This year we upgraded our camper from an 80s vintage pop-up to the hybrid or expandable in the picture.  We actually bought it on Craigslist.  Where the old camper had no amenities, this one has all the necessary items in a small package.

For our anniversary weekend, we spend 4 days and nights in an open camping area known as Long Valley.  Since we arrived on Saturday and left on Wednesday, we had few neighbors.  It was very quiet and cool and peaceful.  The view from our campsite was over a nice meadow.

We did some exploring of areas that we had not been to.  One of those was Fossil Creek, via Strawberry.   We went all the way to the bridge.  It was quite hot down there but there were lots of folks keeping cool in the creek.  The water is so blue in the pools like you see here.   This is a view from the bridge.

On the way out we stopped at the Fossil Creek Creamary and got some very good goat cheese spreads.  I definitely recommend going by there if you are in the Pine – Strawberry area.

Coming back home on Wednesday, just a few miles north on the beeline, we had a blowout of the right tire on the camper.  There was little traffic so I was able to pull over and off the road easily.  I was even blessed with shade.  The only problem was that the road slanted sharply which made it somewhat interesting jacking the trailer up to change the tire.  I was using our FJ Cruiser jack when a good samaritan came by with a much heavier duty jack, as well as a platform to set the jack in on the dirt.   That really helped a lot.  Long story short, thanks to that good samaritan, we were able to get the tire changed quickly and we were on our way.    With the shade and good samaritan, God continues to bless us in so many ways.

The blowout did some damage to our camper so we will get that fixed before we take it out again.  And of course some new tires are in order.

Of course, if you read a novel after watching the movie made from the novel, its very easy to be critical of the movie.  In most cases, the movies do not follow the novel very well.  In this case, the movie has followed the book very good so far.  Obviously, there is a lot of character development in the novel that is just impossible to get into a less than 2 hour movie. 

In case you don’t know, this story written in the 50s describes a country where the government has gone a little crazy.   Every law is promoted and passed ‘for the public good’.  The real producers become demonized in the press and many of them have very unscrupulous people in Washington watching out for their interests.  Can you say lobbyist? 

It’s so easy to compare the story to what is currently the trend in our government.  I mean the trend away from personal accountability and toward a real ‘nanny state’.  The movie has the story happening in 2016 so it may not be much of a stretch to imagine that by that time, we really could be where this story puts America.

For more information, see the official movie website here.  Also, go see the movie and ask the question: Who is John Galt?