Radford's White Christmas

Where did I wake up? I thought I lived in Virginia, and no longer lived in a land where one actually had a white Christmas. I apparently was wrong. We got about a foot of snow (w/ drifts of 2 feet near the front of the house) yesterday. They say we could get another 5 inches today. It's the most snow I've shoveled here since I moved here in 1999. Hello white Christmas!!!

Trip Report: Hood River to Portland

This is posted in reverse order of the trip. I recommend you scroll down to the first Trip Report and read up from there. Sorry :(

Hood River to Portland



Our flight didn't leave Portland until the afternoon of the next day. So our original plan was to stay another night in Hood River, and camp one last time. But somehow that night in the hotel spoiled us. That and logistics and practicality reared their silly heads. So instead, we went into Hood River to a coin laundry and washed the suitcase full of "civilization clothes" - everything we packed for Texas. Then while they were in the wash, we went next door to the UPS store (with PLENTY of loading and unloading space) bought a box and through our camping clothes into the box and mailed them back for only slightly more than it would've cost in luggage fees from American. Then we re-taped and shored up the poor box that we had sent our camping gear out in (but had arrived looking like it had visited an industrial blender) and mailed our camping gear back. Really, just thinking about that nice shiny UPS store standing next to the coin laundry like a beacon of hope and adequate parking - we couldn't bear to say we were camping one more night and going to try to fight our way to the UPS store in Portland to mail things back and still make our flight to Denver the next day. So with our house in order, we headed back to Portland to get a hotel room for the night in the city.

First we stopped by the local cemetery. My father's mother's ashes and his sister who died as an infant are buried in Hood River. My grandma was buried at a time when the VA side of the family couldn't make it out for the service, so Brett and I went to pay our respects at the plot. A pleasant surprise was finding out that I have family in the area and they keep the grave up with flowers for the holidays, so they had put some flowers on for Memorial Day since it's also my grandfather's marker and he was a vet. It was all around a really nice visit and time of remembrance.

On our way back we went back on the historic highway and stopped at the Bonneville Dam (check out the movie here). They're open for visitors to come and look at the salmon ladders and they have a lot of educational information about what they do to conserve the environment. One of the more obvious is that the salmon in the area need to swim upstream to spawn when the time comes, so they've build a series of platforms that they have to fight over (they always pick the hardest way to go) that will get them around the damn. Then they replaced the turbines in the dam so the little "Fingerling" fish that are the product of the spawn can make it back to the sea without getting hurt. You can sit, as we did, for hours and just watch the fish swim by in underwater viewing areas. One guy even sits by everyone and counts the species as each one goes by. There were quite a few fish while we were there - and it wasn't even peak spawning season. I'm sure that gets to be a hectic job during those months.

Unfortunately the old power house was closed, so we didn't get to tour that but we did get some fun pictures of giant sized circuit pieces for Brett to show his Electricity and Magnetism class.

After touring the damn and watching the fish, we headed over to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. It's a project run by the hydroelectric company as a way to help the environment. Native Americans still have fishing rights along the Columbia but because of human intervention the fish populations have never fully recovered. In order to help with that, the hatchery takes some of the spawning salmon out of the fish ladder and uses them to make nurseries full of fish that they can reintroduce. They do the same with the rainbow trout when it's not salmon spawning season. For a quarter you can feed the baby trout a handful of fish food - which we did. But having seen "Dirty Jobs" I can say - I washed my hands immediately afterward. I know what that stuff is made of! :D They also have a pond where they keep a few prize specimens including Herman the 11' 70-year-old sturgeon and a couple of 3' rainbow trout. Talk about crazy! The trout were so large their bodies were arced and they couldn't hold their tails up. Mostly Brett just licked his chops and wondered if they would still taste as good. :D

Links to pics here

Trip Report: Mt St Helens to Hood River, OR

Mt. St. Helens to Columbia River Gorge Historic Highway to Hood River

Hold on tight this is a long day packed with lots of things we did, so it might get a little long.

