Birthday Trip for Janene

For Janene's birthday, we tried to do some things we never find time to do. We got the papers signed to transfer the lot into our name and then went up to Heber to record the change with the county. More about that at another time. We went to a great little restaurant in Midway called the Tarahumara. The food was awesome, but a little on the expensive side. The family that owns it is from the Copper Canyon area in Chihuahua, Mexico where Grandpa Morton filmed his "Misadventure" movie. We then went up to take a look at the lot and traipse the property lines. Quite a few trees are down or dead this year from the hard winter. We walked down the "trail" to the creek ( it was more like bushwhacking a trail) and got enveloped in clouds of pollen from the trees and shrubs, but we found these incredible little purple flowers that were growing everywhere on vines. I think they are a wild clematis, but I'm not sure. Once we got down to the creek, I almost expected to find a six-pack of Nehi and a couple of watermelons chilling in the stream. There were a ton of memories that came flooding back - the time Mort and I dug a badger out of his den along the creek and ran all the way up the trail to the top, expecting our next step to be our last... or the time Grandpa warned me not to touch the aspen trees because the oil on my skin would kill them... or the time my cousin Bryan and I caught our first chipmunk. What a place! It's not the same anymore. Most of the work Grandpa did on the property is either reclaimed by nature, or destroyed by the neighbor, but there is nothing better than the smell of the canyon or the sound of the buzzing bumblebees in the wildflowers to bring back a sense of place, of care and love that we felt there as kids.