We have just returned from our latest adventures and we had a good time. Yes, that is Angel in the above photo. More on that later.

For several weeks now, I have been bugging Marshal about going some place, just to get away. So he decided that he would head to Washington. Well, after doing some thinking about it, he decided not to go. But I kept talking and told him that we could head over to the Cub River and spend a few days. He could fish, Angel and I could ride the ATV in the mountains, and George could sleep. He finally agreed that it was a good idea. Cub River is only like 50 miles from home, so it isn't that much a big deal to take the trip over there. Only takes us like 2 hours to make that trip. You ask why does it take that long to go only that far. Well, first off, it is only about an hour over there to the road that heads back into the mountains. And then maybe another half hour to the campground. We go 14 miles from the highway and about 10 of that is dirt, washboard road. So have to go very slow on the dirt road. Oh, and watch out for those idiots from Utah that only know two speeds. FAST and FASTER!!!!!!!!! No matter what the conditions are!!!!!!!!

So last week in between doctor's appointments and what else that was going on, I managed to get the motor home loaded and we hit the road on Thursday, August 20th. Got there around noon and the campground had one site occupied. So we had the pick of some of the choicest sites. Found a double site, and got all set up. The double was just fine. Our friends the Jones were joining us when George was done with a doctor's appointment on the same day.

Weather was pretty decent. Not too hot and not too cold. Expected it to be really nice and cooler than what it would be in the flatlands.

Thursday we kinda of rested and just sat around. Angel and I did check out the campground and all sites close by. Got used to riding the ATV again.

Friday morning, I sat around visiting with Judy Jones and just relaxing. Friday afternoon, we climbed aboard the ATV's and headed to the Cub River ATV Trail. It leaves the campground, goes down to the river and winds up and over the mountain. It goes along the main road, but away about 25 to 50 feet. Checked out several things that I had not seen last time I was at the Cub River. Found the spring coming out of the mountain that ended up down at the Cub River. That was neat. Yes, I took lots of pictures. By clicking on My Pictures to the right here, you will see all my pictures.

Friday turned out to be pretty hot, especially if a person was in the sun. So since Angel was in the sun all the time in her basket, I devised a canopy to go over her basket to protect her from the sun. Yes, it is Mickey Moused, but it worked just fine to give her shade as needed.

On Saturday, after Marshal was done fishing, we took off on another trail ride. This time to the German Dugway. My main idea was to end up at Copenhagen Basin. That is, if I could keep the others going. This trail was not an easy one. Several spots on the mountain going up were really rocky and very slow going. Didn't have to go down to first gear or 4 wheel drive, but it kept me pretty slow. Lots of wonderful scenery to see. Once we reached the top of the mountain, the others did not want to go further, so we turned around and went back to the camp. I really enjoyed this trail. I know that my son, Stanley, would be envious of his mother. And he would have fun on his dirt bike taking it. LOL

I forgot to mention, Thursday night, a few more people came into the campground. But on Friday evening, it was like a gate had opened up and the campground filled up quickly. There was only like 3 sites left empty. One thing we noticed, most of the vehicles had Utah plates, very few were Idaho. Saturday was very noisy due to all the people in the campground.

Saturday evening the clouds started moving in, but we didn't think anything of it. Come on, it is August in Idaho. It did cool off some though. Sometime after midnight, it started to rain. Not too much at first, but by sun up, the rain was coming down real good. Those that were staying in tents sure were miserable. LOL

On Sunday morning, it finally quit raining. Got to watch those that were in tents try to gets things dried out. But it was too cool to really dry things. Marshal had put down our awning on Saturday, so most of our outside stuff was dry or damp. Since it was halfway decent and the guys went fishing, Angel and I loaded up and headed out to Franklin Basin. It was a half way decent ride. Some rough spots, but not as bad as German Dugway. So we made pretty good time. Saw a couple of roads that tempted me to see what was down them, but I resisted. Since I had told someone where I was gonna be, figured that it would be best to try and stay pretty close to my announced route. We did end up at Franklin Basin and it was a pretty spot. Somewhat cool, but livable for us. The night before I had taken a good look at the topo map to see what roads were available in Franklin Basin. So I chose the road to Egan Basin to make a change in scenery. Not a long road, but nice ride. Towards the end of the road, I looked down at the road to check things out, lifted my head up and in front were two very nice good size bucks. They were fantastic. So close, that I could almost reached out and touched them. I stopped, killed the motor, and reached for the camera. The whole time, they did not move more than 50 yards away from us. Got some good pictures of them. Sure do wished that I had more of a telephoto lens on the camera though. They finally left for parts unknown, but gave us a few minutes of staring at each other. Then it was back to heading back to the camp. Coming down the canyon that leads to Cub River, we scared up another buck. He got into the trees before I could get close enough for a good picture. But he was curious about us. Must have been my red hat from the neighbor and Murdock Chevrolet!!! LOL

