Waterfall Hike

Tuesday night we had our regular drill. As we were wrapping up the discussion of the waterfall came up. It was REALLY muddy. We had a quick burst of heat so it had melted a great deal of snow. There was flooding concerns and questions about the color of the waterfall. It could be 2 things. Just sediment and mud from the water moving so fast or it could be a mudslide up the canyon (which is not good) and means we might have more damage coming. Willard had a MASSIVE flood in 1983. Flooded the whole town. The waterfall looked exactly the same preflood. 

2017

As a dept we made a decision to hike up the canyon and look for any flooding issues and see exactly where the problem was. Of course social media was already swarming with panic. The cool thing is 2 members of our dept actually built the waterline that runs above the waterfall. We set out with 10 of us hiking up the south side trail. We kept 4 or so people down at the bottom with our vehicles and in case we had a call so they were ready to respond. 

You can see our vehicles clear down there.

 I had never hiked the south side of the canyon, only the north. 

 It was so pretty!!

 We took our radios and stayed in communications with the ones below. Plus we hiked up in 3 separate groups and stayed in contact.

 The river was rushing. Thats for sure! But the good news is as far as we could see down the run off was clear. So that meant it was a lower problem probably from all the water coming down at such a high rate.

This is May 2017 

Rod crossing the bridge, Nick waiting to cross

This is the same place mid Feb 2017

May 2017

 Feb 2017

Me, Todd and Van

or Me, Assistant Chief and Chief

 Todd and Van 

We ended up just being under 3 miles making it a round trip. We came out the north side.

Flooring

We have had carpet in our living room the whole time. Ive hated it. Chris has always been pro carpet. Once I found out we had real old hardwood under our floors Ive been dying to rip it up.  I figured Id lost the battle and we would have carpet for a while. We got two stains on our carpet that we couldnt get out. We had shampood them twice, tried stain treatments etc and they were just stuck. Monday Chris was off for the holiday and he had enough. He said "Im so sick of this carpet I want to just rip it out!!" I said go ahead! Lets do it!... and thats all it took. 

 The floor was ssssoooo filthy underneath.

 We hated the tile in the entry way. We have 3 different colors of tile in our house and this one was broken underneath and junk.. 

 So we ripped that out too.

 We took out all the baseboards too..They were white. Gag. That lead to a discussion about the fire place area. When we put it in 3 years ago it was what we could afford and to get something in quick. It wasnt so much what we wanted. We got to talking and really wanted a rock hearth and a mantle. We figured we are going to have to paint the walls anyways.. sand the floors.. put in new baseboards.. whats one more thing! So Todd came over to help us carry out the fire place and we ripped out the tile.

Look how great our floors look already and all I did was sweep them! I cant wait until we get it all complete. We figure it will be our summer project. We left our floors rough just like this for now until we get the fire place stuff back in and the walls painted and I love them so much already!!

Memorial Weekend

Memorial weekend we headed out west to Kelton area. Friday morning when we got out there it was SOOOOO windy but other than that the weather was great. 

Saturday we went for a wheeler ride

I effing HATE snakes. HATE. They freak me out and I cant even pick them up. We saw a bunch of rattlesnakes that weekend and a few other blow snakes. Chris bought me a new pistol for my bday and I had to try it out. We both smoked this stupid snake. I dont care what anyone says no snake is a good snake. He made me hold it for a picture and it took all I had to be able to!

She spent most the ride like this!

After a long hot day in the sun Kennedy and I took a nap. Todd, Chris and Jana set up a shooting course. After a while I went out and joined them. We spent probably over 2 hours just shooting.

These 3 pics arent even posed! They are so much alike...its scary

Sunday MarDee and her family came out. They had been asking us to take them different places out west adventuring. We told them if they felt like driving to Kelton we would show them some fun trails out there.  It was pretty dusty!!

About half way through we switched kids. We let Caid come sit with us (so there was more leg room) and put the two yahoos in the back of MarDee and Brandons Ranger.

We took them out Fingerpoint to the Great Salt Lake

She is so sad school is out (this was her first weekend out) She has read so many books since then and pretty much spent the weekend reading. 

Sunday was HOT. HOT HOT. We were planning on going home Monday morning but decided that there was no point in running the AC all night so we packed up and headed home to a real shower and a cold ac that we didnt have to run the generator for!