The life and times of The Archuleta's: May 2009

We went camping over Memorial Weekend with some friends from my work. We left Friday about 3:30 pm and headed towards the Lonely Beaver Campground in the Henry mountains (near Hanksville). The weatherman said it was suppose to rain all weekend in southern Utah (where we were headed) but who ever believes the weatherman - but lo and behold, as we got close to Hanksville we watched the dark clouds roll in and then it started to rain. LOTS of RAIN!!! (and it didn't stop until sometime in the early morning hours) Of course the road we needed to take was a dirt road and it just got sloppier and sloppier until we got STUCK!!! We tried to go up a slight hill, but the weight of the trailer in the slippery mud was just too much, so Dennis thought the best thing to do was to back it down the hill, through the little creek that formed from all the rain, and up the slight hill on the other side of the little creek. The mud was so slick that the trailer would not cooperate with what the truck would try to make it do. It was now 9:00 pm, DARK, MUDDY, and down right scary. I made Dennis quit trying for a few minutes so we could pray. What else was there to do? Thank goodness our friends (T&S) left Utah county about 30 minutes later than us and they were the angels the Lord sent in answer to our prayers. They hooked a tow rope to the trailer and pulled us up the incline, then down the road a ways until there was a decent spot we could pull the trailer into for the night. I am grateful for Dennis and his excellent driving skills and cool head as he tried so hard to make the trailer cooperate in the mud. We spent the night parked on the side of the road, but our friends went on up to the camp site as they had some neighbors that were already at the camp spot and wanted to check on them. So we spent the night in our nice warm trailer parked in the mud on the side of a very muddy road while it rained all night. But I felt safe - and we were not sleeping in a tent like (T&S) and their neighbor. We wondered if we would be there until the sun came out and dried things up a bit, and figured we could play games and read all weekend long, at least we were doing something different than the daily grind of home life. We had just finished a nice breakfast of fried potatoes and eggs when T&S and their neighbors drove up. They said it was nothing but mud where they camped and they were all wet, so they wanted to camp somewhere else. I was worried about driving on the muddy roads, but T&S were in front of us and their neighbors in back of us, so if we got stuck they could pull us out, but we had not problems and got to the highway safe and sound.
T standing in the mud at our first nights camping spot

Beautiful southern Utah red mud

After about an hours deliberation (after checking the weather reports with every place possible on the internet, and with the ranger station saying that it was going to rain all weekend) 2 families decided to go home and T&S and us decided to go to Goblin valley were we would be on paved and/or gravel roads and campgrounds.

It rained most of the afternoon so we all stayed in the trailer and played Phase 10. It finally quit raining and turned into a nice evening so we went for a hike up to some old mines. It is so beautiful there.

It rained some during the night, but not near as much as the night before. Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, so after breakfast we went on a 5 mile hike through Wild Horse Canyon.

We had only been back for an hour from our hike when the storm came rolling in again, and rained buckets, and hailed for about an hour. We couldn't play games or do anything during the hail, as it was SO LOUD, you couldn't hear the person sitting next to you. But when it finally quit, we ventured out of the trailer and the area had been transformed into piles of hail and flooding all around us, complete with raging rivers. It was a new experience for us to actually see the dry creek beds we were walking on the day before turned into raging rivers. We loved the whole experience.

The rest of the evening was nice, we had dutch oven dinner and sat around the fire.
Monday morning dawned sunny and bright also. Dennis and T went on a 4 wheeler ride to check out some other canyons for hiking in on some future trip and I had a chance to do some more reading.
Even with all the rain, hail and mud, we had so much fun. I would do it again (except for the getting stuck during the dark). Utah has so many different places to see and now I am anxious to go camping some more and see more of this beautiful state.

We are so glad to have our baby and her family back home with us.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, three weeks ago on a whim, Malinda decided she wanted to come to Utah for a visit and showed up unexpectedly and surprised us. It was a great surprise. Then 3 days later, Brian got laid off from his job and they decided that it was time to move back home to Utah. While Malinda was here (her return flight wasn't for 2 more weeks) Brian packed up their apartment and got them already to move. Malinda flew back to Texas, leaving the girls in the care of her sister Alisha, and her and Brian drove the rental truck back. Little K and baby A had not seen their dad in 3 weeks and their mom in 4 days, so they were very excited to have them back.