Mesa, AZ - Goblin Valley

I’m sure that most of you have heard about the Boy Scout leader who was in Goblin State Park in Utah and knocked over a rock formation because he thought it might tumble and hurt someone. Yeah, right. He was guffawing, high-five-ing and dancing a jig as he as pushing it over. And, he filmed it. I don’t think someone would film an act of safety but they often film acts of destruction. We haven’t heard much else about what the consequences of this act might be. We did read that before a judge can impose any punishment, he needs to know what the approximate cost of the damage was. Now the State Park system of Utah must decide how much one of the rocks in Goblin Valley SP costs. As if someone could place a value on a rock a million years old.

Now, Gary and I have some ideas about the consequences: how about a year of service in the state parks. 1/2 of that time could be spent at the entry to the park wearing a sign that reads: ‘I pushed over a rock formation. Tell me what you think of me.’ The rest of the time he could spend cleaning out the bathrooms.

I do know that he is not a Boy Scout leader any more. The Boy Scouts were terribly embarassed and they have every right to be.

On another topic, it seems to me that everyone in the Phoenix area eats out every night - except Gary and I. We noticed last night while driving around that on one street: there were 4 restaurants on one side: Red Robin, In-N-Out, Chick-Fil-A, and Mad Dog something or other, and 6 or so resautrants on the other side of the street: Country Buffet, Macaroni Grill, Applebees, Chiles, Texas Steakhouse and one other. I’m sure that it we had driven further into the surrounding malls and down the road a smidge, we might have found others. And - ALL of the parking lots were jampcked. And, this is a Wednesday night. Luckily, most of it is fast food with high turnover or they’d need to build bigger parking lots.

Let’s face it, every now and then one runs into problems in an RV. Okay, okay, maybe more often than every now and then. Some problems are intermittent and hard to solve but here’s a picture of a problem that is easy to solve. It is a very obvious crack. So, just buy a new part. Easy to say but, holy cow - this part cost $400+. Luckily, Gary can install it.