Before we left Heart of the Hills, we finally gave up on our pan. Among the other camping gear that we bought at Walmart on the first day, we bought a pot and a pan. That pan was the worst excuse for Teflon the world has ever seen. Even bacon, with all that grease, stuck to it! We decided to just do an easy breakfast of poptarts instead of trying to clean it for camping. So we got up and ate poptarts. I had forgotten that I don't really like those. :) So we went to an espresso shak before we got back on the interstate in Castle Rock and had a nice liquid caffiene filled breakfast instead. :)

We stopped at the Mt St Helens visitors center for a short hike and to get a stamp. It's not a national park, but as a national volcanic monument, it does have a "a" stamp that they gladly put in my book. We also found a couple of cool tees while we were there. Alas, much like the Tetons on my trip to Yellowstone, I was doomed to not actually see the mountain from the vantage point because of all the clouds. At least the weather was nice.

We drove down I5 until we got outside Portland and then made our way to I84, jumping off it as quickly as possible onto the Historic Columbia River Gorge Highway. It's the old highway that 84 now runs parallel to and as far as I can tell was meant to be scenic more than anything else. The start of the road is the Crown Point Vista Visitors Center. It's a rest stop like like a diamond is a rock. It was beautifully made and lived up to its name with a great view of the gorge area. After the rest area, the road has about 70 waterfalls within a day hike of it. Many of them are less than a mile from the road. So we went waterfall questing the rest of the day.

The first falls we got to were Latourell. It's a short hike that technically makes a loop, but would require walking on the road, so we went to the other end and turned around. We did get some nice pictures of the concrete bridge that the highway went over. We also laughed when I hadn't set the GPS on the right mode and Sarah (our GPS guide) kept demanding that we turn left on the road - which was 50' over our heads!

Bridal Viel Falls were next on the list. It's a fairly short hike, but the steepness isnt' insignificant. Unlike most falls hikes, where you hike upstream TO the falls and that keeps you motivated, this was downhill the whole way - leaving the less excited hikers in front of us wondering if it the falls would be worth the climb back out. Sadly for them, they turned back and gave up, not knowing they were just around the bend from the falls. Literally, 10 feet more and they could've seen them. It was sad. But the falls themselves live up to the name with good volume and lots of splashing.

The next falls were Wahkeena Falls. They were donated by the same family that donated the Latourell falls along the trip. It was just a mile or so hike to see the falls and they were beautiful. The next day, when we looked up from I84 on our way back into Portland we could see how much larger the falls were! But from close up, you only get to see part of them, but it was a lovely hike. After doing the loop we see that the next falls on the list are only half a mile away, so we get on that trail and leave the car parked at Wahkeena. After a half mile, we reach Multnomah Falls. The most famous of all the falls on the road. Actually after half a mile we reach the gift shop, restaurant, cafe, and all the goodies that come along with the falls. The falls are further up a paved path. Once we were there Brett talked me into a hike to the top. It was a one mile uphill-the-entire-way hike. I had seen a shirt in the bookstore that said "Got Oxygen? I climbed 260' to the top of the falls" so I figured, no biggie. We headed up. It was very, very steep and unrelenting. The farther up the trail we went the fewer people there were heading back down - people peeled off like flies. At one point, hopping over someone else's vomit in the trail I gasped for air and wondered why I was so incredibly out of shape. We finally made it to the top when Brett said "Congrats! You just did 15% grade for 1 mile and walked up 620'!" Uh yeah. Apparently I had a moment of dyslexia when I read the shirt. If I had to struggle up 15% grade, I'm not embarressed - if it was 260' - well, then that'd be another story. :D No matter how you dice it, it was a long hike and after walking back down, we still had another half a mile back to the car. We took our time getting back and got in the car and drove straight back to Multnomah Falls and made a beeline to the cafe and got ourselves soft serve cones to celebrate! Then we went in the gift shop and bought spoons and tees to further celebrate. :) All told it was about our 8th or 9th mile of hiking that day so even though there were 2 more falls to see within a mile hike of the road, we called it a day and packed it in and kept driving to Hood River with no more stops.

For our anniversary my parents had generously bought us a room at the Best Western - Hood River Inn for the night. We got an amazing room on the water with a fireplace. We went out for dinner at Full Sail Brewery in Hood River and watched the wind surfers on the river do tricks while we ate and drank and topped it off with a chocolate stout brownie with Tillamook vanilla icecream on top. Then we went back to the room and I slept for about 12 hours. Brett apparently called family and did early check in for our flights and all of those things that needed to be done. :D I just couldn't resist the comfortable bed and fluffy pillows!

