The Miracle at Home Depot

I sometimes dread going to Home Depot to get supplies for work. Half the time I don't know exactly what it is I need. I just have a list. Today, I had to get a 9x9 drain box, 3-10' segments of 4" solid ADS pipe, a coupler, a cap, some silicone, and a roll of 1" Teflon tape.
Sigh.
I can usually figure it out, eventually. If I'm lucky, a salesman will "point out" the aisle to head towards.
But today...
A cheerful man came bounding up to me the second I got my cart and asked, "What can I help you find?" I almost fell over. He TOOK me to the aisle, showed me what I needed, put stuff in my cart, took me to another aisle, put MORE stuff in my cart, AND let me borrow his cell phone to call my boss. I was just dumbfounded that someone at this store would be so helpful! Lastly, he gave me his card and introduced himself as the district manager of all Home Depots in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. That was it. He said they wanted to try something new in having associates stay with the customer throughout the project. I thought that having someone help you in the first place was brilliant enough. I was impressed. The Park City Home Depot is usually lacking in quality customer service, but thanks to this guy, I don't have to act especially distraught to get noticed.

Last one out, fill in the hole!

Last Saturday, Bevan and I had some time to kill out in W. Jordan/ Copperton area, so we decided to go to the copper mine! How many years did I live in West Valley and I'd never seen the copper mine? It's just one of those things you don't get around to doing, I guess. I recommend it to everybody! It was totally worth the $5 per car admission. I have never seen anything so massive in my life! It's like the Grand Canyon, only it's just a big hole and not a canyon. The visitors center was fascinating and big. They have a nice overlook where you can see all the huge trucks carrying rock. The trucks are the size of a 2-story house. I wish they had one on display you could climb on, but we had to settle for the tire. Looking at that massive hole, it made me wonder if they ever had problems with environmentalists?

Red Dirt and Sunshine

Our road trip went incredibly well, aside from the slow and rough beginning. We were intending to leave Sunday afternoon, but the Subaru was not yet back from the "doctor". There can't be a road trip without the Subaru! The mechanic finally agreed to loan us another Subaru for the week. We'll take it!

We reached out campsite Monday night around 11PM. As usual we spent way too long driving around in the dark looking for a free campsite. Ah, memories! The BLM shut down my favorite free camping areas, but with a little creativity and some minor trespassing, we made do.

Tuesday we spent at Arches hiking all the hikes and driving all the drives. Aside from all the normal arches, we drove out to one I'd never seen before, Tower Arch. Pretty cool.

On Wednesday, we went to Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. So pretty! We did all the little overlooks until lunch. Afterwards we hiked down to the Colorado River via Lathrop trail. We saw some old uranium mines with warnings not to drink any of the water or linger in the area for more than an hour. Nice.

Thursday, we hiked out of the canyon before it got hot. It was a good thing because we only had a little success filtering out the Colorado and we REALLY didn't want to drink that water. We made it anyway and immediately drove to Moab for sodas. We continued on to Newspaper rock and Indian Creek where we camped in a huge primitive campground, mostly used by rock climbers who do yoga in the evenings on their bouldering pads.

Friday was spent in the Needles district of Canyonlands. Beautiful! Once again, we did all the little overlooks and road-side hikes in the morning. In the afternoon we strapped on our packs and hiked out to Druid Arch and Chesler Park. Chesler Park is this huge meadow of sage and grasses surrounded completely by needles and once used for winter cattle grazing. We camped in Chesler Park under the stars, just like those old cowboys.

Saturday morning, we hiked out early and headed to Monticello in search of showers! We didn't want to stink up the new Subaru too bad. We showered and spent the afternoon at the Monticello Temple. Talk about a 1-man show! Those little temples have to be run so efficiently. When we came out of the temple, the weather turned sour. By the time we got to Moab, it was blowing and raining so hard, we decided to bag out last night of camping and head for a real bed. I'm not disappointed we ended out road trip 18 hours early, I'm just glad it turned out so well the rest of the time. Once we washed our soiled clothes and vacuumed the red dirt out of the car, canyonlands seemed like some exotic, far-away place. I'm so grateful we live in Utah where we have everything from snow and aspen trees to slickrock and yuccas. What a great trip!

Tower Arch

No instant oatmeal quite yet!

Island in the Sky!

It glows!

Coming up from the river

Needles!

Chesler Park

Cavern of cairns! Don't lose the trail!

Monticello Temple. Looks bigger than it was.

You think they'd trade us straight across?