Movin’ On

How We Be:

We be good, and ready to move on to another town, another job. We left
Heber City and climbed over 1,000 feet to get over the Wasatch Front,
then dropped down into Brigham City, pop 17,000. The park we’re
mapping is Willard Bay State Park, about 14 miles north of Ogden on
I-15. We thought the park was on the Great Salt Lake, but it turns out
they have built a fresh water reservoir on the flood plain of the Salt
Lake, so have a large recreational lake, with lots of water sports and
apparently really good fishing.

The Box Elder beetles were out in force at Wasatch Mountain. Reminded
me of how they used to get into Q Photo and cover the windows. They
also used to get into the GYN office I worked in on 4th street. It was
very disconcerting for women to have the doctor pick bugs off their
gowns and sheets. The offending tree was tracked down to the Red Oaks
Square but the beetles apparently don’t bother anyone over there.

Here we have some skeeters, but not too bothersome. It’s windy,
blustery and rainy. Pretty typical fall weather.

We have had a mouse die in the coach. It’s been as awful as you can
imagine. We figure it will take about three weeks for the smell to go
away; it’s been nearly two, now, and getting better. Even more
upsetting than the smell is what we hear about the deer mice in this
area carrying the Hantavirus. A friend of a friend cleaned his rig
really good, looking for mice nests, found a big one and cleaned it
out. He was dead within four days, having breathed the mice feces
“dust.” Davey tore the Bluebird apart, looking for our mouse, and found
evidence of them in a pair of large blue shorts (not ours!) which had
fallen down behind a drawer. It wasn’t much of a nest, but I’ve been
watching him closely for flu symptoms, etc. I think we’re okay. We are
now putting moth balls in little plastic raspberry containers, with
holes in them, in the backs of cupboards and under the beds, etc. Old
RVers swear the mice won’t come in if they smell the camphor.

One of our last days at Wasatch Mountain, Dave biked around the park
and noticed a bunch of “women” on the golf course dressed in lavish
ball gowns. He asked a ranger about it and the ranger groaned as he
described some annual event sponsored by a Park City Saloon. We thought
it was pretty funny. It became even more interesting when the weekly
paper ran a picture of the “homecoming royalty” I described as being
stuffed in the trunk of a hatchback for the Wasp parade – turns out on
closer inspection, they were all guys. As was a major part of the pep
squad, wearing cute little cheerleading uniforms and wigs. Whoever
thought there was so much cross dressing in a little Mormon mountain
town.

On our way to Brigham City we spotted a whole herd of oreo cows. Must
be a new breed: they were all black with a broad white band around the
belly.

Southeast Publications’ fiscal year just ended. We’re proud to say we
made the sales achiever’s club, for gross sales over $50,000. I think
we get a T shirt. We aren’t going to the fall meeting the end of this
month in Florida (where we would get proper recognition, I’m sure);
it’s too far. We’ll hit the other annual meeting on the west coast in
April.

For your next movie night, if you haven’t seen it, be sure to check out
“The World’s Fastest Indian,” with Anthony Hopkins. It’s wonderful.

Our New Mexico jobs just increased by one. Our managers are doing a
Chamber of Commerce directory in Fife, WA and can’t get to the park
they committed to doing in November. We’re happy to help them out, so
will go back to Albuquerque the first of November and do a park on the
west edge of the city. Then we’ll go north and do the two parks we have
in Santa Rosa, NM and Fort Sumner. We’re gonna be there in December,
again, damn! We tried to work our schedule to get further south by
December, but it’s hard to pass up a good job, and we would do almost
anything for our managers. They’ve lined us up for a park in
Montgomery. Alabama after New Mexico, so I guess we’ll get thawed out
then.

Love to all,

Sam