Fishing at Johnny Lake

Last Thursday, I took the oldest 2 girls out on a fishing and geocaching trip. The fishing was a bust, we did not even get a bite, but we all had fun spending the day together. Here is some of the pics from the trip.

Just got to the lake, and are getting ready.

Waiting for a fish to bite.

Emma with her pole. She had a hard time just leaving the bait in the water and kept wanting to reel it in to check it every 2 minutes.
Here is Emma casting out into the lake. She was getting pretty good at this because she kept reeling in and recasting so much.

Here is Riah casting out. It took a few tries because she kept forgetting to let go of the line as she cast and the bait and bobber would splash into the water at her feet.

Here is all of us sitting waiting, waiting sitting, sitting and waiting some more. We soon gave up and went out to hide 4 geocaches. Maybe next time we will catch something.

Wolf Rock Challenge

I was planning a trip to Moose mountain to ride my mountain bike and find some geocaches. I had asked a friend if he was interested in going with me. He said yes. Then as the day got closer, the day I had picked was not going to work for him. Then he asked, "You wouldn't happen to have Friday off, would you?" As a matter of fact, I was on vacation all week and had been planning for Saturday because I thought he would be working on Friday. Well, he could not go on Saturday, but had Friday off and had been planning another geocaching adventure. He asked if I would be interested in doing the Wolf Rock Challenge cache. I said sure, not know exactly what I was getting into.

Here is Wolf Rock. We have to go up there!!!!???

Here is Paul, aka Pablo Mac, getting ready at the truck before we headed up the "hill".

Here is what is called the Amphitheater. We had to go up a trail to this point and then head to the left across the bottom. Then we hit another trail through the trees to the west to get to the less-technical climb.

This is just past the Amphitheater just a little ways. Paul brought his video camera to record parts of our adventure.

The trail then ends and this is the route you have to take to get to the top. This is the "easiest" route up the rock.

I started climbing first so Paul could shoot some video. Then I stopped to take some pics.

This is from the same spot, just zoomed out a little farther.
This picture kind of shows how steep the climb is, but not completely.

Here is Paul making his way up after me once he got done shooting video.
We just came up the draw that Paul is looking at. Took a break here after getting the hardest part of the climb out of the way.
Paul shot some more video from the spot we took a break. It was an amazing view from here, but we are not at the top yet.
We could finally see our goal at this spot. The last peak in the distance holds the geocache we are looking for. We had to head to the left and go around that first rock on the other side then across the middle of the next one and finally up and over the top of the last one to the cache.

We are almost there. Quite a view.
Paul with the cache. It took us a little over 2 hours to get here. We covered about 0.52 miles and climbed 900 feet vertically. This is my favorite cache of all time!
This is looking down the north face of Wolf Rock. Those are old growth trees at the bottom and are probably 150 feet tall.
We were visited by a lizard up at the top. He was hanging on the rock in this crack near the cache.
Here I am with the cache logbook and the 3 sisters in the background.
Now we have to make our way back down!
The next ridge to the south is Carpenter mountain. It has a fire lookout on it. You are supposed to be able to rent the lookout and spend the night in it. That little building perched up on the rock is it. That would be a cool place to spend the night.
The next few pics are of some old log books that climbers have been signing since the 60's.


There are 3 different log books in the cache just from climbers covering from the mid 60's to the present. The pics I took were from the 60's and the 80's.
This log page has one log from 1965 and another one from 1966. They were very interesting reading.
One final pic of the Rock. We were standing on the top of that point about 2.5 hours before taking this picture. Our adventure took a total of 5 hours and covered 1.04 miles with 900 vertical feet of elevation gain and then loss on the way down. This is my all time favorite cache.

Sisters

I think she likes her.

Cousin It.

For some reason she doesn't want to keep it this way. She also has no idea who cousin It is.