About lunch time, Marshal came back from fishing and the clouds let loose. We had a good ole mountain cloudburst. The rain came down hard and heavy. At several times, the water was running so fast through our site, that I wondered if we needed a boat. It rained like that for a good hour or so. Since there wasn't much else to do, I had read quite a bit, in fact, finished up the three books I had left and I did some serious work on a Christmas gift while we were there. I took a nap. When I woke up, most of the people had cleared out of the campground and the rain had quit.

That afternoon, we loaded up and headed for the Franklin Basin. Marshal and the rest wanted to see it. So away we went. I did take down Angel's canopy, as it wasn't needed due to the clouds. We arrived at Franklin Basin and decided that since it was still decent, we would go as far as where the road ran into the highway in Logan Canyon. Well, about 5 minutes after we made that decision, it started to rain. At first, thought it was just a quick shower, and then it turned into a deluge!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone, except I, had a rain coat, but George had an extra one that I could wear. And we decided to head back to camp. I took Angel's extra blanket and wrapped her in it, put her on the seat in front of me and leaned over her. That was to help protect her as much as possible from the rain, and to help her stay warm with my body heat. And we headed back as fast as we could go in the rain. About halfway back, the rain let up some. Then almost the way back, we stopped for a minute to rest up and the rain quit. I took off my gloves, leather by the way, wrung about a quart of water out of them. Wrung Angel's blanket out and got quite a bit, but she was damp, not real wet. My pants were soaking wet and heavy from the water. About the only thing that wasn't wet was my boots, (water proofed) and my sweater and tee shirt (had the rain coat on). As the pants were my last clean pair, I had to dig a dirty pair out of the laundry to wear for the next two days!!!!! LOL Everything back at camp was soaking wet, even having the awning out did not protect any of it. We called it early that night. Oh, and Angel was just barely damp, except for her head, which was outside of the blanket. She did not suffer any ill effects from the ride. It was a real fun day for all.

For most of Sunday night, it rained. And it came down good. Still raining come Monday morning. When it finally stopped, we got things ready to head home.

Altogether, we did a couple of good rides, Marshal caught like 15 fish, we ate 9 of them and brought home the rest. It was nicer coming home, as there wasn't any dust on the road, due to the rain.

I am now ready to take off again. Hate sitting at home.

The above picture is of my surviving great uncles on my dad's side of the family. Yes, great uncles. Both are in their 80's.

My great grandparents, John Albert and Marthann Priest Hunsaker were married in 1900. My grandmother, Hortense, was born in November, 1900. She was the oldest child. They had ten children, all that lived to adulthood and raised families of their own. The youngest being born 28 years later. For several years, my grandmothers were having children within months of each other. One of the places that my great grandparents lived, was at Bothwell, Utah. The house they lived in, is still there, remodeled some, but still there. All of their children and several grandchildren were born there.

My grandmother, Hortense, was a sickly person, having had polio as a young child. So my father and his older brother spent a good many years growing up in their grandparents home.

One of my cousins brought some stuff that they had found in the attic of an old house they used to live in. In this stuff, was two postcards, one written by my grandfather, Howard Smith to the Hunsakers about the health of my grandmother, Hortense. The other written by my grandmother to her parents. Both cards were written in 1934. I now have them in my possession. It made my whole day to get these postcards.

One of the things we did was shared memories of our childhood and memories of stories we had heard while growing up.

If I have figured it out right, we had 4 generations there. It is kinda of hard to figure out the generations, as we had the uncles, children (my father's generation), grandchildren (my generation), great grandchildren, great great grandchildren and maybe one more generation. All together we had 52 people. Out of the ten children, there was only 3 with no representative there.

It was a fun day and we really enjoyed ourselves. We will have another reunion next year. More pictures can be found by clicking on the link My Pictures to the right.