Tuesday, 12 through Friday, 15 October 2021
I certainly didn't intend, when I came here, to stay so long, but between the weather and my undone chores, it just seemed to make sense to try to catch up. Which I mostly did.
The predicted massive snowfall never arrived. I think we got only about an inch of snow on Tuesday morning - it was starting just about the time of our 2nd morning walk. Much worse than the snow was the wind, which the weather service said was blowing at 15 mph (it felt much stronger to me) and created a wind chill of 27°. That was at 4 AM.
By 7:30, the wind had died down a bit but the temp had gotten colder, leading to a wind chill of 22°. No fun to walk in and Dexter hated it - could hardly wait to get back inside - though Gracie didn't mind it much with her extra coat. The wind blew all day and made us all pretty uncomfortable. If it hadn't been for that little portable heater, we'd likely have run out of propane.
On Wednesday the wind died down. So even though the temp was actually colder, it felt much warmer.
Then Thursday it was cold and windy again all day long, and also on Friday morning. But finally, in the afternoon, the sun came out and for a while it was pleasant. Then the wind picked back up and everything cooled off again.
Because the original prediction had been for on-again-off-again terrible weather, I couldn't ever be sure each day's changes didn't presage something hard to drive in. So I kept staying.
This was a fairly comfortable campground. Mostly gravel but lots of little islands of trees and grass between the campsites, so it was much more pleasant than some that rely on gravel. There was a nice-sized dog park and another large grassy area designated as a dog walk area, so we always had someplace to go, even when other dogs were out. The biggest problem for us was the other dogs staying here - one couple had a pair of Huskies, for instance, who loved the terrible weather and were left outside on long leashes most days and who barked at us whenever they saw us, even from a distance. And several others like that.
The other problem I had was trying to stop Dexter from eating anything he thought smelled good - whether it was edible or not. Early Friday morning, something he ate caused him to vomit inside the cabin, and I had to clean up not only the floor but also the dog bed, and leave it outside all day to air out and do an extra load of laundry I hadn't planned on to get the cover cleaned. Grrr.
During this week I got several blog posts written, made reservations for where we'll go when we leave here, figured out where the scenic attractions were that I wanted to see in Utah and how I could get there, and started to make plans for going to New Mexico next month. I don't normally look that far ahead but I worried that bad weather might be in store for early November in northern New Mexico. And sure enough, I found several campgrounds that, despite saying they were open all year, planned to close up on November 1st. But I certainly didn't want to abandon the thought of seeing that part of the state so just had to work harder to be sure I could.
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