Memorial Day Monday May 28 2007

Memorial Day

Every Memorial Day we take flowers to the cemetery in Green River where Joe's family is buried. We left about 7 a.m. (I hate early) and drove the back way on the dirt road to Farson. It was very dark and overcast. There were several big camps before the river with 8 or 10 trailers, trucks, ATVs, just circled in the sagebrush, looking like small towns out there. It feels like we're being invaded. It would be easy to imagine that they look a lot like a group of covered wagons on the trail would have. It was a nice drive through the back country this morning. And we saw quite a few golden eagles, antelope, sage chickens, the cattle looking good, many cottontails, and more ground squirrels than I've ever seen before. I don't know what that's about but they were thick everywhere. It's time now for the antelope to be having their fawns. I haven't seen any yet though.

It was about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the highway going that way. By the time we got to the Farson area, the sun was mostly shining. The Big Sandy Reservoir looked almost full. Amazingly traffic was light, even on the freeway between Rock Springs and Green River. We picked up the flowers at Up, Up and Away by 9:20. They were very pretty. Joe went to school with Susan who has the flower shop and she always makes us nice bouquets. The cemetery was beautiful this year, they are taking good care of it. The lilac bushes were so loaded with blooms, maybe prettier than I've every seen them before. The VFW was getting ready for their ceremony - thank heaven for those guys. There was no one we knew at the cemetery, so Joe said let's go have breakfast at the Tomahawk Tavern, actually the restaurant in there is the Crazy Moose or something like that. The food is always pretty good. Luckily Apple and Becky came in looking for us after a walk at Expedition Island, so it was nice of them to try to find us. We usually see them when we go down. Joe and Apple have been friends all their lives. We had a good visit. There was a white box full of leftovers for the dogs. Joe always like to drive past the house they lived in when he was a kid, so we did that, and also saw all his friend's and relatives places nearby. He names them all and notices whether the houses are being taken care of or not.

Then went back to Rock Springs and to Home Depot where we got a door knob bumper guard for the bathroom wall, and some extra light bulbs for his new halogen light in the living room. I looked for bedding flowers for my pots and there were essentially none. Next we went to Walmart. I power shopped in there for almost two hours, for groceries and anything else I could find on my list. Bought a new cordless phone for the studio. The old one was messing up the regular phone, and I've been without it after unplugging it a couple of weeks ago, so guess its time for a new one. Walmart didn't have any flowers either. So much for thinking I would get my flower pots planted. Maybe when we go to Idaho Falls I will find some there.

When I came out of the store Joe said it had sprinkled for about 10 minutes. He had walked the dogs while I shopped so we were good to go. We bought gas at Walmart and it was $3.15 a gallon, that's about 25 cents less than in Pinedale. Heading north out of town there was a storm black clear to the ground. You couldn't see 1/4 of a mile, nothing. It was awesome and rather frightening from a distance, but not bad when we got there. The worst of it had passed by then. Rain came down hard at first, then gradually let up, and it rained for about 20 miles, then the road was wet about to Farson - another 20 miles. From then on it hadn't rained a drop including here at home. (Although later Charm said they had a rather rainy day up at Boulder Lake.) The traffic was horrific going home, with streams of trucks/trailers/semis/cars coming out of Sublette County. At first while the road was wet the traffic just kicked up water and you couldn't see any vehicles that were coming, but no one seemed too inclined to pass anyway. The wind was really gusting across the road all the way back.

I asked Joe if he wanted late lunch/early dinner at the Country Burger place and he said no "we" didn't need lunch, so we didn't. I'm sure he was counting on an ice cream cone at Farson, but it was closed, so I told him he didn't need ice cream anyway. Disappointment hung in the air.

We got home about 4:30, got everything unlocked, groceries unloaded, horse fed and watered, and most of the groceries put away. Dinner was leftovers heated in the microwave. It sure feels good to sit and relax. There's a pretty lavender sunset tonight on the clouds to the east. The rest of the sky, with an almost full moon, was clear. It's surprisingly cold again. I still need to go out and feed the cats and then its jammy time.