Sunday at camp and time for relaxation and small chores.  Independence Day was celebrated here yesterday.  This is Mormon country and, as in Southern Baptist country, the church is the focus of social life and Sunday is the main church day. 

So, yesterday we dined at the Lions fund-raiser dinner at the town park and watched the fireworks show at the high school.  We are told that this was the small show.  The big one is at a Mormon holiday later in the month.  We also stopped for a beer after dinner at the grill in front of the campground.  The waitress had to charge us for chips "food" because in Utah one may not serve drink without food.

The fireworks started when it was almost dark, at almost ten o'clock.  We parked at the back of the high school for the show.  When it ended we joined the small queue to exit.  It took almost five minutes to get out of the parking lot.  This was a big traffic jam in Escalante.  From there we drove 15 miles east and then up a forest service dirt road into the ponderosa pines to a spot where we had been told live flammulated owls. 

We have never seen or heard a flammulated owl.  These birds are tiny and strictly nocturnal.  They feed early in the evening and in the spring relax about midnight and hoot contentedly for several hours.  It is late in the year to be seeking them, but since we were staying up way past our bedtime anyway, we thought it was worth a shot.  Never having driven the road, the trek was a small adventure.  The cattle guards were rough, potholes and cobbles lay in ambush, and the path wound up a mountain.  One very large cow stood uncertainly at the edge as we slowed down and passed in front of her.  One rock banged something underneath although I slowed down and passed it right of center. 

As such roads go, it was good and took us from the desert into the pines.  We saw many moths but heard no owls.  We reached the reported turnoff at about eight miles, turned around, and parked.  We walked up the trail playing the owl tape at every fifty paces.  The silence was unseemly and the darkness intense even though the line of the milky way seemed as a plume of white smoke crossing a sky packed with pricks of stars.  We crossed a mass of tracks that I first took as horse prints.  The flashlight revealed them to be elk tracks.  Anne became uncomfortable.  She expressed no desire to meet either a herd of elk or a foraging bear on this mountain.   I told her she had much less to fear of that than of hazards in driving the wooly road in our little car.  She commented on that too, expressing the view that she wanted to sleep in our motor home that night.  So, the seeking ended.  I commented that if we knew the trail, we could hike the two miles to the top and back just listening as we walked.  But not on this night.

Now knowing the road, the drive back to the highway was easier.  I still had to take it slow.  We did not want to roll up either an elk or a cow, but at least I knew where the curves and major bumps were.  Still, reaching the highway I banged the front end on the shoulder turning out.  We stopped at a lookout and studied the stars until we shivered in the rapidly cooling night air.  Now tired, I carefully drove the remaining ten miles into town and the Broken Bow RV Park.  We found the little porch light on our rig and noticed that the air was perfectly still.  We slept until 6:30 a.m.

Today started with our traditional Sunday breakfast of eggs with meat.  Today it was a fine bacon.  Anne worked laundry.  I maintained the vehicles.  I washed dust from the gills of our little Ford Focus as well as I could.  Anne's door has been sticking so I sprayed water into the door latches and handles.  After an hour I sprayed in WD-40 and then silicone lubricant.  Hopefully that will help.  With a few pounds of desert soil removed, the car will at least run lighter.  When we get home the air filter will be replaced with the first service.

Tomorrow we move about 80 miles to Capitol Reef National Park.  I expect to see more cliffs, rock windows, and spectacular canyons.  Having walked and climbed about our first slot canyons, we are now old hands at traversing this lovely, arid, and rugged terrain.  We have adopted a local motto, "have water will travel."