School Starts Again

Well, it started again, summers over and school -- that great institutition which suposedly teaches our childern reading, writing, and arithmatic but probably excells more at teaching social ideals best left to parents to teach -- has started again. Don't get me wrong, I send my children to public school every day, but I miss them and I hate that I have to schedule my time around theirs. Oh well, on to happier thoughts. It has been a busy summer and where the time has gone no one knows.

The girls and I went riding the ATVs in the mountains yesterday (Saturday) and had an enjoyable time. Jackie was down from Logan to see a friend before college started and she wanted to ride the 4x4s in the mountains. We went and road where we rode during the great deer hunt of 07: the day we almost froze. I took a lot of pictures but since Jackie was taking the whirl wind tour of the Wasatch Plateau I didn't get any pictures of us. I did learn a lot. There are still several snow banks on the plateau in the old glacial cirques from the last winter. It is amazing to see the remenant snow and where they are located. I felt like I was traveling along the plateau ten thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The plateau expresses the latest episode of alpine glaciation so well, it is a wonder that it is so unrecognizible to the average person. I forget that being schooled in geology helps me to see these unique features easier than if I had not been schooled in the subject. Here are some pictures of the platuea and the snow banks along the head of the cirques, and the "u" shaped valleys, and the back side of a horn (North Horn Mountain). The pictures also show the beatle kill of the spruce trees. The Manti-La Sal National Forest lost 90% of the spruce due to a beatle infestation about 4-5 years ago. The evergreens seen in the picture are firs and not spruce. This is a sad tale to tell for another day that shows how wrong and stupid the environmentalists are.

We had a blast riding. Rachel was driving the four wheeler and I was on back. She was driving respectibly well not bouncing me around very much, so I grew board. I was carring my .380 and shot it at a river bank while we were moving and scared Rachel with the loud bang. Jackie was riding ahead of us with Hailee on the back and they even looked back also. Rachel told me and I quote "what did you do that for stupid". I guess I am going to have to teach her to respect her elders again. We all had a laugh and I don't care if they keep me in line if they think they have to.