The fan from Tiger Direct arrived. After putting that one in, it became clear that the CPU fan was equally as loud and needed to be changed. A store in town had one, I’ve put that one in, and things are a bit less noisy. Not enough, however! I still need to do something. Perhaps we’ll go south for a while tomorrow and I might find myself in a Best Buy…. Who knows what miracles may happen?

I checked the status on the order from Tiger Direct for the quiet fan. It’s backordered. They’ll let me know when it’s on the way. Meantime, I’m using my iMac for as much of my activities as possible. I turn on the PC every once-in-a-while but the noise becomes overbearing and off it goes. Nina originally said she couldn’t hear it. But this afternoon when I had heard enough, I shut the PC down and Nina asked me what that noise was that stopped. She then agreed that the fan is just plain too noisey. Who knows when the replacement fan will be here? Meanwhile, I’m getting more and more acclimated to the iMac and finding that I really like the machine. To make it really do all that I need, I’ll need to buy some software, but for everything except genealogy, I could see it easily replacing my PC. Unfortunately, PAF is not available for the Macintosh and there doesn’t seem to be any other reasonable genealogy programs available. The Mac notebook computers have been selling very well and I read somewhere recently that about 12% of the notebooks being sold are Macintosh. I can understand why. They are lightning fast and very secure. One may make its way into my possession some day soon.

It has been very hot the past couple of weeks. Temperatures in excess of a hundred degrees several days in a row are setting records. The weather people say that a high pressure system over the area is beginning to break down and that cooler temperatures will move in later in the week. That’s all well and good, but the grass still has to be mowed. I put it off for two weeks and that was long enough. I started the front yard Friday night when the sun went behind the mountain. I got it about two-thirds done when I had to quit for the night. Saturday morning I started mowing about 7:30 a.m. and finished about 10 a.m. and had breakfast. Then came the trimming around the house and fence which took another hour. By that time the temperatures were well above 95 degrees. I had thought of going downtown for the 24th of July Parade, but the heat changed my mind. Instead we hauled four huge garbage sacks of grass up to the county dump (the grass was that high!) and spent the afternoon indoors. Dinner at Applebee’s rounded out the day so that Nina didn’t have to do any cooking. It was a good day for being inside.

I’ve done some work on the picture album software. The ability to remove a picture has been added to the system. The picture isn’t really deleted, just moved to a topic titled "Deleted Pics". That topic isn’t displayed on the album page, however the picture is still available if it were to be needed later. There’s still more work to be done to the album software, but that’ll wait for another day.

My brother Perry and I have been discussing getting together for a couple of days in August. We’ve settled on the 21st through 23rd of August in Hoback Junction, Wyoming. They are a lot of fun to go do things with and I’m looking forward to the short vacation.

A week or so ago I got a call from my Uncle Ted in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was looking for a couple of young men that would have been nephews on his side of the family. They had a small inheritance coming from his recently deceased brother. Through divorces and remarriages, his family had lost track of this Pocatello branch. Using the city library and the city directories available there, I was able to find an address for the mother. I sent a letter in hopes of getting a forwarding address. She called me this afternoon after receiving the letter. She was certainly surprised that anyone from that family was looking for her or her sons. She is now in contact with my uncle and these fellows (they are certainly not young men any more — married with families!) will be getting the inheritance that their great grandfather put away for them many years ago. This was a search for which the Internet was no help. Thankfully, books and libraries still exist and the needed information was found. Life continues to be good!

A few days ago my computer started making all kinds of noises — grinding, vibrating, bad noises. I took the cover off and discovered, to my surprise, that instead of my hard disk going belly up, it was the fan. I pulled the fan out and took it down to the local computer parts store today. They had one so I brought it home and put it in at lunch. I started up the computer. The fan makes a huge amount of noise. Unlike the old one, it’s just the same constant loud whine. It’s going to drive me nuts. The dang thing cost me eight bucks! It ought to be quiet for that price. There’s nothing to do but order one online. So I went to Tiger Direct and immediately found the same fan that I bought for eight bucks selling for $2.99, or four of them for nine dollars. A super-quiet case fan sells for eight bucks. Now I just need to figure out what else I “need” from Tiger Direct to make the shipping costs worthwhile….

Most every Thursday night during the summer and fall, a group of folks in the neighborhood gather at a local gas station on their motorcycles and take a ride somewhere. Last night I was actually able to join the group. I had the only Kawasaki motorcycle in the group and was one of two touring bikes. All the other bikes were, well, loud. Not all were Harleys, but all had that big, loud motorcycle sound. No matter, I had a great ride and will do it again on Thursday nights as often as life events will allow. We left Pocatello on the back roads and rode over to Lava Hot Springs and then on the old highway up to Chesterfield, back to Bancroft, and over Fish Creek back to Pocatello. The whole ride took about three hours. The weather was just beautiful, the air smelled fresh, and I had a great time. In the picture I was attempting to get my bike, the lead rider ahead of me, and the rest of the gang in the rear view mirror. If I had put my elbow down, I would have had more success with the rear view mirror, but this will definitely have to suffice. Life is good!

This is the second time I’ve written this post. The first time I forgot to click on the “publish” button and, of course, everything I wrote went into the ether never to be retrieved again. So, perhaps the second time is a charm? I’m sure what I’m writing gets better with age, anyway.

