September 29th...En route back to beloved Stanley, ID

(Bill's Perspective)

The boat ride didn't have as much of a negative impact (impact being the key word) as I thought it might. I got up early and took the dogs out then felt compelled by my good night's sleep to stay up. I got the second video uploaded, got a bunch of sermons from Lancaster Baptist downloaded and eventually imported into iTunes, then loaded into the iPod for use on the road. We haven't had the radio on much during this trip, but when we do, we're usually listening to Pastor Chappell's sermons. He's a good speaker.

We had a largely uneventful ride over to Stanley. Kim drove today so I got to take in the scenery. There was a lot to take in too. We continued South on 95 then continued South on 55 then East on Forest Service Road ?? then North on 21 into Stanley. No complicated directions or unnecessary yelling at the GPS. We knew exactly where we were going and when we pulled in, it took mere moments to select a site in the sun instead of one of the many in the trees. We're so tired of being in the cold and dark that we actually want to be awakened by the sun. It's supposed to be warm and sunny during the day even though it will be below freezing each night. :) We're not staying in a campground as almost all of the Forest Service campgrounds have already closed. In addition to the campgrounds, all the dump stations in the area are closed as well. Humpf I say... We are staying in a dispersed camping area near Stanley Lake. We're in a huge area of many acres with only 2 other campers in the area. The dogs will quite enjoy all the off leash time, I'm sure.

In a departure of style from most of this trip, we decided to build a fire. This area is just filled with dead and dry pine trees and the remnants of other people cutting firewood. It wasn't long before I had 4-5 foot flames roaring to keep us warm. I can't really explain how fast it gets cold here. The sun is quite hot during the day but as soon as it goes down, the temps plummet...really fast. Probably 20-30 degrees in 2 hours. So by the time it gets totally dark, whatever isn't facing the fire is quite cold.

We have no hook ups here so the generator is really paying for itself. With it, we can run everything but the AC. Since we certainly won't be needing the AC here, all is well. Kim made a very nice dinner of rice and some burrito type fixins like black beans and tomatoes so we had burrito bowls by the fire. After dinner, we just warmed ourselves and enjoyed the night sky. Once the flames died down and our night vision came back, we could see pretty much all the stars everywhere. Well, maybe not as many as when we were backpacking in Capitol Reef NP but it was a close second.