Link to pics here.

Trip Report: Mt. Rainier

Hurricane Ridge to Seaquest State Park


In the morning while we were breaking camp I looked across the loop at a group camp and saw their dog edging very close to a skunk! It was behind the picnic table, but I could see the black and white tail. I grabbed Brett and said "What do we do?!" - in a few seconds that golden retriever would be soaked - and the whole group was piled in one SUV. EWWW. Before we could decide if we should try to call the dog and wake up the whole campground doing it, the skunk came out from around the table. It was their rat dog! They had a black and white dog with a poofy tail! LOL so glad we didn't try to intervene. :D

We decided to skip some of the towns on the east side of the 101 loop and just get on the road back towards Mt Rainier. Unfortunately the Hood River Canal Bridge was out for construction. So we had to drive through those towns whether we wanted to or not. :) It wasn't a bad drive but it did extend the driving time by several hours and force us to skip Seattle. We did stop for coffee in the general area at a couple of those espresso shacks and Brett thought they were excellent.

When we got to Mt Rainier, where we had planned to camp after the long day of driving, we found that pretty much the entire park was closed except for the one road leading up to the brand new visitors center. When we drove by the campground, the reason for the closure was fairly obvious - there was at least 3 feet of snow in the camp area. In the meantime, we went to the visitors center and I got a stamp. While I was in line to talk to a ranger about other stamp opportunities (can't miss any, you know?) a guy in Tevas and jeans walked to the counter and said "How do I summit?" The park ranger blinked a little and they went back and forth until the ranger realized that the guy was seriously wanting to know what path/route to take to get to the summit. The ranger should get award for being patient and kind. He pulled out a topo map and tried to gently show the guy that there are several mountaineering routes up and that they all cross glacial fields with VERY high chances of avalanches this time of year, hoping to dissuade him. The guy instead got upset when the ranger wouldn't GIVE him the topo map. The ranger said that he needed to buy his own, since that was the office's copy. He said he'd head to the gift shop to get one and the ranger told him that they don't sell the topo maps with the routes on them. He demanded to know why and the ranger - at the very limit of his patience, took a deep breath and said "because people who are going to mountaineer to the top of a 14000' peak plan their route long in advance". I died laughing. I think he heard me because he finally left the counter. If he hadn't I was just about to say "look buddy, the peak is up there. Start walking." It was so funny.

Since we didn't have a place to stay in Rainier, we stopped and saw a fall that the one open road went by (but the trail to actually view it was closed due to snow) and then headed out of the park towards Mt. St. Helens.

There are 3 visitors centers for Mt St Helens. We just wanted to stop at the one closest to the interstate and grab a spoon and a stamp for the NPS book. We made good time and found a WA state park right across the street from the Silver Lake Vistors Center and stayed there. It turned out to be a great choice because unlike all the other campgrounds on the trip, these had showers! After that many days without a shower, it was GLORIOUS even if my tokens for hot water didn't actually get me the full 3 minutes they were supposed to. :) Note to self - next time pack the no-rinse shampoo. :D

Links to pics here

Trip Report: Hoh to Hurricane Ridge

Hoh to Hurricane Ridge

The next morning we got up and broke camp and headed up to the northern side of the Olympic Penninsula. We first stopped at Soleduck Valley to visit the Sol Duc falls (yes, I spelled both of those right). The falls were beautiful as was the morning light in the forest. While we were there we overhead a convesation where a college age looking girl announced to her boyfriend "I'm really disappointed with this. They said it was a rainforest. I thought it would be like the Amazon but it's just plain ol' trees here!" Wow. We laughed until our sides hurt. Apparently she needs help with geography...the whole temperate verus tropical distinction seems lost on her. LOL.

After Sol Duc falls, we stopped for a short mile hike through some forest. In the later months it goes through a section of river that is a spawning point, but for our trip it was all just very beautiful scenery.

After Sol Duc we headed towards Elwha Valley, stopping off at Marymere falls, on the coast of Lake Cresent. The water in Lake Cresent was so beautiful and blue - I would be sorely tempted to spend a week at a rental house up on the shores there one summer. It looks like heaven. Once we got to Elwha Valley, we stopped just inside the park ticket booth. Madison Creek Falls is a waterfall that's only 200' of hiking on a handicap accessible, paved trail. It's not far from 101 and well worth the turn off.

