A Day of Rest

Good morning, my friends. It was nice to have a leisurely morning yesterday with no place to go. We've been so busy for more than a week. Ordinarily, we give ourselves an extra day at our first stop so we can rest up for the journey ahead. It gives us a little transition from "normal" life to "vacation" life too. (It's hard to tell when you're on vacation when you're retired.) This time, we just wanted to get on down the road, and so we postponed our day of rest until the fourth day. I guess that means this is the "official" start of our "vacation." We have one more night here in Vernal, and then we'll move along tomorrow.

Smitty was busy first thing. He was helping Mike repair our closet hanging rod.

The hanging of the closet rod turned into a bit of a fiasco, but it's finished now. Sadly, Mike spent most of the day on it, even with Smitty's help. Before it was finished, we had to walk down the road about half a mile to a hardware store. Along the way, the city welcomed us.

And we saw some dinosaurs. Vernal fully embraces its former life as a place where dinosaurs roamed. There are still some visible on its streets today.

This next one is the little-known unicornisaurus. Or maybe he's wearing a party hat. What's you're take on this guy?

And then there was this big guy...the fearsome T-Rex.

There's a little story behind him:

The recognition was off to the left, but I didn't include it in the photo.

There's a quilt shop in town. We'd planned to go there after the hardware store. Then, while I waited for Mike, I took another look at Google maps. It said the quilt shop was six minutes away. Yay! Oh wait...but then I realized it was six minutes by car. Walking was much farther. It was more than 2-1/2 miles away and closer to an hour on foot. And then we'd have to walk all the way back. Adding that to the distance we'd already walked, and we were looking at about six miles round-trip. It was hot, and we decided to bag it. Unfortunately, the quilt shop will be closed today. Oh well. We'll keep looking for quilt shops.

So we walked back to the camper. While Mike continued his work on the closet, Smitty and I got out for a walk and some of that tasty Mew-tah grass. The RV park is just off the highway and rather noisy. We can see cars and big trucks driving by, but Smitty was very brave. He sampled the grass and had about a ten-minute walk before he was ready to go back inside.

Sadie watched from inside the camper.

For anyone who's new to reading this blog, I should explain about Sadie. She's not permitted out for walks. She was formerly feral, and regresses to feral when she's in strange surroundings. She's escaped from every harness we've ever tried, and when she gets loose, she runs away. We nearly lost her in Teddy Roosevelt National Park a few years ago. That was Sadie's last walk. She used to whine and cry to join us. With the passage of time, she seems resigned to being an indoor-only kitty when we're traveling. Smitty always gets treats of valor when we return from a walk. Sadie gets treats of condolence.

So we had a pretty relaxing day. I finished off the remaining "book spines." I have one for each of my accumulated Shop Hop fabrics now. 

I'm still looking for more fabrics for the current quilt, and so eventually, I'll need more book spines. For now, each fabric is covered.

With that finished, I can start on the first block for the new "Kittens" project. It was getting close to dinner time by then, but I took some time to wind some floss bobbins with the colors I'll need for the first block.

Probably, I'll get a start on it this afternoon, but there are other things on our agenda for today. First, we'll have our traditional Sunday morning blueberry oatmeal pancakes. And then, we'll get ourselves ready to spend the day at Dinosaur National Monument. I spent some time looking at the website yesterday. For sure, we want to drive 32-mile Harpers Corner scenic drive. And we want to visit the Quarry Exhibit Hall, where we're told we can see a wall that contains 1,500 dinosaur bones. Cool! I don't expect it will take all day, but one never knows. We need to make a stop at the grocery store too. There will be no access to stores of any kind at our next remote destination, and so we need food to last us for the week.

If you're enjoying today's post, you can thank Sadie for helping me. She's an excellent helper, no matter whether I'm sewing or writing.

Next up, pancakes. I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about the national monument, but then I may be out of range when we reach our destination in Colorado. When we were there in 2019, there was no wi-fi and a very weak cell signal. Unless something has changed, we'll have to do some time-traveling when I'm back in range. Fingers crossed we have some connectivity this time around.