Well it's time for General Conference again. I look forward to April and October General Conference with great anticipation, for they are always very spiritually fulfilling. How quickly the last six months have passed.

In October, my friend Jason and I drove to Salt Lake City on Saturday morning, listening to the morning session as we drove, where we attended the Saturday afternoon session. That was the session where Elder Dieter F. Uchdorf and Elder David A. Bednar were sustained to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was a special privilege to be present there and to participate as we and all the other members of the Church raised their right hands to sustain these two newly called Apostles.

We were seated in the bottom few rows of the upper balcony at the westernmost end, looking down upon the stand where the various General Authorities sit. Before the session began, we watched the two new members of the Quorum of the Twelve standing at the end of the row where the Twelve sit, the end nearest to us. It was marvelous to see the friendship and welcome extended to these two new members by the others. They came over and stood next to them, shook their hands, and even warmly hugged them. It was heartwarming.

This conference, I decided to...

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Another Saturday had arrived with sunny, shirt-sleeve weather, the air pleasantly cool and clear after recent stormy weather. Having had no real physical activity for two weeks, the urge to go hiking was nigh unto killing me. I made a quick call over...

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On Concrete Arrows
Random Tidbits and Musings on the Historic Aviation Markers in Southwestern Utah

While cache hunting (or geocaching), I've come across several large concrete arrows on the ground. At first I wondered what they were for, speculating that perhaps they were aviation markers of some sort. Later, after reading other cache hunters talk about the same arrows, and after reading a historical display in the St. George Utah Municipal Airport about the old Air Mail routes circa 1930, I learned that indeed these were indeed aviation markers, relics left over from aviation history.

I have visited three of these arrows so far. I would like to visit more, if more exist.

One is located near the Bloomington Overlook cache by Drifty. If you vist that arrow and look where it points, you will see a crooked-topped mesa near Washington, Utah called Shinob Kibe.

Another arrow is located near the Shinob Kibe Cache by Astounding (That's me, of course! *smile*) atop that mesa. This particular arrow is airway beacon 37B or HO0622, part of the Los Angeles to Salt Lake City airway route. If you visit the Shinob Kibe Cache, you can also log your visit to this arrow since it is listed as Airway Beacon Benchmark HO0622.

While recently visiting the Shinob Kibe arrow, I wondered if it pointed to the next arrow in the route, and if that next arrow still existed. Sure enough, the next arrow does exist. I used the search as an excuse to place a new cache, the Quail Creek Reservoir West Overlook cache, near the rim of the hill west of Quail Creek Reservoir. I placed the cache before I found the arrow. On the way back to my vehicle, a few hundred feet from where the cache is hidden, I came across the expected arrow.

Arrow above Quail Creek ReservoirBoth the Shinob Kibe and the Quail Creek arrows show evidence that metal towers once stood above the central concrete pads. Also, both of these arrows are approximately 55 to 56 feet in length. I need to revisit the Bloomington Overlook arrow to see how long it is and whether it too shows evidence of a beacon tower.

Airway Beacon Illustration Circa 1931 - Courtesy FAAI found a web site at the FAA that had this to say:These arrows in Southwestern Utah aren't quite 70 feet long. Since there is evidence of steel towers on at least two of these arrows, I think there is sufficent evidence that these arrows were a part of this or a similar air route beacon system.

If there were generators at the Shinob Kibe or Quail Creek arrows, the back concrete pads of both of these are tilted quite a bit (and don't show signs of great cracking or upheaval to indicate that the tilt is due to shifts in the ground), so I wonder how it worked.

Also, the only access route to the Shinob Kibe arrow is a narrow, single-file trail, so the concrete, steel, and/or any other equipment or supplies brought to that location would likely have been brought by pack animal, as is mentioned at the same FAA web page.

Interesting stuff...

Shinob Kibe Paintbrush Near a concrete arrow, an aviation navigation aid from sometime around 1930, atop the Shinob Kibe mesa in Washington, Utah (the community next-door to St. George, Utah where I live), I came across some Indian Paintbrush, booming early admid the unusually green surroundings (unusually green for the desert due to recent unusually plentiful rain).

I got lucky. My camera caught just the angle I was looking for. And this shot filled my camera's compact flash card, so even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have taken any more pictures.

Today at church I put the image on my notebook computer as my desktop wallpaper. (I bring my laptop computer to church to take minutes at some of the meetings I attend.) I liked the image so much, I decided to stick it on my web site as a new wallpaper selection.

To see or download larger resolution versions of this photo, visit my Wallpapers section of my web site.

What was I doing atop Shinob Kibe yesterday? Why I was there to replenish my Shinob Kibe geocache. Read my Astounding Adventures log entry for more details.

If this post's title rings a bell, then you've revealed that you're as hooked on LOST as I am, and as my parents, sisters, and brother are. This evening I visited my parents house in Hurricane. There we gathered together around the television, and watched the most recent episode of LOST that the TiVo had recorded.

I must say, having a TiVo to record programs for later watching is sweet. We skipped past the commercials and watched a one-hour episode in forty-something minutes, and were able to rewind in a few key spots when someone missed something, or pause when we wanted to talk a bit or just laugh ourselves silly.

I had a blast. I haven't enjoyed family television watching like this for a long time. The last TV series all of my family (at least those of us in southwestern Utah) all enjoyed this much and gathered together regularly to watch was Now and Again, about five years or so ago.

This episode of Lost, titled Numbers was one of our favorite. We laughed and laughed and laughed again and again throughout.

You don't know how grateful I was for the telephone call from my little brother was this afternoon. The afternoon was waring on and I had not been outside once, and it was a beautiful day. I was dying for an excuse to go for a short hike, to get outdoors, to...

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Sun River Golf Course SubmergedI've always had something of a morbid fascination with natural disasters, something of a lingering desire to see a tornado up close (but not too close). The power of nature's fury has a raw sort of beauty that leaves me in awe.

Juxtaposed against that beauty is compassion for those who lose property, or far, far worse, friends or family to the destruction. In this flood, one person has lost his life, and it looks like many others have or will lose their homes and many of their possessions. Such loss is terrible, and painful. The suffering overshadows and overwhelms any beauty natures fury might possess.

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In my family, each year at Christmas, we each have a name of someone else in the family that we focus our gift-giving attention to. Since there are nine of us, seven children, some married with their own families, and my parents, it would be insane to...

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Well I did it. This afternoon, with my sister and parents, I went to see the movie, "The Work and the Glory" in Hurricane at the new and impressive Coral Cliffs Cinema 8 theaters.

But first, I must digr...

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For the heck of it, I'm copying verbatim (mostly -- with just a few HTML tweaks to make it look okay, and any other edits, some flagged with italic notes) my profile from the LDS Mingle web site for single LDS folks like myself. You know, one of those LDS web sites for desperate singles? (That's a joke for the humor impaired--while some site members may be desperate, I think they're the exception, not the rule.) I enjoyed putting this profile together, so why not share it here? Besides, this lets me archive it for future reference...

Here it is:

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