JEFF'S GALENA ADVENTURES, JUNE 11, 2006

Today I pretty much finished fixing the outhouse. It still needs some siding, so I'll see if Lowe's or anybody has anything like it. Otherwise I'll just put the crappy board back on. I still need to make a foundation, then dig a bit deeper, then somehow set the thing back up.

There are so many ATVs zipping through here now. They often stop right at the cabins to figure out which direction they want to go.

I went to Brownsville for a burger, then back a different way to the tornado site. Along this back road, there was a gate. No sign, just a gate. I sat there for a while wondering what to do, but finally decided that since it's a forest service road, I could use it. So I set the gate down and went through, then set the gate back up. A ways farther a gate was down but there was a sign saying "please close the gate" so I did. This road was really bad, btw. It winds up along highway 17 at Juros Park Road or something like that. The National Guard was camped right there for some big weekend event.

So I'm back at the tornado site, and the forest service has really cleaned up the trees that were over the road. I didn't even think I was on the right road at first. But I found the site.

Janet, Jeraldine and I were discussing whether a place like this where all the trees fell in one direction would be a tornado. But as you can see from this photo, the trees did fall in several directions. But mostly they fell to the west.

Anyway, I went east about 200 yards from the road to what appeared to be the end of knocked over trees. Then I went about 75 yards west to that end. So that was about the size of the area, and maybe 50 yards or more wide. I'm sure it was a tornado. At the perimeters of the site, the trees were snapped off instead of being pulled up by the roots. I'll probably even go back once again.

Now about this photo. I thought I needed to be a bit higher to take this photo, so I carefully stood on my bike to take it. Just as I was congratulating myself on the cool shot, the bike fell over. I almost impaled myself on the kickstand. The front brake handle broke off about halfway, and now the front is slightly turned from straight. Oh well, I'd rather hurt the bike standing still than moving! I was going to take it in for the 600 mile service anyway (about 350 miles on it now, about 55 miles put on today), so I'll have them fix that stuff.

I don't know what these flowers are but they were at the tornado site.

There are deer everywhere! I must have seen over 70 on the way home. It was late in the day when they usually come out. I saw both white tail and black tail deer.

This is a station along the Mickelson Trail. This trail goes along an abandoned railroad bed and can be used for walking, biking, or horseback riding. There is a station like this with water and parking area about every 6 miles. The trail goes from the southern hills to the northern hills, about 114 miles total! It seems to be pretty popular.

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