I Remember When

All three of these trees were on land before more floods came and widened the creek and now they all sit inside the creek.

New Friend

We have a mesh front door that hangs down and allows Jax to go in and out at will but keeps the bugs out. Occasionally a chipmunk or white tailed antelope squirrel will come in and I'll protect them from Jax. The problem child is the rock squirrels. The largest squirrels with the bush tails. They know where we keep the sunflower seeds for morning feeding and they had right for the hall way. Jax has free reign with them as they are about the same size. In the summer Jax will sit just around the corner in the hallway and wait for them to come in. When he hears their feet on the linoleum floor he blows around the corner. The rock squirrels struggle to turn around on the waxed floor and retreat.

Jax and I come back from hiking and when I walk into the office the trash can is tipped over. I'm thinking how happy Jax is going to be getting to chase a squirrel. A skunk comes out of the trash can. It's quick on the trigger. Sees us and sprays, though not in our direction. Jax and I run down the hallway and outside. I run back into the kitchen and grab a couple hot dogs and put them by the front door hoping it will smell them and come back outside. Jax takes off with both hot dogs. I go back in the kitchen and grab two more and see the skunk round the corner into the kitchen and back outside. Now he/she comes to visit every day. I leave the front door closed. People will pull up to play disc and when I walk outside they say "There's a skunk on your porch." I'll grab a couple hot dogs and it will take them and retreat under the porch. It's an older skunk and I'm pretty sure it's about blind. When I put a hot dog on the porch it doesn't seem to notice. It will hear the hot dog hit and then it's nose will guide it to the hot dog. Not sure what I'll do when the visitor season begins in late February.

Bears Ears

Obama created the national monument his last day in office. Trump shrank it early in his first term. Biden way expanded it past what even Obama had. I'm waiting for Trump to shrink it. When Biden expanded it the boundary went all the way up to Hurrah Pass and took the five or so acres I have on the north side and absorbed it boundary wise, not legally. The argument to create it in the first place was it's beautiful and mostly untouched so it needs to be protected, by the federal government, not locals. If after all these years it's beautiful and monstly untouched by designating if a national monument won't that just increase more awareness of it. So one evening last week a guy calls and wants to know if I would do a one night rental. He wants to come and explore Bears Ears. I tell him I have a minimum two nights because one night is too short for the customer, drive all the way out here, then leave in the morning. And, too much work for staff without bringing in more people and using up more rooms. He understands. The next day Jax and I go hiking. Just for a change we do the north side of the road coming down from Hurrah. Pretty much all on the five acres I have on that side. It's not until we get back I realize we were also hiking Bears Ears.

Clarification

I guess first I should clean up some stuff. When I previously posted I was going to put the north side of the property up for sale, primarily to get the mortgage payment down, or eliminated, and along with that reduce expenses, which would insure the long term future of the south side of the property which is the lodge. The reactions have been all over the board. I have two serious proposals but they both want to own the whole place and that makes sense. Example being their are seven bedrooms in the lodge. I have one, Teresa has one, we have one that other folks that work here occasionally live in on the rare occasions when we need help or we use it as overflow should I make a booking error and overbook. Hasn't happened so far. This is my friend waiting to go hiking. He sleeps on a bed on my desk.

Teresa's room and my room are what it takes to run a 145 acre property and eight rentals. If you bought just the north side who is going to run it and do maintenance and cleaning. If you leave one of the four units open for staff you've eliminated 25% of your potential rentals. Could easily make a deal with Teresa and I to run and maintain it but it's easier if you have eight rentals. Over here at the lodge I use to rent out the 7th room and we had two bunk beds in it. That made too many people at the lodge in my opinion. I've also gotten a decent amount of inquiries to how little can someone buy. I don't want to change the lot sizes. It's expensive and time consuming so my thought process is just the north side and that's in the $3.2 range. However nobody wants just the north side so far, they want the whole place and it makes more sense unless you're going to add more rentals to the north side. My friend still waiting.

I've had some people want to book before it changes hands and while I'm appreciative I don't plan to sell the whole place but the offers have been quite a bit. I thought I'd keep this side, the two courses, one weekend a year for the north side disc tourney and access to the boat ramp and gravel pit. The offers have said if I sell the whole place I can stay and they would be very flexible on my terms. I don't plan to sell the place in whole. If I can find additional revenue sources and ways to reduce expenses all of it becomes irrelevant.