Moody Blues (a wench with a winch)

It's seven AM and still pitch black out Goldie's windows. Her furnace runs continuously, causing panes to sweat like Mike Tyson in the 14th round—39 degrees on one side 80 on the other. It's been raining for a while now, not a deluge, not a pitter patter, just enough to turn your Lazy Daze RV in to a prison cell. You see, dampness lowers chill factors, thus it's been cold enough that any sane person would have traded shorts for long pants days ago. But I resist, persist, and insist, like a child refusing vegetables. We're in the desert for crying out loud, but it's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas!

Not only are women smarter than men, they're tougher, too. Bobbie bundles up every morning, braves the cold and goo of BLM roads behind our park, and goes for a long walk. Me? I can't face it. I sit and pout in private, surfing dozens of weather websites in search of a rainbow, sketching plans for the ark we will need if this shit doesn't letup. It's as if a bullseye hangs over southwest Utah, centered over Virgintown, epicentered over me. These, of course, are symptoms of advanced RV Fever, and it's not yet Thanksgiving. 

Yesterday, our new boondocking RVino friends bailed like a Boonie, or at least tried to. But it was too late; mud mired their exit...a rig too heavy goeth not far, not to mention tires too bald, desert too saturated. They were gummed balled in gumbo…glued and screwed. A tow truck with a wench (ok, it could have been a wench with a winch) came to John and Susan's rescue...put them on solid enough ground to get the hell out of Dodge. They took a "rain check" on the Outdoor Group's Happy Hour that evening (their idea), and departed without so much as leaving a bottle of Merlot for us to salute/curse them. 

The antidote for endless grey skies and rain and cold and wind is to pretend it's not happening, just get out there and brave that shit like a post-MAN. After all, we are the Outdoor Gang; what kind of message does it send to quit and bail when the going gets tough? For heavens sake, our CEO sits in Yuma...what's that all about? Fraud!

But the hardcore remnants of the O. G. are still here; a little moody, but still here! We piled in Sue Bee and headed into the clenched, drooling Jaws of Zion, wipers like machetes, hacking a way through the fog of a jungle monsoon. It felt good to be hiking again, weather and all. The trail up to Echo Canyon is steep and we warmed up pretty fast...all except our hands, that is, and my bare legs. Hey, in some cultures "stubbornness" is a trait that's revered and honored. 

On a sodden cloudy day, one might as well leave cameras behind in the car. But what the hell; we could always delete photos deemed too poor to share. Besides, it gave Jim and I something to do to keep our minds off how cold we were.  

Happy Hour, RVinos…and not a bottle of wine to be found :(.