With Elwha behind us, we headed on to Hurricane Ridge. It's a ridge-top drive through the Olympic Mtn chain. At the top is very nice visitor's center where one can even rent skis for what seems to me like an insane day of hiking up hills to ski back down them in 2 seconds. But then, I don't ski, so I don't expect to understand the appeal. :) What we did see were several cyclist riding the long steep uphill to the endpoint so that they could turn around and descend the next 8 miles back. As we were driving by we even saw Tyler Hamilton, the retired pro rider that we named Tyler our cat after - but didn't recognize him in time to holler his name as he took off downhill. Brett took an amazing panorama at the top - and I scored a spoon. :) We spent the night at Heart o' the Hills campground, halfway back down the ridge.

Link to pics here.

Trip Report: Day at the beach

The Pacific



With campsites at a premium during the holiday weekend, we decided to stay at the site for two nights, instead of just moving on the next day. This afforded us that much much needed "chill out day" and we got a late start after pancakes and headed back over to the beach. The beaches are numbered from South to North 1-4 with South Beach and Ruby beach on either end of the numbered ones. The farther south, the less sand beach there is and the more the "beach" is just large logs and rocks at the bottom of a cliff. We started at Beach 1 and went up the beaches, checking out the sites and hiking down from the cliff onto the beaches proper to look around. Each beach was different all the way to Ruby Beach where the glacial rocks gave way to real sand (which according to the guide book is sometimes pink because of crushed garnets, though Brett is skeptical). Beach 4 has a lot of rock formations at the water's edge. We were there earlier in the day and after going to Ruby Beach, we back tracked and went back to Beach 4 closer to low tide to get a better look at the tide pools. They were, in a word, amazing. The waves crashing against the rocks would retreat to show 50 starfish at a time - the sea anemones would push out their lime green tentacles when the water came over them and then ball themselves back into their pink innards as it flowed out of their rock bed. The little black mussels were on the rocks by the millions - opening and closing with the water. I love aquariums and it was like 5 major exhibits in one place - a place we could freely walk through. It was unbelievable. To celebrate the wonder of the day we went back to camp for a roaring fire and coal burgers with Tillamook cheese and bacon. For those not in the know, coal burgers are another Taylor camping tradition. Very slow cooked burgers with cheese melted inside the patty - I'm a huge fan. :)

That night I woke up to the sound of nothing. Really and truly nothing. It was disorienting but comforting at the same time. When I focused I realized that the "white noise" was actually the river right outside. I thought "I should lay here and listen to the river in the middle of the nothingness because I'll never hear it again like this" and then the river lulled me immediately back to sleep. Go figure. :D

Link to pics here.

Trip Report: Quinault to Hoh

Quinault to Hoh Rainforest


Our plan had been to spend the next night on the Pacific but since it was Memorial Day weekend, the campgrounds were all full so we headed inland to the Hoh Rainforest and stayed at the much less crowded NP campground there. We even got in early enough that we got a spot on the Hoh River. After setting up camp and sitting at the campsite watching the glacial river flow by and listening to the breeze whistle across our beer bottle necks, we went for a few miles of short hikes around the visitor's center to see the much greener rainforest and had a laid back dinner and FINALLY some s'mores. :)

Link to pics here.

Trip Report: Tillamook to Quinault, WA

Tillamook Cheese Factory to Quinault Rain Forest



The start of this album was our trip to the cheese factory. They had samples out that were delicious and we bought a block of smoked white cheddar, peppercorn cheddar, and garlic cheddar and had cheese and crackers, cheese burgers, cheese and hashbrowns - and pretty much put cheese on anything else we could think of during the trip. :D It was delicious! The other delicious thing about the cheese factory was their selection of 38 freshly made flavors of icecream! We had a 5 scoops sampler at 10 in the morning: marionberry, chocolate peanutbutter, vanilla toffee, lemon blueberry pie, and udderly chocolate. They were all amazing and our biggest regret from the entire trip was not going back for a second bowl to try more flavors! :D

After checking out Tillamook (see video of cheddar being made at the factory here), we drove up the coastal highway of 101 to Canon Beach where we stopped to take pics of Haystack Rock. It is the most photographed site in Oregon (according to some literature) but since it was windy and cold , we snapped some pictures and remained generally unimpressed. But it was nice to stretch our legs before starting the long hall up to Washington. The coastal highway was beautiful. We left the plains and water of the Willamette Valley (I felt like I finally won that silly Commadore 64 game from my childhood - Oregon Trail) and headed in towards the rainforests of Washington.

