Playing so nicely together…in the dirt!
Last weekend was a busy one for us! Besides our normal campground duties we had guests…of the 3 and 5 year old persuasion! Paityn and Cameron stayed with us from Friday evening until Monday evening. Their Papa was in Wisconsin (and still is) with the Army and their mom had a conference in Salt Lake City for Thirty One.
We had a good time and they were both very good. We had s’mores, watched movies, grilled hot dogs, ate ice cream, painted sun catchers and played with sand toys in the dirt! Although I must confess that by Monday night Nana and Papaw were both exhausted!
The boat ramp parking lot, which we monitor. You can see our coach in the background.
The campground was much quieter over the weekend than in past weekends. I’m not sure what happened but it was very welcome. We’ve had a couple of changes (one couple left and another moved to a different area and a third couple took over the day use/tent area) that may have contributed to the more easy-going pace as the walkie talkies were much more quiet and tensions weren’t sky-high. Whatever it was…we’ll take it!
We have a Mormon ‘holiday’ coming up next weekend, Pioneer Day, and we understand it’s supposed to be just as busy as the 4th of July weekend so we’ll see how things go then.
Three delicacies…large portions!
Tuesday afternoon we ‘ran away’ from the campground for a few hours and it felt wonderful! We tried a new Chinese restaurant called Eastern Winds for lunch and decided we prefer it to Wing Wah and will go back. The prices were good and the portions were very large…plus the fortune cookies were way yummy! I asked the waitress about them and she came back with a sandwich bag full of broken ones that they didn’t want to serve so she gave them to us!
Eleven Peas in a Pod!
While Dan & Amanda were in town a few weeks ago we all got together and had our family pictures taken as it had been 4 years since we’d done it and we’ve gained 3 grandchildren since then. We got the edited pictures back this week and were very happy with the way they turned out! So many great shots…of just the grandbabies, individual families and the entire group. Interestingly enough the name of the photographers business is Greene Peas in a Pod Photography…how coincidental is that??
A view of the day use beach area from the boat ramp parking lot
The weather has been wonderful. We are considered to be in a ‘high desert’ area so the temperature gets fairly warm during the day (anywhere from mid 80s to low to mid 90s) but then drops down considerably at night, usually into the mid to high 50s. Our side of the mountain is consistently 7-10 degrees cooler than the Ogden side of the mountain and we LOVE it!
Last week on our day off we decided to visit Ogden’s Union Station. Built in 1924 Union Station was the hub of train activity in the Ogden area but is now the home to 4 small museums: John M Browning Fire Arms Museum, Utah Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Browning-Kimball Classic Car Museum and the Utah State Railroad Museum. Admission is $5 per adult which includes all four museums but with our military IDs we were given free admission…awesome!
Michael checking out one of the displays in the western museum
The Cowboy/Western museum was our first stop and probably the smallest of the museums and would have been more appropriately named the ‘Pioneer Days Museum’ as it contained more information and memorabilia from people associated with the Pioneer Days celebration. Nonetheless it was interesting.
One of the volunteers explaining about the safe and the golden spike replica within it
Next we went through the railroad museum, which was the largest and most interesting of the museums. We learned more on the history of how the railroad was built out west, about the ‘meeting’ of the east and west railroads and had an awesome volunteer that gave us lots of information about Union Station when it was the center of activity. She showed us that the original baggage scale was still in place and working. She explained to us that their once were 8 sets of tracks (now just 2) at the station and that to get to the furthest tracks a person had to go down into an underground tunnel.
Mr. Oblivious…had no clue he was being stalked
The fire arms museum wasn’t my kind of thing…just a bunch of guns hung up on display. I walked around and did a little reading and then waited for Michael to finish checking the place out. While I waited for him I kinda stalked him, hiding behind cases, taking pictures and wondering if he’d ever feel like he was being followed….he didn’t…he was completely oblivious!
The classic car museum and in the foreground a volunteer puppy dog
The classic car museum was very small with just 12 or 13 cars but they were all so pretty. We took a little time checking each vehicle out and even spent some time chatting with the volunteer and his dog before heading out.
The entrance to the Union Grill
We had lunch in the middle of our museum visits at the Union Grill which is also inside of Union Station but only for a few more weeks as they will be moving to a new, bigger location. We enjoyed a bowl of french onion soup and split a sandwich as we had plans to meet Kelsea and the kids for dinner later in the day.
Michael had seen an RV place several times as we drove through Ogden and decided that today was the day to stop and check it out. State Trailer is basically an RV parts store and they are pretty well stocked with most anything you might want or need.
We roamed around quite a bit and I thought Michael would come out with a ton of stuff but he didn’t! The only thing he ended up with was an interior frame for the window in our door…and that was something that I found.
Carlos’ Produce Stand
Next door to the RV place was a produce market that we stopped at and picked up several produce items as well as some cheese curds. The curds were ‘squeaky’ fresh and quite tasty.
Since our door stays open so much while we’re in Texas gate guarding ours had originally been white but the sun turned it yellow. Unfortunately, after getting it home and preparing to install it he found that the holes for the screws were in the wrong place and it wouldn’t work so we’ll have to return it. However, that gave him the gumption to go ahead and spray paint the old one, white, and now it looks good as new!
When our new bedroom air conditioner was installed back on March 14th Michael reminded the installers that the dip switches needed to be set properly to make the heat pump work. He assumed they set them correctly. Since we don’t use the heat pumps very often it wasn’t until we were headed north that we had cause to use them and found that the heat pump wasn’t working. Not a big deal as setting the dip switches isn’t hard it was just a matter of taking the time to do get up on the roof and check the settings on the living room ac and setting the dip switches on the bedroom ac to match. Michael finally got that task accomplished this week and we are now good to go for when the cold weather arrives.