We had no other obligations this afternoon, so we decided to take a long drive. We left about 1:30 p.m. and returned about four hours later. We drove on the normal roads as far as the map said we could go south towards Malad (the map was wrong. We could have driven the entire way on normal roads). Then we took I-15 over Malad Pass and exited at the first Malad exit. We’ve never been anywhere in Malad except to one or the other of two gas stations just off the exit. This time we planned to drive through the town. That turned out to be a good idea. We exited the interstate and found we were on a road that has been on our list of places to visit: Boot Road (see the pictures! album for pictures and more detail). We just didn’t know where that road was other than somewhere by Malad. Now we know and will probably stop there again sometime.

From Malad we went west over a small mountain pass and into Holbrook, Idaho. There was once a town but now it is mostly abandoned. There are perhaps three or four occupied houses in the town plus a nice community park next to a recently refurbished Mormon Church building. I don’t know what Stake this ward/branch is part of — there is no information on the Church’s website. There also wasn’t anyone in or around the building to ask. Since Nina’s maternal grandfather was a Holbrook, visiting this town was on our list of Important Things to Do. Somewhere along the line, a couple of Holbrooks came west. Some went into Arizona and founded Holbrook, Arizona. Others joined the Church and came west, settling in Idaho and founding Holbrook, Idaho. We took several pictures and then headed back north and home. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

We’re back home and the motorhome is unloaded. Stuff isn’t put away, yet, but at least it’s all out of the motorhome. There was very little connectivity while we were gone and at least two posts from my Blackberry didn’t arrive. So, there are some holes that need to be filled in!

We left Saturday mid-morning to drive north of Rexburg through Island Park to Henry’s Lake State Park. This is one of the premiere fishing areas in eastern Idaho. The Snake River comes down through this area along with several other rivers that feed into the Snake. Henry’s Lake is a fairly large natural lake and can accomodate many, many fishermen and recreational boaters. Nina had reserved a camp spot down near the lake. It was one of two spots left that could accomodate us — but it didn’t have water or electricity. We did just fine with neither. The generator was available but we only used it to make toast for breakfast…!!

Saturday evening we stayed at the campsite, had dinner, and just relaxed. Some thunderstorms moved through which drove us inside a couple of times. There were some pretty serious thunderstorms every afternoon and evening that we were there.

Sunday morning we headed into West Yellowstone — about 17 miles away — and attended the West Yellowstone Ward church services. This ward really understands how to handle large crowds. I expect there were about 700 people there for Sacrament Meeting and about half stayed for the other meetings. People in the ward were assigned to handle various parts of the service. For instance, one person was responsible for rounding up enough Aaronic Priesthood to pass the sacrament and another found the six Priests needed to bless the sacrament and the five Teachers needed to prepare the sacrament. Both Michael and Christopher were asked to pass and they looked pretty sharp in their suits. Each person passing the sacrament took two trays and they were kept pretty busy keeping the trays moving up and down the rows. In the end it took twelve minutes to pass to about 700 people. We take longer than that in our ward for a hundred and fifty people!

Sunday afternoon we took the motorhome and drove around Quake Lake and Hebgen Lake. This is one of the posts that didn’t arrive. Quake Lake was formed on August 17, 1959 when a quake measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale struck a little before midnight. A huge landslide dammed up the Madison River downstream from the Hebgen dam. Hundreds of people were stranded requiring smoke jumpers to parachute in with supplies and army helicopters to ferry out the wounded. Twenty-eight people died and nineteen of those were never recovered. I remember the earthquake vividly as it was the major news event of that summer. I was working in Treasureton at the Workman farm when the earthquake occurred and it woke me up. It was very interesting to go through this area and stop at the visitors center some 47 years after the event.

The thunderstorms were huge on Sunday evening. We sat outside for quite a while watching the lightning going off all around the area. We didn’t get much rain — just a lot of wind (damaging the awning, of course. I should have put it down and didn’t before we went to bed.) but the lightning show was pretty spectacular.

We pretty much let people sleep in on Monday. Even Nina slept until about 6 a.m.! Christopher can sleep 24 hours a day if left to his own devices, I think. Monday late morning we went into West Yellowstone for lunch, a little souvenier shopping, and the Imax theater show on Yellowstone. I really enjoyed the theater and the information on Yellowstone. I think the kids found it rather boring except for a couple of parts featuring bears. Then we did some final grocery shopping and went back to the campground to roast hot dogs, cook chicken, and for the kids to roast … Starbursts. That’s right — those little chewy candies. You put them on a stick and roast it in the fire. The outside gets very crunchy and the inside gets very soft, almost like a cream filling. I tried a couple and that was enough for me. Marshmellows roasted on the fire are one delicious thing, but Starbursts are a bit too far. The thunderstorms drove us back into the motorhome for a couple of hours of exciting games of Uno. The clouds finally blew away and Nina and the kids went outside to look at the stars. I studied the back of my eyelids for about twenty seconds before going to sleep.

Today is the 4th of July. The day was bright and clear at Henry’s Lake State Park. Most everyone was leaving to go somewhere else (most were probably going home). After a great breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, honey, and Sunny Delight, we also packed up and drove out of the campground about 11:30 a.m. We drove past the Upper and Lower Mesa Falls (I did the Upper Falls trek by myself. None of the grandkids wanted to get out of the motorhome!). Then it was back home to unload the RV and settle in for the night. The grandkids go back to Orem tomorrow afternoon and they’ll be very happy to be back with family and friends. They had a good time camping, but they’re now looking forward to home. Heather, Ty, Jaelene, and Scott all fly home tomorrow and I’m sure they’ll be just as excited to see their kids. By Thursday we’ll be back to normal around here. Time to plan the next camping trip!