big fans

 The rest of the long Thanksgiving weekend was a combination of hiking, jigaw puzzles and World Cup soccer matches - no black Friday nonsense for us!  We prefer to spend our money locally, at a bar, yelling at bad calls and missed shots.

On Friday, we headed up to Sandflats Recreation Area.  After reupping our season pass, we parked at the Slickrock trailhead.  It was early-ish and still fairly chilly so there were only a couple of vehicles there, getting ready to ride, and all the 4x4 folks were bundled up against the cold.  Knowing that the USAvENG game was at noon, we had time limitations, so we walked out along the Slickrock trail to the Abyss overlook, paused to watch some jeeps navigating the sandstone domes across from us, and then walked back via the Practice loop.  Somewhere between 4-5 miles, enough to get some exercise in.  Back at the parking lot, there were lots more people getting ready to head out and Milton introduced himself to a group who were quite charmed by him.

View from the Practice loop - what a day!

At noon, we, our friend Jose, and several other fans were standing at Woody's front door, waiting to be let in.  Every television in the place was showing the US match and every person in the place was there to watch it.  The game ended in a draw: surprising for England but a decent result for the young American team.

Saturday, Milton and I went out to Moab Brand Trails in the morning while H did some errands.  We did our now-usual Circle O route and saw literally no one out on the trails until we were heading back on the parking lot cut-off.  Again, Milt introduced himself to the people around us and proved extraordinarily brave when a baby wanted to see him; babies and toddlers make him nervous, because they can be loud and erratic, but I held him so the baby could pat him and it all ended well.

Autumnal pothole

For the Argentina v Mexico game that afternoon we found ourselves at Dewey's as Woody's didn't have the staff to open that early.  Both our neighbor Amelia and Jose joined us - we have friends! - and it was a slightly more exciting match this time.  We even stuck around long enough on Sunday to watch Germany v Spain, which was the best match of all the ones we watched.