2009 Garden so far

Here are some pics from the Jayne family garden this year. The garden consists of an 8 x 10 raised bed, 1 topsyturvy tomato planter, and 2 other containers for extra tomato plants. We already had a crop of radishes which I did not replant because I am the only one who will eat them and I did not want that many. We had a nice little crop of carrots and have planted more and have a nice crop of leaf lettuce to keep our salads fresh. Then there is the spinach. It doesn't want to grow. We have about 4 sickly looking little plants that were not even worth taking a picture of. We have 1 sorano pepper plant that has not bloomed yet and a zucchini that is producing nicely. Then there is the green beans. When we first planted the beans a lot of them came up, but a neighborhood cat decided they liked the taste of bean plants and ate all but 3 of the plants. A couple days ago, I harvested our bean crop. I got 4 beans! Riah just ate them raw. Now we planted a bunch more so maybe we will get some later.

We have 6 tomato plants with mixed results on them all.

Here is a tomato in the topsyturvy planter. It started out doing well but now it doesn't look so good. It has a few tomatos on it. Still undecided on these things.

This one started out doing well also, but now has stopped growing and looks sick. It is producing a few tomatos.

This one is in the raised bed and started out slow but is growing nicely now and is putting on a lot of tomatos.

Here is our zucchini plant. It is doing wonderful. We have gotten 1 off it so far and there are a lot of zucchini on it now. You can see our lettuce in the background and if you look closely you can see our pepper plant in the middle. Just past that you can't see our pathetic little spinach plants.

Then there is this poor little tomato plant. It stayed in its little pot for too long and was about dead when we finally planted it. To its credit, it did not die, but the zucchini plant has gotten so big that it covers this little guy up. We don't expect much from this one.

Here is our star performers this year. There is a cherry tomato and a roma tomato plant in this container. They are both about 6 feet tall and producing like crazy. Why can't the rest of the plants do this good. Here is a couple of pics of the tomatos. And by the way, Riah picked out her own cloths today. I am not responsible for that!

When does hunting season start?

Having been distracted by a new baby that just arrived I had forgotten about some pics I took last week and had intended to blog about them. I ran across those pics today and here we are.
Hunting season is not far away and seeing this sight the other day just gets you all fired up and eager to get out the old rifle and start shootin. This was a rather large herd in one of my favorite hunting areas. It usually splits up into a couple smaller herds by hunting season(trying to hide easier I think). But both the herds are usually in one of several good hunting spots. One of them is, which is my favorite spot, Notellum ridge. It is directly across Notellum creek from Idontknow hill. It is just to the Northwesteast of the big mountain with all the tall trees on it and a little SouthNorth of the big body of water that is nearby.
Notice the bull hiding in the lower right corner of this picture. He is politely letting all the ladies go first. Such a gentlelk.

This is another bull from the same herd. Notice his daddy didn't teach him proper manners and he is gettin out of there with all his harem trying to catch up. Or maybe he is showing them the way.

Back to bull # 1. He is still patiently waiting for all the ladies to get to safety before moving on himself, but he is obviously getting nervous and wishing he did not have so many to move around.

Here is bull number 2 again. He has either remembered the manners his daddy taught him and letting the ladies go first, or he is out of shape from just sittin around grazing that he had to stop to rest. Either way it looks good for hunting season this year. Now if I could only figure out how they are getting that copy of the hunting regulations to know when hunting season starts, I could stop that and they might actually still be in the state come hunting season. If you want to find how to get to Notellum ridge, just talk to "Bubba". He is the big guy in the next picture and you can find him at..................ummmm........ah...um...Now where was I again?

Nana approves!

Nana made the long drive over from Paisley today to see Mileah. She now has 5 granddaughters; Aleesha(my niece), Emma, Moriah, Sarah, and Mileah. She was happy to get here and see her and thinks that she is a beutiful baby girl. We all agree with her. Grandmas always know what they are talking about!

Sarah gets to hold Mileah

Sarah got to hold Mileah for the first time today. When asked, she still says she does not like her new baby sister, but it is obvious that she does. It appears that Mileah is not as happy about Sarah holding her, as Sarah is.