My Lovely Young Bride of almost 30 years came to me last night and asked how I’d like a week long trip to Utah at the end of August. Well, Yeah. She wants to go visit our BFF’s and do Genealogy at the Salt Lake City Genealogy Library. Sure! As long as she can park me and the Caravan towards the south so I can go visit Canyons and such while she’s doing genealogy stuff.

But, there’s the problem. If our friend can’t pick her up and drop her off each day then she’d need to take the truck. (SWMBO. Not our friend. Nevermind.) Which would leave me unable to drive around in the desert. Which I really like doing.

So, she says “How about I do 3 days of Genealogy and You do 3 days of Canyons?” That’ll work! But I feel kinda sorta bad about her not being able to do genealogy the whole time. I’ll get over it. I’m strong that way.

So I’ve already reserved a camp site at the Jordanelle State Park for 3 days and am looking for a camp ground “down south” kind of centrally located to the many Canyons available. I, of course, want to see them all but I don’t think it’s physically possible in only 3 days. I may have to pick one (or two) and stick with that.

But, which one? I saw part of the Grand Canyon way back in 1968. SWMBO has never seen the Grand Canyon. Neither of us has ever been to Bryce Canyon, Glen Canyon, Zion, or any place in Southern Utah.

The sheer amount of choices is distracting! And Frustrating! Fuck! I need 2 months; not 3 or 4 days! (Excuse my French.)

But, looking at the map, I kinda sorta think the Grand Canyon is out for this trip. Unless she decides she really wants to see it; then that’ll be pretty much the only one we’ll visit cause it’s really South. Long trip.

We went to WinCo instead of Safeway this week. While there we picked up a couple of gallons of their sweet tea. I like it! I like it a lot better than Safeway sweet tea. Tastes more like real tea and not sugar water with some tea flavoring. I think (know) next time we need sweet tea where I’ll be going even if it is a “special” trip.

Not much else going on around here. Really cloudy but warm. Almost muggy and we had a couple of sprinkles. I moved 1.5 of my planters (about 60 cinder blocks) to the upper back yard. (This is what I’m getting too old for!) Just stacked the cinder blocks until I rent a digger and level out the yard where I’m going to move my garden to. Think I wrecked my back. Again. (Man, it hurts right now. I’m getting OLD.)

Sat on the front steps and “shucked” peas while just enjoying the weather. Nice out there. Now to blanch them, let them dry, then freeze them. (Oops. Turns out I “shelled” peas. One “shucks” corn.) Either way the Peas are now as naked as I am! Almost needed a cane (or crane!) to get my fat, old, ass up off the steps!

About to make chili dogs for dinner cause I’m tired and sore and don’t feel like getting too complicated for dinner. Could dice some onion though. (I did and it was all good. Didn’t realize how hungry I was until I started eating.)

Had some actual rain late this afternoon. Cool!

Let’s see. How to write this up? Most people would find our weekend boring; but not me. I got to spend three days “cooped” up with my Schweetie in a strange place. Mostly cloudy. Mostly cold. Mostly windy. Sometimes wet. I got a lot of “radio” stuff and SWMBO got a lot of knitting into this weekend. Caravan worked out great. Took lots of pictures. Mostly just spent time with that lovely young woman I married almost 30 years ago.

Stayed at the Hoquiam RV Resort in, Hoquiam, WA and it wasn’t as spendy as you’d think for booking at the last minute. Nice little place that stayed mostly empty. Liked the owners and the grounds. (The only thing I didn’t really like was that they don’t strike the colors at night and they’re not lit.) Owners were friendly as hell! Mostly just stayed around the campground Saturday just being lazy. I made some BBQ Chicken that was excellent!

Sunday we drove over to Ocean Shores for a look around. It was your typical Western WaRshington Beach Day: cool. cloudy. windy. And the tide was out. Did see one girl in a Bikini (nice butt!) and a heavy coat. (Typical WaRshington Beach Attire.) Drove a couple of miles actually on the beach. SWMBO walked out to rinse the foam off her shoes and a wave got her wet up to her knees. Did a bit more driving around before settling in for the evening.

Got up early this morning (forgot to turn the alarms off on my Nexus 7), had breakfast and broke camp. Three hour drive home. Everything unpacked and put away. Trip to Safeway and SWMBO treated me to Taco Bell (the new one in town). Now we be just chillin’ for the rest of the night.

Except her (old) laptop (the one running Linux Mint) quit outputting to the monitor. Can’t get it to do anything but whirr at me. So we set up her (almost new) Windows 8 laptop and now she has two monitors. And 5000+ E-Mails she hasn’t downloaded in the past 6-8 months. (We never set up e-mail on the Linux Mint laptop for some reason. I think because she was checking mail on her phone and was happy with that. She likes to keep things simple. Hence marrying me.)

Plugged her Linux Mint laptop into my monitor and it came right up. Working fine. So she had me put it back in her room. Booted right up. Sometimes I just don’t understand computers. It won’t work. It will work. It won’t work. It will work. Make up your damned CPU! But it does crack me up that she prefers the Linux Mint laptop over her Windows 8 laptop. The Woman who likes to keep things simple. The User. The “Don’t Change My Computer Without Asking Me First” woman.

So. We took a camping trip. Had a good time. Got home safe. Back to routine.

SWMBO got next Monday (Memorial Day) off so we thought we’d go camping. Except every RV park within decent driving distance (for a long weekend) that I’ve checked has had no empty spots. I’m beginning to wonder if I did the right thing with this RV stuff. Doesn’t seem like one can “spontaneously” go camping anymore.

Most of the “campgrounds” I’ve looked at on Google Earth are simply large parking lots crammed full with RV’s packed tighter than Obama’s ass (what with his head being up there and all). RV Parks in cities really kind of crack me up. Camping, to me, is getting out of the city and into the country to enjoy a bit of “Nature.” But, I guess people would want to visit cities too. (I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley down L.A. way. South El Monte mostly.)

So, I don’t know. Guess I’m going to have to learn to schedule camping out way in advance of when we want to. That means locking SWMBO down to finding out what days she will have (or will take) off work and where we want to go. Which sounds like work instead of fun. But maybe I just don’t have the right mind-set. Yet.

Weather must be changing cause I’m getting a bit of a headache. Reports of lightning in Shelton this morning. MJ on Q13Fox says scattered showers. I need to move to Arizona!

And, indeed, it is. Has. Much cloudier, and a damned site cooler, today. Cool enough for me to wear my coat. Heard some thunder this morning too. That was cool. At least the headache didn’t actually happen.

Well, found a place to camp so we’re definitely, probably, going and I’ve been getting ready to go. Two days out with my Schweetie! Woo Woo! Lucky we have a built-in house sitter that’ll be here. The campground is in Hoquiam; which is only a couple of hours away.

Picked SWMBO up at the bus stop in town. Stopped by Safeway for last minute items and gas (man! It was busy!) Got the trailer hooked up and ready to go. It’s pretty much loaded except for last minute “stuff.” (Nexus 7, Camera, Stuff.) And it’s time for me to hit the rack!