Sunday, October 28, 2007

Frog and Snake Oh My




We have a Mr. Frog living in are bird house by the front door.
I sure he in there to catch bugs that fly around the light at night.
He could be to big to get out of there?
(enlarge to see frog)

And then there the snakes who lay on the road to harm them selfs.
(cold blooded) Taken from inside of my car after Molly run over it.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Is Three Heads Better Than One

At one of Daniel's last game He played in-------

Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Geo Dog On The Hunt

The Geo dog on the hunt again.


On the hunt, the Geo Dog, found DrDan at the trail head as He was getting ready to head up the trail to find, 3 caches in the area.


The Old Shell Game (FTF)
Beary Sweet Junk
Wheezers Cache
Roadside Ambiance (FTF)
TREE WITH 17 TRUNKS

Called the Enchanted Forest Trail, located off of North Applegate road at the end of Slagle Creek road. The trail I believe goes to the top of the hill or mountain and drop over into Foots Creek area and down to Old 99.
The Geo Dog met there and lead me up the trail to help in finding the other caches, the links are listed above.

I started to walk and I thought, I have the mountain bike in the car why am I doing this, so I walked back and got the bike and rode up the trail and found these cache quickly. The dog stayed with me the hole time and followed me to each cache and waited on the trail for me to go on.

Part of the reason for going after these caches, was one had not been found yet, and its really cool to be the First To Find (FTF) on any caches.

The one cache that was missing, is in a really interest container, home made type, and that is why it was had to find, I actually pick it up and put down before finding it.

This was a good cache day, found two FTF's and out of the five I found.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Bridge Over Trouble Water

Normally when a bridge is build, it is used by people and cars and thing that walk or roll or move around on sold led ground. This bridge was build for a completely different use. Lets start at the beginning of the story.

The Dam was constructed by private moneys starting in the 1920's and was dedicated on November 5, 1921 as Savage Rapids Diversion Dam.
And rebuild and repair by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1949-1955.
The purpose of the dam was for irrigation of 10,000 acres of farm lands in and around Grants Pass and Rogue River area.


My Dad worked 1975 to 80's for the irrigation company that kelp the ditch clean and one of his jobs was to look after the dam's fish screens and check pump oil leaves. He would come in every day and clean the trash that floated down stream into the fish screens. The fish screens purpose is the keep the fish from going into the pumps and getting cut up.
This is how the pump system works, the water coming into the screens is not all pumped into the ditches. They use the falling water to turn the pumps so it takes about 16 to 20 gal. to pump 1 gal. into the ditch.
The water from the pumps goes back into the river.
No electric, or other power is needed to pump the water.
The old farts were pretty smart, cheep cheep water supplies.

Side story, one day dad comes home and say a boat went over the dam and was down in front of the dam. One injury, a broken arm.
Dad said there is a hole or tunnel in the bottom of the dam that you can comes out by the boat.
So this very dark and wet, lots of water noise and thousand of leach hanging off the walls and forming and boiling water.
So I walk out there, trying to keep the camera dry, and took some pictures of the boat.
Cool story.

Back to the Dam story.
The Dam is killing thousands of fish every year because of the fish ladder, much safer then jump up water falls ?



The Dam is being removed, and the water will be pump by electrify.
You know, this is not going to cost anything now.
The water went under the Dam in old days, now the new bridge is so the water can be pumped over the river.
The pit at the end of the bridge is the place for the new pumps.

All this because fish are having and easer time swimming up the fish ladder, then up savage
rapids, rapid.


Monday, October 08, 2007

Pilot Rock, View From The Top





Picture L to R and down.
Daniel looking down from top with sun behind him.
Group shot, John, Molly, Ben, and Rochelle.
Top, looking down the trail toward freeway.
John hiking on trail, to base.

We hike or crawl to the top, we meaning Dan, Rochelle, Ben, Daniel, Molly and John.
We went up and back in about 2 hours. Very steep in places, like crawling on your belly.
Found PilotRock register, we left a note and read some of the funny ones.