The most southern rainforest is Quinault. The plan had been to camp along the south shore of Lake Quinault in one of the several campgrounds. Unfortunately, I had not been clear enough in my preparation - the campgrounds were all National FOREST service, not NPS - so they wouldn't open for one more day. But owners of an RV campground took pity on us, gave us a discount, and let us pitch our tent off to the side of one of the gravel drives. The site had no picnic tables, so Brett used the concrete parking block as a table and we had our first camping beers (a Taylor tradition) while sitting by the world's largest spruce tree and eating hamburger with mac and cheese and bemoaning the "no campfires" sign. After dinner we went for a short hike to one of the nearby waterfalls. The rainforest doesn't get as much rain as others but I still spent the entire hike marveling at the size of the trees.

Link to pics here.
And the movie here.

Trip Report: Portland to Tillamook, OR

Portland to Tillamook

After we left Dallas we flew into Portland and picked up our rental Ford Edge. For anyone in the market - this is NOT a good choice. At 30k miles it sounded like it was about to fall apart. Lucky for us, it never did. It also had bad spacing for the cup holders - ill designed cup holders are a deal breaker for me. In Portland we ate at the Rogue Brewery with a friend. After circling downtown Portland for a while looking for parking (HELLOOOO what kind of UPS store doesn't have a loading zone out front?!) We finally nabbed a spot and picked up the tent and camping gear we had mailed out to the UPS store and went to Walmart to buy a cooler, chairs, and food for the trip before heading on to the town of Tillamook, home of the best cheddar cheese in the West.

Unfortunately by the time we got in to Tillamook the cheese factory was closed for the night, so we went up the road to Garibaldi and stayed in a hotel while we sorted out our car. The last roadtrip/camping journey we took of this magnitude, we really had worked out a great way to pack the car. Our time rearranging our gear in the parking lot at the hotel proved to us that this trip wasn't going to go as easily. Another strike against the Ford Edge - there was no way to situate the cooler so that I could turn from the front seat into the back seat and fish out the jelly to make PB and Js while Brett drove. Instead, lunches consisted of a warped Chinese-fire-drill of Brett pulling over somewhere and me running to the other side of the car and digging out the jelly before hopping back in to find the bread, paper towels, and PB. I woud also complain at this point that the dashboard wasn't flat enough for adequately jelly-ing two sandwiches at once (strike 3 against the Ford Edge). :D But of such are memories made!

Trip Report: L B Johnson Ranch

Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch NP

Bray suggested that we take a roundabout way back to Dallas via the LBJ ranch, which turned out to be a great idea since we got 3 stamps and it broke up the long drive nicely. Hill country in TX is really beautiful and with all the wildflowers blooming along the roads, it was easy to see how Lady Bird Johnson was inspired to plant wildflowers around the country's interstates.

One of the coolest parts of the trips was the Sauer-Beckman Farm. It's on the LBJ park land and it's a historic German farm (again with the Germans in TX :D ) and the people there live and work on the farm. They don't sleep there because it might hurt the antique beds, but they do everything else there. They showed us how they made lye and yogurt and we wandered around to see the working farm. The garden was very impressive, they have a lot of farm waste to compost and the TX weather really serves them well. Their canned goods pantry put even Dodie's overstocked kitchen to shame! :-)

After checking out the farm, we headed over to LBJs Ranch house. The original driveway called for people to drive through the creek under a waterfall. Very cool in my opinion, but these days visitors are routed down to a bridge. The ranch was beautiful and his office inside the ranch was open to walk through. The guide pointed out the 3 TVs in the room - one to watch each channel! LOL. The beautiful saddle displayed was a gift from the president of Mexico.

Link to pics here

Trip Report: San Antonio

San Antonio Sightseeing



On Sunday we drove down to SA to visit my sister, Bray. The traffic wasn't bad but to make it even more fun, Brett bought me a GPS for my birtherversary (sound it out, you'll get it). It has a lifetime subscription to traffic info. It marks current traffic problems, areas of congestion, and anticipated delays. You can choose to avoid them - which we did a few times in TX, making the trip even more enjoyable.

