I had just gotten home from the cabin with my friends, when I turned right away and drove back up with Gary. It had been almost a year since he had been able to go. We ended up staying about 10 days!! That was a record. We kept thinking about all of the reasons we needed to come back and then just decided to stay one more day . . . about 5 times. We could have stayed longer if there hadn't been so many commitments back home. The temple had its' closure for 2 weeks, so that allowed us to be gone that long.
We didn't take many projects or work up there, so we had lots of time to work around the cabin and complete some long overdue projects there. Every day, we took at least one ride up the mountain. We would see tons of elk, so we keep going back up. There had been recent fires up by Greer, so we figured that is why the animals had moved down from the mountains and were very active. One day, we made a huge loop around Springerville and Eager to view the fire damage.
We also had rain storms - our favorite. Our friends, the Powell's, came up over a weekend and we enjoyed their company. We took Joni up to view the animals and gave her a tour of that part of the state! In return, she made us homemade ice cream! Nice trade-off! We really hated to come home. We could have stayed much longer.
