… afternoon.
I started to doze off almost before I had finished lunch, and that was that until 16:30. A good two hours at least I was out of it all.
But then again, that’s no surprise because I’d had an awful night. Once more, it was very late when I finally dozed off, but then it was at 02:30 when I sat bolt upright awake. I’d had a nightmare again – something that is happening more and more often these days, and I’ll spare you the gory details because you are probably eating your tea just now or something like that.
But eventually, after a good few hours tossing and turning, I went back to sleep again, and stepped right back into my nightmare exactly at the spot where I had left it.
We then had the 06:00 wake-up, and the 06:30 wake-up, and then my 07:00 alarm call.
There were a few of us at breakfast, not as many as yesterday, and then I came back down here.
I’ve been on my travels this morning, but not quite as you think. Regular readers of this rubbish will remember that in 2002 I went to Wyoming in the USA to visit a few of the sites on the “emigrant trail” – the Oregon and California Trail of the 1840s across the continent.
One of the parties, the legendary Donner party that came to grief in the Rockies, were delayed because they took a short-cut which, while in theory might have saved them some time, ended up being marooned in the salt flats of the Utah Desert.
By the time that they had sorted themselves out and rejoined the main trail, they had caught the winter snows as they climbed into the mountains. And there they remained, eating each other, until the following Spring.
Anyway, this short-cut, the “Hastings cut-off” has gone down in legend as a result of the Donner party’s (mis)adventures and someone has recently followed it, putting a whole sheaf of photographs and text on line. And so I spent a good few hours following the journey south-westwards.
Much of the material abandoned in the desert was recovered many years later by a homesteader by Eugene Munsee, and his cabin, dating from the 1880s is still extant. We were even treated to a guided tour of his cabin which was quite interesting.
I nipped into town to the Delhaize for some lunch stuff, and then after lunch we had my siesta.
Tonight, my tea prepared in exactly the same way as last night’s, was even more delicious seeing as it’s had more time for the spices to marinade. Tomorrow’s should be even better I reckon.
And now I’m going to catch up with my beauty sleep. I need it.
