It's FRICKIN' SNOWING!!!!!

Holy crap, this has been the coldest/weirdest winter I've ever experienced here. What happened to Global Warming????? I'm sure there is some explanation that Al Gore can spin about how this is a side-affect of global warming, but we should all be assured that the polar caps are still melting.

Anyway, I was hoping for warmer weather by the end of April. We have a camping trip to make on May 1st, but luckily it's in Canyonlands.

Goodbye to our home......

I'm posting from my computer, which is set up on the counter top of my kitchen. My house is empty, nothing left inside. I'm ready to move on and I'm emotionally detached from it, but there is a little sadness leaving this place I first purchased when I was 23. I've lived here for a long time and I've put a lot of hard work into the place. But I'm VERY ready to move on. It's not been fair for Alene to have to have lived here and we are out-growing this house. Caiden needs a normal neighborhood for a kid where other kids live and he can play with them.

Speaking of, Caiden still has not detached from this place. The past two nights he has cried himself to sleep thinking about leaving. He has lived here his whole life. He makes comments about how if he had to stay here and would die doing it, he would. Or, if this house is for sale when he is older, he is going to buy it. He says he hopes the new people don't change anything so it will be just like he remembers it. He's extremely sad and it's very hard seeing him go through it. I'll give him a couple of weeks at our new place before I think he'll have forgotten about this place.

Anyway, I want to thank my family for all their support and help over the years with this place. I want to thank them for helping to put the roof on and for helping move. It should be an interesting few weeks coming up.

We're now moving into an Inn Town Suites for a week, hopefully less if we can close on my other house sooner. Then, on May 1st, we are out of here for a 5 day trip to Canyonlands. We've put all our camping gear toward the front of the storage unit our stuff is placed in, so that will be convenient. We're really crossing our fingers that we can close before we leave so we know we have a house to come back to.

Wish us luck!

To see more photos of the house we're leaving, click HERE

Let's write a Sawng

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of music in general, but I've always had a great love for Weezer and their music. Sure it's pop music, but it can be fun, with other songs being very serious. Their lead singer is a quirky dude named Rivers Cuomo. He had an interesting life growing up. He was a geek and wanted to a rock star. He started off with a big-hair metal band, but eventually embraced his inner-geek and the music took off.

Anyway, 15+ years later he's in his late 30's and still kicking out great music. Right now Weezer is about to release their 6th album and he has been passing the time involving fans on youtube to help him write a song. I think it's genius to allow your fans to get involved with something like this. As he requests info via youtube, you can see a link under each video that says (responses), these are people responding to his video with ideas.

Watch the video and you can see how quirky he is, but the genius that comes from his ideas on how to write a song. Each video is about 3 minutes long, so watch them when you have time. The song is not written yet, so there will be more videos of his in the future. You can keep track of them via his youtube homepage at: http://www.youtube.com/user/RiversCuomoAlone

Caiden better get his act in gear!!!

That's it, no more of this video game crap, Caiden is going to take guitar lessons and learn the freaking BLUES!!!! If this kid can do this at 8, so can Caiden.

Places I want to see/hike

This is going to be a constantly updated list I'll add to and check off when I do it. I'm going to post the link to the right under my profile. This is going to be a quick list off the top of my head, so watch for stuff to be added later.

UTAH

Escalante
- Coyote Gulch
- Hole in the Rock (I want to drive to the end and hike through it to Powell)
- Brimstone Canyon
- Egypt 3 Canyon

San Rafael Swell
- Eardley canyon (the whole thing, not just a portion of it)
- Lower Eardley Canyon potholes (tech rappel)
- Little Wild Horse/Bell Canyon loop
- Crack/Chute Canyon loop
- Dang Canyon (Did Ding already, so I want to go up Dang and complete the loop)
- ATV the behind the reef road
- Upper Chute Canyon/Lower Baptist Draw (tech rappel)
- Lower & Upper Black Box Canyon
- Segers Hole (tech rappel)
- Miners Hollow/Quandry Canyon (tech rappel)
- North Fork Iron Wash (tech rappel)

Zions/WAY Southern UT (not sure what to call this area)
- Buckskin gulch
- Zions Narrows
- North Rim Zions to Grotto area

Cedar Mesa
- Don't know enough of it specifically, but I'll post more later once I start the research

Canyonlands
- Island in the Sky
- The Maze
- Needles

Capital Reef
-

Bryce Canyon
-

Western Uintas
-

Eastern Uintas
-

Wasatch Front
-

Rock Band Party

So, I decided to invite some of the siblings over for a Rock Band party on the night of my birthday, April 11th. It was a blast. We played a head-to head tournament type thing where we were all on teams of four and competed by points against each other. It was a blast.

