Craziness At The County Fair and Amazing Flowers

The highlight of last week for our family was the county fair. For the sake of discussion, let’s say you’ve never been to the Washington County Fair. Here is what you’re missing:

1) An unusually high ratio of mullets. I seriously can’t understand how this happens. How do so many mullets pop out of the woodwork?

2) A show with dancing pink poodles. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow Cory, when did you start taking acid?" This truly wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination.

3) Unique carnival workers. And by “unique” I mean “seriously creepy”.

4) Lots of carnival rides that our stomachs were not equipped to handle. During one ride my daughter gripped my arm, dry heaved, and said “Make it stop daddy!” It is a true act of God that I did not end up covered in barf.

In far less thrilling news, I got in 58 miles running last week.

Monday, August 5th 2013: 10 miles at an obscenely early hour before work.
Tuesday, August 6th 2013: 10 miles in the evening.
Wednesday, August 7th 2013: Nada.
Thursday, August 8th 2013: 5 miles before work in the Desert Reserve.
Friday, August 9th 2013: 7 miles early.
Saturday, August 10th 2013: 26 miles in Warner Valley.

For Monday’s run I wanted to get some trail miles in the dark. I’m not very good at trails in the dark so I need more practice. Sometimes when I’m alone in the dark on a trail I worry that a mountain lion will turn me into a light snack. But the only animals I saw were of few of these:

Tuesday’s 10 miler was a hefty dose of heat training. I went up near Gooseberry Mesa which was toasty hot but totally beautiful.

There were these amazing purple flowers blooming all over the place. I’ve run around here a bunch but never seen these flowers. Wow.

What was that? You want to see more? Allllllllllrighty then. (Name that movie.)

There were these little insect-like things buzzing all over the purple flowers. I’ve never seen them before either. They looked like a mix of a butterfly, a hummingbird, and a moth. And they are fast!

If anyone ever wants to join me on a little jaunt out here let me know. I’d love to show you around. It’s basically a little chunk of heaven.

My destination was the Yellowman Petroglyphs (also some pictographs). They are some secret panels and since they are so hard to find, they are still well-preserved.

The Yellow Man is quite unique partly because of the yellow pigment and partly because it is so high up the wall that I’m not sure how someone was able to get up high enough to make it.

I’ve heard there are other petroglyphs in the area so I went scouting around a little bit but the only thing I found were some cool layered rocks.

Saturday I got in a ridiculously hot 26 miles around Warner Valley. Mel joined me for the first ten miles.

I love running with my wife. Sometimes we just run in silence. Sometimes we talk about the kids. Sometimes we talk about what to have for dinner tomorrow. Sometimes we talk about shows we loved as kids. (Alf, Charles In Charge, Mr. Belvedere, The Monkees, etc.) The miles always fly by.