On Monday Bray took us into town. After the wedding, the goal of the trip became "how many NPS (National Park Service) stamps can Megan collect?" and "how many collectible spoons can she score?" Lame, perhaps, but I really enjoy both and Brett puts up with it like a champ. So in honor of that, Bray first took us to the San Antonio Missions. Four missions comprise the single National Park, but each park had an additional stamp to make sure I had to go to all of them. :D

The first mission was San Jose. We went on a tour with a volunteer guide who told the history of the mission from the point of view of the Native Americans who lived in the area. The missions were built primarily by them and for them. In exchange for the loyalty to Spain while acting as colonized, claimed land, the Spanish missionaries taught them how to go from a hunter-gatherer society to farmers who lived in stone houses. The San Jose Mission is one of the premier places for weddings in San Antonio and a quick look at some of the architecture makes it pretty easy to see why. Speaking of architecture, one of the really interesting things we found about SA was the German influence. It was in town names and street names - all over. Certainly not what we expected from some place so close to Mexico. It turns out that Germans came to for a variety of reasons, even early on, and left their mark even in the building of the church in San Jose. In some of the pictures of the outer arch ways you can see the arches change from big round archest to Gothic pointed arches - the work of German Engineers in the early 1700s.

The second mission was Espada. All of the mission churches still have regular Catholic mass celebrated, but Espada is still a monastery as well. The monks who live on the grounds keep beautiful plans around their doors - as well as a "Please keep out" sign.

The third mission we went to was San Juan. It's a beautiful mission with a lot of information about what it takes to restore missions like this. Around there the ground is very unstable. Marks on the building showed major movement from siesmic activity, and solving the problem of how to run electricity in the gift shop without destroying the walls took some creative thinking!

The last mission on our tour was Mission Concepcion. It's the least restored (almost completely untouched) mission and the church is still in fantastic shape (though the rest of the mission walls and living quarters have been lost to war and nature). Inside the church some of the original frescos are still visible. One in particular that is in the ceiling of a room in a sun shape suggests that perhaps not all of the artisans were Spanish or German, and that the natives may have added some of their own stylings. The rope hanging in the picture is the rope to toll the bells before mass.

After 4 missions in BEAUTIFUL 80 something degree weather, we drove to the Tower of the Americas and parked (shout out to Bray's hook up who got us free parking!) and headed to the Alamo. The Alamo isn't a part of the NPS; it's owned by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas but they have a nice stamp for the passport and it seemed like a "must see" for a visit to San Antonio. It was nice, and the ground are beautiful, but visitors aren't allowed to take pictures inside the building, which makes for a short section of the photo album.

From there we went on a little cruise along the Riverwalk. Again, one of those "must see" things. It's very beautiful. Bray and I both daydreamed about getting a room on the "river" and spending the weekend shopping sometime. :D There were some neat things to see along the way, including a "mural" on one of the buildings that is actually a giant mosaic of the development of western technology and culture.

Check out pics here

Trip Report: Dallas

Dallas - Gina and Brock's Wedding

To start off the journey, we headed to Dallas for Gina's wedding. Gina is a dear friend of ours - so close that we even let her babysit Calvin back in the day! :D It was good to see her again. On Friday we went to her parents' lovely house for a people-from-out-of-town hanging out time. It was really nice to be able to spend a little time with Gina and to eat the delicious chocolate-covered cherry groom's cake - though I'm still not sure about this "Texas BBQ" thing :D. We have a few pictures from the wedding - most didn't come out because we didn't know how to work the brand new camera that I gave Brett for our anniversary. By the end of the trip, Brett was a pro with it, even making use of the manual settings - but our first attempts to use it were thwarted by my taking it off the "dummy setting". I finally realized that the camera really is just smarter than me. :D

Oh, and the first picture in the album is from lunch before Gina's wedding at a place called Uncle Bucks. It was attached to the Bass Pro Shop - I had never been in one of those. Let me just go on the record and say WOW. There were camping things I didn't even know I NEEDED. :D So after a giant hamburger and 8 hand crafted beers for $10, we walked around the store and limited our purchases to a knife-spoon-fork combo set and clip on LED flashlights. But wow, the camp kitchens were calling me. LOL.

