Sunday, July 6, 2008

Sand Dunes... "See Dan Drive!"

Have you been waiting to "See Dan Drive?!" Well - here is the proof - he did it!


Did you know that we have a place in Utah called "Little Sahara"? I have lived here a long time and have never taken the time to go to this National Park, and it is only about 90 minutes from our home! For one thing, you have to own an off-road vehicle to have any fun, and we (Dan and I) don't have such toys, so we have never bothered to go check it out. Nathan (our son) bought an ATV from his brother-in-law, so they invited us to go with them for a fun weekend getaway...

Here is Nate helping his Dad get situated on the four-wheeler...


And off Dan goes... !!


Bye bye, Daddio!


Dan is kickin' up a little dirt.... better slow it down, Dan!


Dan has gone the "full circle" and is now coming back to the camp site!


As you can tell, Dan is pretty happy about his ride! (Did you notice, he just happened to be wearing his "See Dan Drive" shirt!) He did rub the skin off his right thumb as he had to press on the gas more with the outside of this thumb/ palm to get acceleration. He said it was good motivation to get his thumb working better on his right hand!



Now for some shots of the pros...!

Jeff "catchin' some air" at the top of a dune...



Watch out! Here comes Nate...


Hey! Nate can do the "air" thing too!!



Here is our beautiful daughter, Angie!



Angie is doing some jumps too.... what are those brothers teaching her!



And here goes LaNae...!


Just a little proof that I did get on the four wheeler! The only problem was that I got stuck and had to be rescued from the top of the sand dune...!

I thought - I will just go down the trail a bit where I thought the sand dunes were smaller. I will take a nice little ride over a few dunes, circle back and then I can claim that I "drove it"! So-- up the hill I went... only when I got up there, I found that I was on a rather large dune... and the top of it was very steep, like a tent top! One side of the dune was a big bowl and it was very steep... I was trying to see how I was going to navigate this thing... it was a lot larger than I was expecting, so I slowed the vehicle down a little. (Bad move... the engine cut out!) So there I am about three feet from the top of this dune on a very steep incline! I thought... I can do this... (ha ha) ... so I turned the wheel a bit up hill and got back on and tried to start the thing. Well - it kicked me in the shin (ouch!) but I got it going again...

My success didn't last too long as when I let out the clutch, the ATV decided to dig in deeper into the sand, rather than go up over the top! So -- there I am -- stranded up on the top of a sand dune. I was lucky that I could see see the camp site and so I just went to the top of the hill, waved my arms wildly and waited for my sons to come get me! Poor guys -- they jumped in their 4-wheel drive vehicle and drove as far as they could, and then they had to hike up the sand mountain to rescue the vehicle! I just said -- I have nothing to prove -- you go ahead and just bring it down! ;-) So I walked down the mountain and they got to have an extra ride as a benefit for "saving Mom".

It's time to head for home! Here are the boys working together to take the tents down....


Everyone was pretty worn out by then... here is Gentry sleeping on the camp chairs!



We had a great time! Thanks to Nate and Heather for letting us join in on this fun family weekend!!