“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~Dale Carnegie
Len and I were up at 6:30am in order to leave by 7:30 to be in Blanding by 8am to be there when the repair shop (Montella’s) opened. They had a backlog and said that it would be at least an hour before they could get to it so we went in search of coffee and breakfast and found the Center Street Cafe, a hometown breakfast-and-lunch only diner run by a family. The grandmother was the cranky-but-frank short-order cook, the daughter was the sympathetic waitress, with help from her son who looked to be 12 or 13. They knew everyone who came in—except us, of course. Len ordered a short stack that turned out to
be fairly tall and I ordered an egg over-easy with one biscuit and gravy—a weakness of mine ever since I worked the kitchen in the Skyline Manor Nursing Home (my first real job at 16) and Buela the cook got me hooked on biscuits with sausage gravy.
After breakfast, we went back to Montella’s and Len spent ages troubleshooting with the mechanics while I wrote out some postcards and made notes for the day’s blog post. Randy and Martha came into town and picked me up at the garage then we drove to The Dinosaur Museum, where I was in paleoheaven.
Remember the picture I posted of that small amonite that I bought at the Argo Mine? Well, the Dinosaur Museum had a six-foot diameter amonite just inside their front door! Woah. That’s one big stone cephalopod. I toured the museum and enjoyed learning about the tracks of dinosaurs, the change to many more of them believed to be feathered and some debate now as to whether or not birds are descended from dinosaurs or whether they developed on parallel tracks. Also, it turns out that every state has a state fossil? Do you know yours?
There were pop culture displays, too, including an original diorama from a stop-motion animated T-Rex film. The first image shows the setup, the second shows how it looks through the viewfinder.
Aside from the museum, it was mostly another day of troubleshooting. Looking forward to that being behind us. Tomorrow, though, is a five-and-a-half hour drive day in order to get us back on track. Since we were waylaid by three days, we do have some cancellations. Gone from the schedule now are Moab and Dinosaur Butte.
Randy and Martha left Blanding to head to Phoenix to fly home and reported back that their flight may be cancelled because the temperature is so high the runway in Phoenix is melting. Just let that sink in for a minute. The RUNWAY is MELTING. End times.
Coming Up: Red Fleet State Park, Utah.
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