Here are some of my favorite pictures:












You can see more of these pictures HERE

I finally got me a gangster gun

Yup, picked up my CZ 75B (a Czeck-made 9mm pistol). Immediately after picking it up, I shot off a box of 50 rounds in the shooting range. It felt so sweet! I also picked me up an electric button combo safe to keep it stored in. I'll have to think of somewhere fancy to put it in our new house because it can be mounted under something. I'm really stoked about the 16 round clip.

The whole kit w/ extra clip.






My safe

Alene is finally back

She went on a business trip for almost a complete week to Anaheim then to Portland. The odd thing about her being gone was that Caiden was with his mom that weekend too, so I was pretty much to myself. Most men would die to have that much time away, to do their own thing, but it was weird for me.

First, I did keep busy (for the most part) with plenty to do in selling the house. I had time to finish doing the insulation in the basement and fix some grout on the floors of the house. I also patched a water leak in the house and painted it, so plenty to do.

However, it just really sucked after a few days to myself. It's been almost 3 years of marriage and being with her almost every day. You get used to that routine I guess and I even liked it. Despite arguments and times being upset with each other, I missed happy times too. It made me appreciate her more and I'd gladly take it all (arguments, fighting, fun stuff, etc.) to have her here.

Pros of wife being away and having home to yourself:
You can pretty much do whatever you want however you want to do it.
Time to "veg" around. I played some video games and watched some movies.
Time to get stuff done at my own pace.

Cons of wife being away:
Not there to hug and kiss
The house is quiet
Stupid old habits like not showering for a day or brushing my teeth before going to bed.
Not there to share things with. Moments like a funny video clip you saw, or something interesting to talk about.
Rock Band sucks playing alone
Cooking dinner alone sucks
Eating dinner alone sucks

Anyway, it sucked having her gone, but I appreciate her much more. PLUS, her BELLY has grown so much since she's been gone. It was so fun just rubbing it last night when I picked her up and this morning when I dropped her off at work.

Welcome home baby.

Stonehenge

Spinal Tap is one of my favorite all-time comedies and as I was perusing youtube for some Spinal Tap clips I came upon this high school talent show of some students doing Stonehenge (followed up with a Freebird cover). These kids are actually pretty good. The sound quality isn't the best, but they did their best to convey the actual scene from the movie.

Watch the original one first, then watch the talent show version (warning, some curse words on the dialog for the original movie)

Trip Report: Robbers Roost area

We had the great pleasure of being invited to Bill's birthday camping trip, which has been an on-going tradition for him for quite a few years I guess. I remember my first trip with them (Alene, April, and Bill) was before Alene and I were married. Looking back, I'm sure Bill was wondering what the hell Alene was thinking marrying me. I remember packing in a ton of excessive stuff for the trip. Extra clothes, a 10'x10' canopy (you know, for shade), a 6' banquet table and many other un-necessary items. I still pack in a table (but it's only a 3' table), but other than that, I pride myself on bringing as little as possible and with every trip I get better and better about it.

Like clothing. Now I bring one pair of pants (no matter how long we're there), and one pair of shorts. I'll also have one long sleeved shirt, a short sleeved shirt, a fleece sweater of sorts, and either a jacket or a light wind breaker, depending on the weather. I bring a little extra for Caiden because dude knows how to get dirty!

Anyway, onto the trip.

We left SLC as it was beginning to rain and snow. We left on good news that we had just received an offer on our house, so it was exciting to be getting away, knowing our house is likely going to sell.

The area Bill was taking us to is called Keg Spring. It's East of the san rafael reef and just north of Horseshoe Canyon, where Alene and I were last month. This particular site was very close to the Green River (within walking distance to a canyon rim). Bill had been down to this site last Fall, so he had a chance to scope it out and knew exactly where to take us. The site was PERFECT. You had a great view of everything around you. We could see parts of Canyonlands with bill's binoculars. It was awesome.

Here is the view from our campsite looking East:



Bill has many more pictures of this area HERE.

After getting camp set up, we embarked out to hike to colonnade arch, which is a series of 5-7 arches (depending on how you look at it). I was really wanting to get out to see it because of Bill's pictures from his trip last fall. The hike in was fun and easy and getting there was cool. I felt like it was almost like we discovered something no one else had seen. It kind of sat on the edge of a cliff (not that dangerous, but your view right from the arch area was of the Green River and another canyon I can't seem to remember the name).