Picture Link.

Catching up

I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from the beautiful flowers in the yard. Once again our yard is a show stopper - people take walks down the road by our house just to stop and admire the tulips and daffodils. Some neighbors a few doors uphill from us put a deck on their house last summer and told us that they did it just so they could watch our backyard bloom while they drank their morning coffee each day! :) I'm just pleased as punch because this is the first year that we can smell the lilac blooming from inside the house. To think we planted it the week of the wedding... :D



We haven't been very good about updating this, but since a few people wanted to see pictures of the ongoing wine cellar project, this is the best place I know to post them. For those not in the know, when our house was built it was originally a florist, the building was dug out into the side of a slight hill and the natural cool temperatures from dirt insulation were augmented by cooling equipment. Fast forward some decades and the shop is now the basement and the room that was created to be the coolest is the place we store our wine. It holds about 55 degrees year round, but fluctuates more than we'd like. It also has no real useful shelving for the wine storage. We made a few cubes and bought a wine bottle storage rack, but they were all filled up fairly quickly since we only had room for about 40 bottles. So after the coldest part of winter was done, but before the heat of summer sets in, we're gutting the two rooms and making it into a real wine cellar. (Shout out to Brian for buying Brett that very, very helpful "How and why to build a wine cellar" book.) We started the project during spring break, vastly underestimating the amount of time it would take for demo, but are making headway on it now that the demo is done. As you can see the pictures the old room was put together by someone who might've been a little OCD when it comes to nailing - and goodness knows there wasn't a screw in sight! That would be too easy.

Currently the walls are down and the studs are up. We opened up what had been two small rooms into one large room (9'x9') and should be finishing the wiring tomorrow and starting with the insulation. We're pretty excited because we found out that the room was already keeping a fairly steady temperature with very minimal insulation and when it's done right, the room should be pretty close to exactly perfect for what we need. After it's insulated and the drywall is down we'll add flooring and finally get to start on shelves. But the main thing is that we can get the wine back into the room as soon as the walls are up. Yay! I'll keep posting as there are picture-worthy milestones.

Happy spring all.

Turtle Midwifery and other news

We just got back and settled into the pile of laundry that seems like our house after the week at Carolina Beach with my parents. It had been a couple of years since we had made it on vacation with the whole family, but this summer I'm not working and Brandy flew in from Texas, so it was a no-brainer.

We stayed at a different condo than the usual place, as the "usual place" has been demolished and completely revamped. The new place was a few blocks farther from the downtown/boardwalk scene but it couldn't have been more perfect. Brett and I arrived first and walked down the boardwalk to the beach and right to the side of the boardwalk to the ocean was none other than the telltale orange tape marking a sea turtle nest! Not only was that exciting, but the trench had been dug! Basically, there are groups of volunteers that monitor the sea turtle nests. At some number of days after they were laid, they dig a trench out to the sea, to ease the hatchlings' journey. If there's a trench, it means the nest can hatch any night.

The first night we checked a few times for the turtles, but no such luck. The volunteers called it a night at around 11, and so did we. The next morning the trench was covered in tracks! Clearly we had missed a big hatching. During the day, while we were out boogie-boarding in the awesome waves, 3 more hatched. Sadly 2 didn't make it, since hatching at low tide at 3 in the afternoon isn't really what they're designed for. But we did cheer on the one that did make it! That evening we met up with the volunteers and told them what we'd seen and were heroes since we had witnessed the first one get to the sea (well the first one that could be officially recorded by the aquarium representative). The family all drug our chairs out to the trench and lined up to watch the next hatching. After a while of sitting in the dark whispering (turtles need to hear the ocean and see that it's night time to come out of the nest in best circumstances), everyone but me and Brett bailed. A while later a volunteer took a red light up to the nest and announced a hatching in progress. I quickly roused the troops back at the condo with a phone call and we all got to witness the hatching. Brett and I were given gloves to wear to assist in the hatching and proudly claim midwifery honors. :)

Basically what happens is that the turtles fight their way out of the underground nest and will wander around trying to find their way to the ocean. In order to get them pointed in the right direction and in the water as fast as possible, a trench is dug in the sand. A Nest Mother holds a bright lantern at the end of the trench, simulating the full moon that wasn't at all out that night and drawing the turtles in that direction. Then, midwives (as we like to call ourselves) crawl along each side of the trench and push sand towards the turtles when they try to climb out of the trench. Sometimes they're confused, or one flipper isn't as strong as the other, so without help, they could end up going in circles or parallel to the beach, but our babies made it safely to the water! I'd love to show pictures but there was no light to get them.

