Melissa, Andy and the kids' Blog

My dad discovered records about my Great Grandpa Hanson Bayles and the Decker Brothers being the only people to raise successful crops the first year in Bluff.  It referenced Great Grandpa Bayles farming at the mouth of Recapture Creek.  It is only 35 minutes from our house, so we figured we could check it out.  The research started with a comparison of a modern satellite image to the map my dad provided  from 1886 , trying to locate Recapture Creek in our modern world.  After asking a friend about the area, he said there is a decent dirt road most of the way, so we decided to just take the truck, rather than load up an ATV. Here is  a link  to the Google Maps view of the area .   We started by pulling off highway 162 onto a dirt road.  We followed that for about a mile, then things got interesting.  We turned on to a smaller trail and got to run through a couple mud pits and drive down the dry riverbed for a 1/3 mile.  W...

  First order of business for October? Get the truck. We headed back to Arizona October 3rd to help with clean up weekend at Grandma Flick's cabin and get our truck back.    $15,000 later the truck looks just like it did to begin with.  Well, except Melissa's big scratch on the front right fender is gone... because its a new fender.  All new fenders, driver door, hood, bumper/grill, cattle/Ford guard and a bunch of new suspension parts. My girls enjoying a ride. After visiting the cabin, we came home... and went back in time! Mrs. Bayless had 80's day at school to celebrate the end of first term and she looked great. The Monticello temple looked great too, all dressed up for fall. We spent a day riding up Abajo Peak on the Rhino. We took Zoe and a picnic lunch and had a lot of fun enjoying the colorful leaves. We stopped in a beautiful meadow for lunch.  I rode through here during the "Bayles" reunion I was invi...

After the truck accident, the rental car place gave us a Bug to replace the truck... for what would become a whole month. So Melissa promptly decided to take it off-roading for a photo shoot. My employer sponsored a 5k run at the 2014 Northern Navajo Fair in Bluff, UT. I was asked to help organize it and ended up donating plush chicken toys to be buried along the path.  Ahoohai is a Navajo word mean fair/celebration or chicken pull, it comes from the tradition of skilled horsemen pulling a stuffed chicken out of the ground from the saddle to win a prize.  We turned it in to a foot race with prize labeled chickens. Melissa parked at the halfway point and ran a water booth.  The course ended up quite enjoyable, running north from the fair grounds along a dirt and rock path under the bluffs. After the run, Melissa and I went home for a few hours.  We then returned to Bluff for the rodeo.  It seemed like a slow month, but I'm sure we did ot...

Labor day weekend (9/1/14) ended with some work behind the cabin.   Grandma and Zoe checked the deer/bear watering bucket. Uncle Dale and I collected firewood from the trees the forest service cut down. Saying goodbye. 2.4 miles away from the cabin. We introduced the truck to a small silver F-150 named, "dumb truck." The driver of the other truck was waiting to cross our highway in Arizona and I guess he didn't see us so he pulled out nice and slow to cross the road.  I had time to put on the brakes and probably slowed from 40 to 35 MPH, but driving the truck with the trailer and both ATVs is a lot of weight.  We hit his driver's side rear wheel and sent him into a 180* spin across the road Smashed bumper, radiators and sheet metal. The trailer bent the truck's hitch.   His truck across the road. Oops!   We called the cabin and Dale came to pull the trailer and toys back up there.  We stayed an extra night a...

Zoe got a new friend this month.  Our neighbors, kitty corner, got a Cocker Spaniel called Copper and he and Zoe are now the best of friends.   Melissa and I hosted a block party BBQ.  We had great turnout, lots of new friends we hadn't ever spent time with before, came to hang out. We had married, single, 4 week old, 90 year old, ward members, nonmembers and everything in between. It was a great evening, definitely something we'll be doing again.  If not a hot chocolate party, then another BBQ next summer.   Pretty lame classroom, huh?  Well, not for long because this is Mrs Bayless' new classroom.  Melissa accepted an offer to teach 6th grade math at the middle school about a week and a half before school started.   And it was just a couple days before her birthday too.  Which meant we had to cut her birthday weekend a little short to get her back for teacher start day Monday.   We ended up with a busy we...