Playing in a Big Pile of Leaves

Step 1: gather the leaves

 Step 2: Jump

 

 

 

Mountain Bike Survival Episode

Read the riveting tale of one man's brush with disaster on the bike trail here. And yes, I am that man. And yes, there is a picture.

Yosemite Falls and Then Some

Our first view of the falls

The view at the base of the falls

The trailhead for Upper Falls

View of the Valley from a little ways up. You can see some of the flooding in the meadows.

One of the many great views of the Upper Falls along the trail

Two Yosemite icons

Two future Yosemite icons?

View from the top of the Upper Falls

The team

Rachel found the most comfortable spot during our lunch break

After lunch we kept on moving forward. (This is Yosemite Creek, the source of the falls.)

View from Yosemite Point

Close up of Half Dome. Note the snow patch on top.

Fording Indian Canyon Creek (we think) before deciding to turn around and head back the way we came. We weren't sure about snow conditions further along the trail and decided to play it safe.

Gun show on the way back down

Field Trip to the Donut Store

Meghan was supposed to go on a field trip yesterday but it was cancelled last week. She was pretty upset, so I asked her what we could do that would be just as fun as going on a field trip. She thought for a second and replied, "Go to the donut store." That was do able.

I had vague plans to go buy donuts, but didn't really think too much about it (I was blogging). Meghan, however, did continue to think about those delicious circular delights, and her plans were much more concrete. She got some paper and a marker and began writing. When she asked me how to spell Saturday, then Sunday, then Monday, I asked her what she was doing. She was creating a calendar so she could keep track of the days she had left until D day.

Every morning she would update her calendar, putting an X through that day's box. Clearly, I would have to make good on my promise.

Donut day arrived yesterday:

 

Here's a bonus feature, filmed and narrated during the trip by the Donut Queen herself (look for a cameo appearance by her thumb:

Wild Plum Loop Trail

Here are the outtakes of our Memorial Day Hike of the Wild Plum Loop Trail up past Sierra City off of Highway 49. You can see the highlight reel and read a brief report of the hike here.

 First shot of my favorite view

We really wanted these to be bear tracks (but bear tracks have 5 toes and a bigger paw)

One of our encounters with Haypress Creek

At this point on the trail Abby converted to Islam. I blame the doll she got at Target that in between baby noises proclaimed that Islam is the light.

Bridge over Haypress Creek marked the midpoint of our hike (at least mileage wise. It was mostly downhill on the way back)

Sour Gummy Worms

That's a big snowball

I wish I could photoshop those electricity poles out of the picture (and bring the brightness down a little on the mountain in the background). It would make a sweet picture

Lennon enjoyed pulling the moss off of this whatever this structure is.

Abby came home with a backpack full of rocks. Meghan, on the other hand, was more selective. She brought home a circle rock, a rectangle rock, and a triangle rock.

Father Son Frogs and Fish

 
Last night I loaded up the van, shepherded Lennon into it, and took off for Rancho Seco Lake. My church was having its annual father and son (make it plural if you have more than one son) camp out. It started off a little rocky when both Rachel and I refused to allow Lennon to take any video games. He spent the drive reading The Silver Chair with a surly expression on his face.

Once we pulled up to the campsite though, things got much better. I found a few friends to talk to. Lennon found a bunch of little frogs, which he put in an empty orange juice bottle. We set up the tent. We took a friend and his 3 year old son out in the canoe. We tried to fish, but didn't catch anything. (Lennon was using his frogs as bait).  When we got back and I was loading everything into the car Lennon yelled that he caught one. Sure enough, he landed a crappie.

We got back in time for a fireside devotional where I took a seat to listen and Lennon went to get closer to the fire.  He came back a little while later with one of his frogs impaled on a stick, telling me that he just ate a frog leg--in the car on the way back he had asked me if I dared him to eat one. Of course I did. Sure enough, his little frog--maybe a 1/2 an inch long--had a missing appendage. Lennon ate a second leg and told me it was ok, but the foot was gross. Then he put the rest of it in his mouth, bit down, made a hilarious disgusted face, and then swallowed. He told me later that he knew it was ok to eat it because Bear Grylls said that all frogs are ok to eat except brightly colored ones.

After the fireside we grabbed our box of Sour Patch Kids and bag of Cheetos and headed over to play some Dominican Dominoes. I guess it's a tradition now because we played last year with the same guys. We played till almost 1, or at least I did. Lennon was downing Sour Patch Kids like crazy and getting kind of loopy. He was starting to lose focus. Then he got out the ipod and pretty much gave up on the game. After a while he went back to the tent, where I found him about an hour later blasting the ipod (I could hear it as I approached the tent--and he was wearing head phones) and playing solitaire.

So even though the sun was up at like 6 o 'clock in the morning and by 6:30 it sounded like the whole camp was up (there was even a soccer game going on), Lennon slept in until almost 8. Coincidentally, his awakening coincided almost simultaneously with the serving of breakfast.

This picture was taken after I had packed up everything in the tent, including the sleeping pad that he had been lying on.

While he was asleep, I decided I would do a little fishing from the bank, so I grabbed my fishing rod, still rigged with a plastic worm from the night before, and headed down to the lake for my first fishing of 2011. Within 10 minutes I landed this bad boy:

When I got back, people were lining up for breakfast, so I decided to get Lennon up. (He probably would have slept in longer if I hadn't.)

We ate breakfast and then went out for one last fishing trip before we had to get home.

Lennon caught two more fish: green sunfish, one decent, one smallish, but I didn't have any more luck. At least not as far as the fishing went, but I did feel lucky to be able to spend some time with my boy. He's a great kid, and this, for some reason, becomes more apparent when he's away from his sisters, school, and given a bag of Cheetos and a box of Sour Patch Kids.

(I'm working on a new blog, a public one, and if you'd like to click on it, you 'll find a slightly much more reflective final paragraph, although the rest will be exactly the same. I'd love to hear what you think. *I'd also like the hits on the site* Here's the link: http://outdoor-dad.blogspot.com/2011/05/father-son-camp-out.html )