Gettysburg

I don't think I've been to Gettysburg before, and I know this was Ryan's first visit. We met up with Chad and Angela and their little baby girl, Ava. Unfortunately we didn't get out of the house as quick as we wanted (Caden's fault. Yes, I will shamelessly blame it on the baby.) so we were only able to spend half a day there. We didn't get to see everything, but it was still awesome. 

What can I say about Civil War sites? They're very interesting, and kind of sad at the same time. 

 

This painting, the Cyclorama, was amazing! One thing about it that I thought was really neat was that little man, sword in hand, standing next to the tree. That's the artist, Paul Philippoteaux. That was his way of signing this masterpiece.

Caden looking up at some cannonballs. Methinks I will regret the calculating gleam in his eye. Not that he needs cannonballs to wreak havoc (explanation forthcoming in a later post).

Never get on the wrong side of a woman who knows how to make cookies.

Not being in the military myself, this is something I've never understood about the size and proportion of the various groupings of soldiers until this picture laid it all out for me. Ah! I feel smarter already.

We stood where he stood! Pardon me while I geek out over that fact.

Some type of Cedar. I was just impressed by the sheer size of it.

Our souvenir from the trip; locally made fudge. We got Peanut Butter Chocolate, Cookies n' Cream, and Chocolate Walnut. They did not last long.

Visiting Yellowstone

We wanted one last "Hurrah" with our friends Dave & Laura before we packed up and moved to the other side of the country, so we decided to go to Jackson Wy/the Tetons/Yellowstone National Park. We've been to Jackson before, and loved it, but we've never had a good view of the Tetons or been to Yellowstone before.

I was expecting bumper to bumper traffic moving at rush hour speeds of 0-5 mph while every dude and his brother took a zillion pictures of one mangy moose munching willow twigs on the side of the road. We didn't see much wildlife, but what we did see was very cool.

 Waiting on Old Faithful to show up.

Little man with an ice cream mustache.

 Teaser trailer...

There she blows!

It was really amazing. The plume of water got at least 40-50 feet in the air.

Here's the rest of the pictures from the trip. I'm more interested in getting them online in the short amount of time that I have than I am in waxing poetic on all the neat things we saw. Sorry. :-p

If you have kids too, you'll understand.

I like getting my silhouette in the shot. It's a picture of me without me actually being in the picture.

 Fountain Paint Pots & Bison poo.

 Sleepy boy.

 Please do not attempt to swim in the boiling water. You will come out looking like bacon.

 Hello!

 Bad Ryan! No! Didn't you read the sign?

Actually the water wasn't hot at all right here. It did give him a little bit of an electric shock, which was kind of weird.

Bison, wolf and coyote?

 Hello again. :)

 The Tetons.

 This cabin is just outside of Jackson Hole, WY. It's in one of the Rocky Balboa movies, but as I'm not a Rocky fan, I couldn't tell you which one.

 If you gotta point, point decisively.

 Hey, Mom!

This trip was short but great and I'm so glad we were able to spend it with such good friends. Love you guys!

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a very good Thanksgiving this year. We weren't able to celebrate the day with family this year, but some good friends invited us over, and we all had a wonderful potluck-type dinner, played boardgames and ate way too much.

I was in charge of stuffing, veggies and rolls, and, since I have no "traditional" holiday recipes of my own yet, I used my friends as the guinea pigs for these two recipes that I found at delish.com. Aren't I sweet? Luckily, both went over very well. The stuffing was good (turkey sausage is yummy), but my favorite was the veggies. I'll probably use that one again soon. Ryan needs to eat more veggies anyway. It's for his own good. :)

Lochsa River 2009

What I learned on this camping trip:

1) My nose is a magnet for wispy spiderweb strands
2) The hippie movement for "natural" outdoorsyness is alive and well
3) Mushrooms will do in a pinch for a game of baseball
4) and Fly fishing and hail don't mix

Our yearly camping trip to the Lochsa with Chris and Jeannette went really well this year. It was a lot of fun, the weather was mostly great, and we were able to get in both hiking and fishing almost every day, which made everyone happy. We also camped in this:

It had a stove!
It had BEDS!
It's gonna be hard to go back to a tent after this. :)

On to the ADVENTURE!

The first trail we tried led to a hot spring, which should have been our first clue. It was also more like a road than a trail, which should have been our second clue.


We found a really neat little spot where a spring of hot water was actually draining into a pool beside the river.

It was beautiful.

Here's some crazy tree roots we found while climbing back to the trail. We had only been out for an hour but we had to turn back pretty soon after that.

Question: Does soaking naked in a hot spring that is situated directly beside a trail where anyone and his brother (and their little kids) could walk right up and say, "Hi," sound like a good idea to anyone here? No? No! It doesn't to me either!

For Pete's sake, hippies! Please go and be "natural" where no one else has to see you! Sheesh!

Okay, I'm better now.

Obviously we didn't want to run into any more "nature lovers," so we decided to do a little exploring in the direction away from the water.

Jeannette walks along a log.

Ryan and Chris have fun moving the bridge.

And that was about it for the hike on that day. The guys went fishing after that and we wives went along to take pictures. We found:

A dragonfly

A bunny-shaped rock (I would have packed this thing home if it weren't the size of a basketball)

And a little spider. Yes, I finally took a spider picture like all the rest of you weirdos! Joy. Moving on.

Here's Chris fishing from the comfort of his very own boulder.


I love taking pictures where more than one thing is going on.

And here's one of everyone.

Fascinating as fishing is, the wives do tend to get a tiny bit bored after hours of sitting on the same piece of rocky river-side, so Jeannette started making balancing thingies. I joined in because it looked like too much fun to keep out of.

Zen-like, isn't it?

We got a little elaborate. Jeannette had a lot more patience than I did. She made the rocks balance; I just tried to keep from knocking them down. :)

The next day we drove a little further and found a trail that had no hot spring and was much less "road-ish." It was more of a trail on the side of a hill. I discovered that I have the stamina to hike from breakfast to lunch on one day--very proud of that fact--but I won't be able to move well the next. :)

Found some cute little mushrooms.


Ryan contemplates.
Don't ask me why the horse's skull is tied to a tree. We found it that way.


Hi there.


The view at the top was great, but it meant that 4 miles of downhill were between us and lunch!

We covered around 8 miles on this hike (Go, us!), and only saw two people at a distance. Their big dog came up to say hi, but then left with them. Ryan thought he'd be funny and scare the dog off, but the dog only took this as an invitation to play. I'm not sure which was funnier; Ryan waving his arms and yelling like a maniac or the dog's response. It started bouncing around in the brush so excitedly. Oh, boy; a new bestest friend! Oh, boy. Oh, boy! It was hilarious.

The next day was the day of mushrooms.

We decided to do an easier hike.


See the gentle trail meandering through the woods.


There were a few obstacles to overcome.


Don't jump, Chris!


What is it about little mushrooms that makes them just so cute?

The mushroom battlefield. Evidence of Chris and Ryan's violent nature against the fungus of the field. See the following videos for true mushroom carnage!

And that's about it, except for the hail.

It kind of interrupted the guys last day of fishing, so we all played cribbage instead, and then we drove home the next day.