Adventures at Mule Creek

 Farewell to the trailer.  She was doing well, but in December we had two floods.  The first one, we left for the weekend and left the water dripping in the bathroom to make sure it didn't freeze.  Somehow, the plug fell into the drain and blocked it, causing it to fill up and spill over.  We got that one cleaned up - water all over the floor, in the heat ducts, under furniture, etc., etc.  Then, a few days later, the furnace stopped working, the water pipes froze, and the toilet valve cracked.  Once the water thawed, we were flooded again.  And now the furnace doesn't work. We fixed the toilet and made it through the end of the semester with space heaters, but it's time to give the trailer a rest.  We towed it home before Christmas.  One of the art professors at Snow College just built 2 small townhome-style apartments a block from the school.  We rented one of them. It's two stories, living area and kitchen on the first floor, bed...

 A few weeks ago we built skirting around the trailer with OSB sheeting.  Now it's time to get a little more serious.  Lows next week are predicted to drop to the single digits Fahrenheit.  Time to figure out how to keep all water in a liquid state. For the water supply line, I purchased a heated drinking water hose on Amazon (see it here ).  It cost about $70.  Kind of expensive, but worth it, as long as it works. For the sewer connection, I bought a heater cord with a thermostat (also on Amazon, here ).  I ran the heater cord along the sewer hose, using zip ties to hold it in place. I got some Reflectix insulation at the hardware store.  It's basically bubble wrap-style plastic with a reflective foil coating.  I wrapped the Reflectix around the sewer hose, with the heater cord inside the insulation. I used foil tape to seal the seams.  Make sure to leave the thermostat, which is located in a pigtail at the end of the co...

 Last week I flew to Dallas to help my sister-in-law move 2 storage units full of stuff back to Utah.  We (there were 3 of us) made the 1200 mile trip, in one 26 ft. box truck and one pickup truck, in 2 long days.  Not exactly fun, but interesting and scenic.  Crossing the Navajo Nation, from Gallup, NM to Shiprock, then up to Cortez, Colorado, and over to Moab, Utah is beautiful, especially in the fall. Makes me glad to be back in our little trailer at Mule Creek, looking for work during the day and enjoying the skies at night. Spent some time finishing winterization - added heat tape and insulation to the water supply line, sewer line, and valves.   Haven't found a job yet.  Many possibilities but nothing final.  But it will come. Here's a couple views of Mule Creek's most notable landmark, seen from the front door of the trailer.  

I received the highest score on the test in my Art History class. Wahoo!! The weather is so dry. There's smoke in the air all the time. It's from fires. There are so many fires burning. Our school reported no COVID19  cases today.  In institute I shared the miraculous story of Daria's reunification with her family. There's a young boy in the class who is adopted from Russia. He's looking for his family. I hope he can help me enter the Russian names in Family Search. He has 7 Russian adopted siblings.

An earthwork is art in or on the earth. It works with nature and can disintegrate as soon as it is made. The purpose of this assignment is to meet the other students in our classes on an informal level. So, we gathered on a warm September afternoon after connecting on Group Me. I chose a spot up Manti canyon for the project. It's near a stream and can be washed away if we get any rain.  The group was excited. They're so young. I call them my grandchildren. We brought them apples and cookies. Only J wanted to eat. He's the same boy who told his future date he is bisexual. I asked him if things worked out with the date. He said it's better than he ever imagined. Good for them! We decided to create the face of a young woman in the sand. We used sticks for her hair. J got really upset that we hadn't chosen a color pallette. He was worried we would send it into the gallery and they would want a color palette. I assured him we were okay. We worked ...

  Probably the most iconic building in the Sanpete Valley is the Manti LDS Temple.  Sitting on the brow of a hill and visible for many miles, it presides over the valley with quiet dignity.  It was completed in 1888 by early Mormon pioneers.  It was built on what was at the time described as a "rattlesnake infested" bluff.  Just behind the temple, there is a replica of a dugout home that represents the difficult circumstances the pioneers lived in while building this beautiful building. Last week we visited the temple on a cloudy, breezy afternoon.  We climbed the hill and walked around to the rear, east side of the building.  This provided a different perspective than the more often photographed northern and western sides.  From the east, it is easier to see the temple's relationship to the farming community below and to imagine what it might have been like in the 1800s.