A few evenings later the volunteers and aquarium reps dug up the nest. They do this to keep track of how many eggs hatched and because occasionally some stragglers will have hatched and gotten stuck in sea oat roots. Once the turtles hatch they have up to 3 days to make it to the surface and sea before they die, so NC law says that on the 55th day after being laid, when everything should've hatched that was going to, the Aquarium has to dig up the rest and try to save any that were stuck. We of course showed up for that show as well. And what a show it was! Usually a nest will have 2 or 3 live babies and a couple of dead ones as well. Ours had 16 live turtles and no dead ones! They counted the egg shells and there was about a 50-50 hatching rate which is also apparently impressive. Each of the turtles was carefully put in buckets and dropped at the water line to the silent cheers of the crowd that had turned out. Even the one that had just hatched and had one flipper that weak and not yet functional made it successfully to the sea. It was very exciting to watch and even neater to be a part of!

In other news, the waves were perfect for boogie boarding most of the trip. Brandy even tried it for the first time and loved it! It *is* addictive once you get the hang of it. Erin was happier at the condo's pool. I have to agree it was amazing. It was salt water. Not ocean water, but clean water with salt in it. It apparently breaks down the salt into a chlorine and keeps it sterile that way, but without the harsh chemicals that burn your eyes and make my hair green! It also had jets in it. There were seats in corners of the pool, like a hot tub, and general gets around the walls to keep you moving in the water. I found that if I could manage to stay on my floaty raft it made for an excellent lazy-river experience...until Louis turned the pumps on high and dumped me! :D I've never wanted a home pool until now. But wow. Maintenance is nothing and it's so relaxing! I told Brett all we had to do was remodel the entire back end of our house and re-landscape the yard but he didn't seem convinced. :)

Anyway, here are the pics from the trip. Enjoy!

Pictures from the porch party

Before heading down to the beach in NC, we stopped at Dave and Marty's for a little pre-party with Marty's side of the family. It was a good time and we had way too much food.

Front Porch Facelift

Before and After:




So here we have the much anticipated porch renovation pictures. You might recall that we took out bushes and put new landscaping in before leaving for Jamaica. It was clear after being gone for 2 weeks of straight rain here that our gutters weren't draining in the right direction. Water was pouring out of the endcap, instead of heading towards what should've been downhill to the downspout. This had turned our post-stump dirt into a quagmire. In order to fix the gutters, the roof of the porch had to be raised. It turns out that the gutters were hung correctly, but the huge slab of concrete that is our porch had sunk over time, taking with it the roof. This coincided with my parents coming up to visit. For our birtherversary they gave us a new storm door with the promise of installation help. While the storm door was being put in, someone leaned on a column of the porch (we blame Calvin) and what we thought was a bad situation became more immediate - the columns were completely rotted. So the day after they left we went to Advance Auto and bought two car jacks and set to work raising the porch roof in preparation for new columns. We had hoped that the outer casing of the column was rotten but that inside there would be a strong beam of support. Alas that was not to be so. As we jacked up the columns they fell apart into rotten piles. Now, after the project being stalled almost daily by more rain than any place outside of the Amazon should get, we're finally finished: new, stylish columns that opened up the feel of the porch and adequately support the now level roof, a new storm door, new paint on the interior door, pressure washed walls, new paint on the trim, new lights and doorbell switch, and new paint on the porch floor, and we couldn't be happier with the results.

Of course in the pictures it's to be noted that the landscaping is going to be an ongoing project that will span into Fall, as we continue to remove stumps and a bush or two, transplant things, and add edging and borders. We'll keep you posted on all that too!

The pictures that Chronicle the Journey are here.

Also I've posted some pictures from a hike we did to Bottom Creek Gorge. The waterfall didn't come out at all in the pictures because there wasn't much water, we were far away, and there's nothing for scale, but the wild blackberries were in bloom and abundant. There was a lot of wildlife along the hike, though only the snakes were too lazy to run before we could get the camera out! Enjoy.