I was enjoying that full moon this evening soaking out in our hot tub in the backyard. Love the winter brightness of the full moon, illuminating the desert rocky mountain behind our home and the Joshua and Mesquite trees. I saw this very cool falling star, with a long yellow trail, then it suddenly exploded with a bright white flash. Even with the bright moonlit sky I could see the falling star very well. Makes you think about how well our atmosphere protects us from stuff flying through space, at least the small meteors :-)
Anyway I did not make it down to DCHS this Thanksgiving weekend. I did go down on both Saturday and Sunday of the weekend of 11-11, spending time with Nevada Naturist and his friend on both days. They were down for the weekend and stayed at our house on that Saturday night. On Sunday my wife and daughters came down to DCHS also. I spent time that Saturday cleaning out the Womb, Serenity, and the Aniversary pools with the pool hose I have stored down there. Got em all nice and spanky clean!
There have been a few close calls regarding fire problems over the summer. One case where some folks who were camped upstream and had a fire, and apparently some fool put a propane canister in the fire and it exploded and started some trees on fire. Next to the big white sand beach area by the Arizonal pool, on the hillside above the sand, there is a roundish burn area, maybe 40 feet in diameter where someone clearly set the hill on fire. Also some of you here will remember Scott, the guy who was selling stuff like liquor down at DCHS, among doing other stupid things, and was eventually convicted and banned from the area for a year. Well he's back spending time at DCHS. Anyway he told Nevada Naturist and me a story on the weekend of the 11th about how he had brought a Flare Gun down to the springs, and while he had it there, he fired it off, and the flare landed on the hillside just northeast of the hotpools area, just a hundred feet or so above the PCT, and it started a fire. Thankfully some folks got up there quick and were able to stop the fire before it went up the hillside. You have to ask yourself, what kind of guy brings a friggin Flare Gun to a drought stricken area of high fire danger, and then fires the thing off. Nevada Naturist and his friend had never met Scott before, and they came over to me later in the day and said, " man that guys out there ". Thats the kind of crap thats going to get the place shut down, especially after the horrendous fires recently up in the San Bernardino mountains.
Aside from that, we all had a wonderful time soaking and visiting with old friends down at DCHS. I got a photo looking downstream across the big beach area that I took on Saturday, and I'll post it at Wizard's pictures when I get a chance. There is loads of trash back in the trees and bushes when you get a bit aways from the pools area. Just sad the idiots can't respect the place. Things look pretty decent around the pools and big beach. I take out what trash I can, but I'm not up to the big bags like in my younger days.
I saw Naked Man down there and he told me about how he and Greg had done alot of work on the graffiti, especially the big one upstream from DCHS. They got the big one basically hidden to where you can't see if from the Bowen Ranch trail anymore. They did work to hide some other graffiti too. I told Naked Man where there was some just downstream from the hotpools and he said he would take a look at it and see what he could do. Just real nice to not have to see the 11 foot by 4 foot ugly huge graffiti that was visible from the Bowen trail.
On the 16th of this month I also did a hike to Deep Creek to another spot that I like, and spent the day soaking up a bit up sun in a quite serene area along the creek where nobody goes. Nice to spend quiet time in pristine places where fools aren't tearing Mother Nature apart. Still on the way into the canyon passed many areas on the hillsides that have been chewed up by illegal ORV riding. I wish the USFS had a way to stop it, but the area is so spread out, and with little manpower and other priorities I know its just not feasible for the USFS to elliminate this problem to any significant degree. I think a few well place snipers would really do the trick :-)