Here are pictures of Colonnade Arch. Click HERE to see all the pictures from this hike:


Looking at the Green River in the background, from inside one of the arches




This was a weird formation that was circled with other rocks. Bill had seen a faded picture of it at the trailhead last Fall and wondered what it was. It's still speculation, but some have said it's some sort of lichen formed and eventually turned to stone, or just a tougher part of the rock that caused the concretion



After that hike we went back to camp and just chilled the rest of the night.

The next day (Saturday), we got up, did the breakfast thing and prepared for being away from camp for the day. Bill was taking us to Moonshine Wash and after that, planned on exploring the area via our vehicles.

Moonshine wash lived up to the hype. That place was AWESOME. The narrows there were so cool. Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short and we never made it to where we wanted to, which was an old 9' long sheep bridge (click HERE for Bill's picture he took last fall) which runs across the top of the canyon. It's totally old and not passable anymore, but it still stands, which is cool. Bill and April were having problems you would expect when having to haul a 1 year old on your back and a distracted 4 year old. Bill keeps telling me, "I can't WAIT for you to deal with this". Anyway, we decided to go ahead of them, thinking they would eventually catch up. As we made way down canyon, there were some serious drop-offs that I had doubts we would be able to get back up. I believe we went down about 5 of them, when realized nobody was catching up behind us. We had no idea how far we had to go to get to the famous sheep bridge, so we waited a bit, yelled for April and Bill, but heard nothing in return. We decided to make our way back to them and had to climb back up all those drop offs. I was impressed that we were able to get out and pull Caiden out as well.

We made our way back out and saw an older couple hiking the canyon. They said they saw our group on the rim of the canyon, working their way back. I immediately scrambled out of the canyon and looked around to see nobody. I looked back down to where we had been and I got pissed because in the distance I could see the sheep bridge and knew we weren't that far away from it when we turned around. Oh well. This is definitely a place I will be coming back to. Not only do I want to see the sheep bridge myself, I want to work my way up the side canyon for which Moonshine Wash is famous for. Up this canyon is a set of man-made cement bins made for making moonshine back in the prohibition era. There is apparently a natural spring in this area too.

We made our way back up to the trailhead just as Bill and the posse were getting ready to take off. They figured we would find our way back and they were going to leave us a note to meet them back at camp.

Here are some pictures form Moonshine Wash. Click HERE for the complete set:

We were in good hands with our sniper out in front of us

The narrows begin...










Trying to find my way up a dry fall





Since we were able to catch up with Bill and the posse, we were able to follow them around to a couple of off-road trails that lead to the Green River. The first one was called Bull Bottom, which is a spot where a switchback trail was carved out against the canyon wall to bring cattle from the canyon rim, down to the river bottom for grazing (and I'm sure a little Green River water). The trail was so skinny, which begged the question: "I wonder how many cows fell off the trail to the canyon floor?" Clint had been reading about the Green River a lot and felt a connection to it so he decided to head up canyon a bit and take a naked dip to complete his closeness. None of us thought he would do it, but he did.

Here are a few pictures of Bull Bottom:





After visiting Bull Bottom, Bill drove us up to the Wolverton Canyon over-look, which was an amazing view of the Green River. Click HERE for the set of the rest of these pictures:







On Sunday we ended up packing up and just heading out to Goblin Valley to hike around. Caiden loves that place. This time we hiked the N/NE area and worked our way south. We got a little scared because we scrambled so far back there and to the southern area and came to a halt because of a DEEEEP cave-type thing that had to have dropped about 40'. It was freaky because we had to turn around and go back and find our way out. It may seem impossible, but we got a little lost back there.

Here are some pictures from the trip. Click HERE for a link to our set.

It doesn't look like much, but this was really scary and dropped off on each side about 30'.




Ride 'em cowboy!




This is my favorite picture of Caiden. He's actually smiling and showing his teeth :-)

The REALLY deep and scary hole. I'm seriously surprised someone hasn't fallen in there. It just kind of shows up as you're hiking.






We had a great time in the area and I can't wait to go back and check out more of Moonshine and also, to go through Three Canyon, which runs parallel with Moonshine, just to the East.

We're taking a hiatus for the next month because of moving and Alene traveling for work for most of this month. We have a trip planned to Canyonlands, Needles district in early May, so that should be fun.

I've got to end with a few video clips of something else we did on the trip: Shoot guns. I've never owned a gun and until recently, I've REALLY wanted to get one for many reasons. First, for home protection, but second for outdoor protection. I shot Bill's Springfield XD9mm and Clint's XD .45 Cal. I also shot Clints new SKS rifle, which was fun. Alene also took a few shots with both the 9mm and the .45. I think I've almost got her convinced that it's OK to get one.

Bill shooting his XD9



Clint Bump-firing his SKS (for the first time)