get back in a week or two and there are three squirrel entrances about 20 feet from each other. You can tell two of them are large and one is small. Then the sun hits the small one just right and I can see down the hole. It's huge and going off in a couple different directions. Jax is going to have such a good year chasing squirrels. I wonder how many tunnels are out there. It sort of feels like I'm at Khe Sahn. I can't see the enemy but every night you can hear the VC tunneling closer.

Sunday

I hear there is a football game somewhere today. Jax and I will probably miss it. We have places to go, around Base Camp, little people to see. The hybrid did not show up last night, at least now while we were outside so no picture of it yet. Jax and I headed down the creek to the beach. Any sign of the deer was gone. The kayaks were left right side up when winter hit and they got water inside them and then it froze making them pretty heavy so got em tipped over to drain. 46 degrees today. It's nice so hopefully they are draining.

Ice is starting to melt here and there up on the Anti-Cline. Dangerous place to hike this time of year. Water and snow got down in the cracks behind the rocks and froze. The ice expansion pushed all the cracks a little wider. The rocks didn't fall because the ice gripped onto it. But soon, beginning over the next 30 days or so when the ice melts it will let go of the rocks and it will be gravity's turn.

Awhile back Jax and I were out hiking to the east of the property and saw a bunch of white on the rocks. Generally out here that means a spring somewhere with a lot of salt in it. Jax and I had some time so we went to investigate and see if that pronouncement held up.

There was water dripping out of the rocks and had created a pool of water. Jax and I took the creek bed back.

Some More Days

Seeing one or two vehicles a day, up from none. Heather said somebody ask on Facebook if I had a picture of the hybrid and I don't but I'll see if I can get one tonight. Just a couple weeks or so away from heading out to get Kobae and right at a month before the disc golf tournament. Took 120 sign ups, sold out, and some folks on the waiting list. As for the property getting pretty close to sold out March and April and May is going pretty fast. Maybe three more weeks and then it's going to be tough to get a place to stay.

Last week, not sure what day, I wake up, push the button to turn the computer on and it doesn't come on. I call around Moab trying to find somebody that can fix my computer and when all is said and done, there isn't anybody. I find a guy who says he'll ship it off someplace to get fixed. Yes I've backed everything up, though not frequently but I've got nothing to load the back up on and he says it will be about ten days before it comes back, if it comes back.

I can't take bookings, check the schedule, change dates, I have nothing to work with.

I've got some errands to run and by the time I get done it's going to be dark and the heater in the while truck doesn't work. I head over to Nations to see if they can fix the heater and while they're working on it there's a guy in the office I don't know. I'm telling Chris my computer problem and this guy says "I have an extra Mac you can borrow." He goes home and gets it and I'm in business. I get back to the lodge, call Dave in San Diego who set up my computer in the beginning. He kept everything and he sets me up again in less than a half hour. I'm up until 2:30 in the morning catching up to the days requests and I got to say it's going pretty well. Close call. Dave says he'll set me up when I go get Kobae.