Friday Night Blog
TGIF from cold, raining, and sleeting Utah. This week has been sunny and 65, except for yesterday, which was 75 with 40 mph winds, and today, where it’s in the 40s and raining.
Once again, not too much is happening here. Recently, I went hiking with the girls from my snowshoe class, and Ian and I had game night at the neighbors’. We went camping last weekend, which I will talk about in more detail and with photos if you keep reading.
Work is work, so it’s fine, but still work. I’ve been watching a lot of baseball, which is nice. My sneakers are falling apart, so I’ll need to replace those. Perhaps a trip to REI is in my future for tomorrow? Let’s see, what else?
We got a new plant stand for our plants.
Ian guessed Wordle in one try. Although, who knows why the word “shame” was the first thing that popped into his head that morning?
I finally emailed the wedding venue woman so I can say I’m working on wedding planning even though I’m not really doing anything. Giant mosquitos keep attaching themselves to the outside of our windows and doors. Our neighbor gave us a pro tip to pour a little water into the drain in the floor behind our washing machine to get rid of the sewage smell after we shower, and it actually worked. So now our laundry room no longer smells like death after we shower. All exciting things.
Last weekend, we went camping at Antelope Island State Park, which is about an hour northwest of where we live. I was a little worried because this is the time of year when the biting gnats come out, but we were fortunate that we had no issues with that while we were there. It was quite windy and cold, so maybe that deterred them.
We got to camp late afternoon and had a tough time setting everything up with the wind. It ended up working out, though. Look how majestic our campsite looks.
It looks much less majestic from the other side.
Next, we went on a windy walk on the beach. The little access path to get to the beach is right in the campground, which was quite convenient.
The Great Salt Lake looks a lot bigger in person.
You can just make out the red 4Runner in the distance.
A mysterious beach ball. We never did figure out what this was or how it got there.
Bison tracks on the beach
It was a bit windy.
Back at our campsite, we enjoyed an adult beverage while a couple two sites over, in broad daylight and right next to the bathrooms, were rather loudly and obnoxiously doing the hanky panky. It was pretty annoying.
Arguably, the stranger thing was that after they were done, they immediately packed up camp and left. This was at about 6 PM. Their tent also almost blew away, which was comical to watch them chase after. Needless to say, people are weird.
After the questionable couple left, Ian attempted 3-4 times to make a fire. To his credit, the wind kept blowing it out. Once the sun set, it started to rain somewhat aggressively. After all that, when it stopped raining after an hour or so, the fire hadn’t even completely gone out yet.
I don’t have photos of this because it’s a description of a noise, but I need to tell you about the coyotes. About 9 PM, the coyotes came out in full force. They were howling like crazy periodically throughout the night (must’ve been the full moon). It was wild (literally and figuratively) and a bit creepy.
Our campsite had a very clear game trail right next to it, so really the coyotes or the bison or the deer or who knows what could have stopped by anytime. I did check in the morning for tracks or poop or other evidence of late night visitors, but didn’t find anything.
Instead, what I did find was a treasure trove of biological soil! I also found one old pile of bison poop, but that’s less exciting.
I like you and want you to keep reading my blog, so I will not bore you with all of the photos of rocks I took while Ian was in the bathroom. But this is my blog and I can write about what I want, so here’s one photo of the best BS I found (that’s short for biological soil :)
Once Ian pried me away from my rock hunting, we went on a lovely 5 mile hike before breakfast. It was an easy hike, no crazy elevation gain or anything like that, but it basically make a circle around a portion of the island and had nice views the whole time.
What you can’t see in this photo is all the bison land mines in the grass.
The little tan circle in the middle is a parking lot with a vault toilet where we made a pit stop. To the right, there’s a brown blob - that’s a bison.
Oh, hello.
Full disclosure, this photo was taken from the car on our way out. We only saw the one bison on our hike.
After a delicious turkey bacon and eggs breakfast, we packed up camp and headed home. That’s when we saw this bison and about a dozen more. This one was situated best for the roadside photo-op.
Pretty purple flowers. This photo did not turn out very well. In-person, it looked like a blanket of purple and yellow with all the flowers.
The whole trip was a great distraction from the FOMO (fear of missing out) that I had with my whole family being home for Easter. Really, they’re all home already anyway, except Katie, who is moving home permanently in two months anyway. It’s only going to get worse, but I guess who need family when you have bison? That’s a lie. I miss my family very much.
I will leave you tonight with this video of a bison scratching itself on a wooden post. You can’t actually see the post in the video, so it looks like the bison is having a psychological breakdown. Between the janky fur and the itching, I figure it’s shedding its winter coat. This guess was confirmed by my mother, so now I know it must be true ;)
Squarespace is being dumb and won’t let me embed the video, so please use this link if you want to watch a bison scratch itself aggressively for approximately 15 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6ZnXim2dguQ
Until next time… Love and miss you all!
