GYPSY REVIVAL…

We are once again on one of our adventures after spending six months with Mom Burt in Lindon, Utah. Our time there was a real blessing … to spend so much quality time with her.

Since Buff is now equipped with a video camera we are going to try to post some to the blog and see how it works. Your feedback is certainly welcome…..

We arrived at our campground on June 10th and were so happy with the set-up we have this year. We are based at Stillwater campground with two other campgrounds to host along with this one. We have a total of 57 sites and TWELVE toilets to maintain…. This should certainly take off the 15 pounds I gained at mom’s eating too much good stuff. Our other campgrounds are Hayden’s Fork and Sulphur. All three are absolutely beautiful and hold many memories for me as this is my old stomping ground….it’s good to be home.

About two days after we arrived we were taking our evening walk through the campground when we found a big hairy Harley-riding biker dude sitting in a site close to ours…. My inclination was to just ignore him and continue our walk…as far as I was concerned he could stay there as long as he wanted and even pee on the table if he so desired!! But, Camp host Buff walked right over to him … determined to collect whatever fee biker dude owed… and asked him if he was planning on spending the night … (mental note: make sure our gun was loaded if he was).. Biker dude says he is getting too old to sleep on the ground and had just stopped to eat his dinner….(I breath a sigh of relief and start walking on) …. But Buff wants to collect the damned six dollars for the day use fee….he asks big biker dude where he is from…. Big biker dude says…
“Evanston”……
Buff tells biker dude that I’m also from Evanston and asks him his name…
Big Hairy Biker dude points to me and exclaims….”She knows my name”…
Now, I am certain (even with some blank areas in my memory) that in my wild wicked youth I sure didn’t hang out with the Harley crowd… so I peek around Buff to take a better look and …..

It is my cousin (?) (we share the same great grandparents) that I’ve known since he was a kid!!!!! What a pleasant surprise and after getting used to the beard, tattoos, leathers, etc. I found him to be the same dear and kind person I had always known. We had a great visit remembering the past and catching up on family news. A few days later he came for the evening and brought his daughter to meet us. We visited for awhile and then promptly bored them to death showing them our DVD’s of our travels…… not sure they will return for another round but we have extended the invitation for them to spend a few days here…..

When we arrived the Bear River was already at high water level and overflowing it’s banks all along it’s route…. We stuck a stick in our “front yard” and decided if the water got past it we would have to sand bag our site…..

A few days later the stick floated away …. we spent a couple of hours sandbagging… we decided if it got past the sandbags we would have to move to higher ground….

A few days later the sandbags had been breached so at 11: p.m. we realized that we needed to move…. I quickly put stuff anywhere I could find for it to be safe and we hitched up and moved about sixty feet to a higher area…. Got to bed about 1: a.m. and hoped the river was as high as it was going to get… we were running out of room at our site to move any higher….

The next week all looked good and I got all the stuff out of drawers and closets and set-up housekeeping again…. We loved the new area we had moved to and decided that even when the river returned to normal we would just stay there…..

Then we had three lovely days of warm weather… in the high 70’s … we celebrated the lovely summer days, danced our happy dance, cooked outside and joked about “how high is the water mama/papa every time one of us went outside….with not a thought of what was happening on the snow covered mountains above us….so… continuing on in our joyful innocence…

We were finally able to get to our last campground as all the snow had melted out of it …with the warm weather and all….so we happily spent the day cleaning fire pits and toilets…. When we got back to our site we were really tired and looked forward to dinner, a movie and early bed

Right in the middle of the movie some campers knocked on the door and told us the campground was flooding….YIKES…. Buff ran off with them and came back with a pretty concerned look on his face and told me to get the trailer ready to move … then went back to sandbag and trench to see if he could stop the water coming in…..HA!! By 10:00 when I went to find him I was driving through water…told him we had to get out NOW!!

The two couples that were camping here ran over and helped us get our stuff ready to go…even though their trailers were also in harms way…they had also been helping Buff sandbag and trench… what great people!!! By the time we got out we realized that they also needed to be evacuated …so everybody is moving trailers to higher ground in the middle of the night!! By midnight we were all safe and ready to drop!!

It was a pretty scary experience and I was very upset that I had to pack up again in a panic… then I realized how fortunate we were that we have a “home” that can be moved out of harms way and didn’t have to sit helplessly by and watch it destroyed by a flood like so many have this year.

So, we are now living in a temporary site (a large group site we have on much higher ground) and are waiting for the river to subside so we can return to our “home” site…. They expect the river to peak in the next day or two… we are hoping we can move back by Thursday as the site we are now in is reserved for Friday and we will have to move from here anyway!!!! We are becoming more Gypsy than we had planned….making little moves and not even leaving our campground!!!!!

For those of our friends and family that are thinking of visiting us this year … there is a lovely lodge about four miles from our site… (www.BearRiverLodge.com) … the cabins have kitchens with dishes and utensils, big screen TV w/DVD players and dish network, living room w/gas log fireplace, gas BBQ grills on decks and patios, outside hot tubs and a heated swimming pool…. Needless to say a bit pricey.. Sun – Thurs $229/night… there is also a small convenience store that serves burgers, etc. (and much to my dismay they have soft ice cream… drat!).

Rob, Mart and Denise…. This is where the old Bear River Station used to be where you would go on rides with Mammy and Popeye… Rob… I couldn’t find the ca-ca rock!!

Of course, there are less expensive motels in Evanston which is only 30 miles away…… or bring a tent and camp with us here for free…..

So, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise…. (again) we will keep posting on a regular basis with news and pictures…..

The Gypsies,
Buff, Frances and Sierra

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