Though they have largely faded by now, the colours this year were spectatcular, especially in the Provo Canyon area (not that I made a statewide tour or anything). Sometimes I look at these photos and the colors seems too rich, but this is how they looked. I really love early morning and late afternoon sunlight. There is more here if you are interested
So my long absence was not because I had grown tired of blogging, but simply because I have been tired. Back on October 3rd, I started doing something new at work that has made for some very long days the past three weeks. There has not been a day when I did not finish feeling like my head was about ready to explode. It has been quite tough, and even the thought of trying to sound coherent for my blog was more than I could deal with, so I put it off and put it off. No more. I'm back for a few days, but then I am off for some much needed camping in Arches National Park. I'm really going to need this time off as the entire month of November promises to be worse than the last three weeks.
And as if work has not been bad enough, just when we are looking forward to a relaxing weekend, disaster decided to rear its ugly head. I woke up at about 4:25 Saturday morning and could not get back to sleep. Believe me, I tried, but it just was not happening, so I decided to get up and write. The day had other plans, however. A little after 5AM, I heard the water go on upstairs. No big deal, somebody just answering an early morning nature call, or so I thought. Next thing I know, I hear water dripping. I get up and run to the hall and water is coming down out of the ceiling, the vents, everywhere. I grabbed the phone and called our landlords upstairs. It turns out that a hose on their toilet popped off, sending water down into our apartment. It was a huge mess that we had to clean up (they helped a bit), and this is not the first time this year something like this has happened (the last one was a water heater, but I won't go into that now). We went more than 24 hours with a loud, droning floor fan blowing under the carpet, but at least it is dry now. It would have been so much worse if I had not been awake (or if it had happened while we were in Arches), so I am very thankful for that, but it was another in a long list of catastrophes and inconveniences that we have had to deal with living down here. It was also the end of our relaxing weekend, dead before it could even get started. At least this evening is quiet.
With all that happening, this morning I decided we needed a bit of nature therapy. We drove out to the airport dike by Utah Lake and I tested out my new lens on some water fowl. We saw some grebes and these birds that looked like black ducks with white bills and red eyes. I'm not sure what they were because I cannot find them in my bird book, but they were fun to watch. We sat on some rocks by the lake and just watched these birds as they did their thing among the reeds and grasses. We enjoyed the warmth of the sun, the smell of the air, and the sounds of the birds around us. I think it was just what we needed, though we could not stay too long. Now I look forward to sitting on a rock by our campsite, watching the sun set and enjoying the solitude and quiet of being in Arches. Three days of the best of Utah's desert country is just what the doctor ordered, in a manner of speaking....and I'll share photos when I return.
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