Ants every were

When drove to Portland for the dinner boat ride on the Columbia River that Randy had invited a bunch of uses to.
Thanks Randy for great boat ride and dinner.
We all got to see some real Indians working alone the bank for the river.

So the story of the Ants.
We stayed at Sam place and drove up to the boat ride from there.
The night we got there, I park in the road below Sam apartment , and I parked under a tree.


When we came out the next morning to go to REI and some other places, the tree had
drop this sticky stuff all over the car.
The windows would hardly work.
When we came back and I parked away from the sticky tree.
When we came out to leave for the dinner ride.
The car was covered in ants.
I parked next to some weeds that touch the front end of the car and so the ants came up the weed to cross over to the car.
You can see the weed in the top picture.
The Ants were eating the sticky pitch stuff off of the car.

So a hole bunch of ants went for a 60 mph ride, but by the time we got to the boat ride most of them didn't like the ride because there was none to be found.

The Day Of the 100

One of my Goals was to ride a 100 miles on my mountain bike in one day.
So on Thursday July 31, I start the riding at 7:30AM.
Because of the heat I had to break this up.
First run: 50 miles in 3.75 hours, avenge speed 13.8.
Second run: 30 miles in 2.25 hours, avenge speed 13.6
Third run: 20 mile in 1.50 hours, avenge speed 13.4

Total : 100 miles in 7.47 hours, avenge speed of 13.4 mph,
Or
starting 7:30 AM and finsh 9:30 PM.

I'll never do this again, my butt and hands were falling sleep.

Day 5 and 6 of the Steens Road Trip

On Day 5, Saturday:
Drove to camp site at Lake of the Woods and camp to do some MTB at the lake.
Found a new trail that runs between Lake of Woods and Fish lake, about 9 miles.
Lots of caches in the area.
On Day 6 Sunday:
Drove home and cleaning up cache alone the way.
This me on near the top of Steens Mt. Rang.

Grasshoppers hitting car between places.



Me at the highest cache in Oregon.
9733 feet.
One of 70 caches I found on this trip.

Day 3 and 4 of Steens Road Trip

On day 3 and 4.
I was at the base of Steens Mt. Rang.
Its a 60 mile loop up to 9700 feet.
So I drove the 3 miles in to Frenechglen to fuel up.
At only $5.00 gal. I only need about 4 gallons.
Only a 3 cache to day, but I do get a FTF on the highest cache in Oregon.

I saw this watch tower near a farm house, why?















The view from the road of the first canyon.





The great view from the rocks.















Look south at the hight point, 9733 feet.



















Wild Horses lake, there is 3 people down there.

The Road Trip to Steens Mountain Rang

I left July 22, heading out on highway 140 out of Medford going east.
I had set-up the GPSr to geocaching alone the way all the way to the Steens or as much as possible.
So I started picking up caches about Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods area, alone the road.
I pick up about 16 cache alone the way, all the way over to the other side of K-Fall pass Bonanza to a lake called Gerber Reservoir, and camped there in a nice little dry camp.
Its about 25 acer lake.
Seem to be the fishing spot for every one who was there.
There was 2 not find yet cache, but one was on and island and other was across this bay, the water was none to clean, so I passed on these as much as I hated not getting the FTF.
The smoke from the Cal. fires was blowing into this area, as you can see from the picture.
On Day II, I was up about 7:00AM because the sun was shinning on the tent, so no sleep in time and I had to make to the camp sit at the base of the Steens today.
I left the area about 8:AM or so and found some more caches, as I was leaving the area.
Heading back to highway 140 I had to cover about 30 mile of dirt road so this slow me down so till I hit 140.
I pick up 7 cache through the hole day, not to good, but no misses yet.

I push on for Lake View, not much of a town.
I had forgotten to get a tube for my MTB in Grants Pass, so I thought I would find one here, no luck at all.
Only one place had bike tubes, and there were the wrong ones.
A hardware store, and no bike shop in town.
So I fueled up, because this would be the last place to fuel till I get to Frenchglen, at the base of the Steens.
So I took the short cut to Frenchglen, and you know how short cuts work out.
I pass through one of the largest game and bird refuges.
Warner (bird) Refuge and Hart Mountain Antelope Refuges.






As you can see from the video, it is really big.
When I left Lake View, I cut up north to a little place called Plush, and that was were the pavement ended and the dirt road started.
The dirt road was under construction, so at about 25 miles from Plush I came across a flagger, who told me that she could not talk to the other end because the radios wouldn't reach that far, so go ahead and watch out for the big trucks.

So driving at the post speed limit, I drove the 65 miles of dirt, dodging big trucks and farmers and some cows.

There is a really nice place for sell out there, 420 acres with new house on the only hill out there, with lots of open space to do what ever you would like.
I got to the Page Spring camp ground about 4:30 and found a nice camp spot next the a river, the river was about 8 inches deep. LOL
I spent two night here.
Oh, the post speed was 35mph. LOL

Day 2, Alta Lake Hike

Got to the Alta lake about 4:00pm and set up camp in the same spot that Me and Ben used about 15 years ago.
This is the end you first come to when the trail ends, the camp site is way down at the other end. The camp site is at 6800 feet elevation.
The weather cools down pretty quick, I was in the tent and bag by 8:00pm because I got cold.










This the view from the camp site, in AM.


And the video is of the valley starting with Crater Lake at one end and ending at Devil's peak. This is the view I had for dinner and breakfast.

Picture to the right is of Grass Lake and Middle Lake is closes, this is looking south into California.








If you click on the picture, you can see witch is Crater Lake and Mt. Thelson.








The reflection in the lake was so nice, I had to add the picture.

And last...............

The Hike to Alta Lake

I finely started my vacation, about two weeks late, starting Thursday, NO WORK till August 4.

And guess what the first thing I did?
On Thursday morning I packed my back pack, and left for the 7 Lakes Wilderness area in the Sky Lakes Wilderness. This area is located between Crate Lake and Mt. McLoughling, and area about 15 miles wide and 50 miles long, with 100s of lake.
The trail head for Alta Lake, one of the 7 lakes, is the closes and shorts hike in.
A mirror 6 1/2 miles by the sign any ways.
Being on vacation I slept in and got a late start. So by the time got my pack set-up and found every thing, I did not get out of here till about noon.
The trail head is about 14 miles the other side of the town of Prospect.

Here I am at the trail head.

I drove into the TH, about 1:00pm, a mosquitoes go me in the first two minutes I was out of the car. So, out came the OFF stuff, the super strong stuff is the only thing that will work with these hungry bugs.
The trail is just wide enough for a unicycle, and climbs pretty good.
The first two miles, climbs from 5000 feet to 6000 feet, walking though woods and fields.















About 1 mile of open fields, as you can see in the pictures.
After 2 mile it got a interesting surprise, for the next 3 miles, I must have cross 50 of these.














As you can see that the snow is really there, in places, being up to eight feet deep. As luck would have it, it is very hard, so it made it easer to walk across, in most places.
More to come of what I saw, when I got to Alta Lake and the other 6 lakes.

More Item of Interest / Book Report

In another place in South America.
These brothers were touring the local churches, looking at the painting and art work that was done on the buildings.
So the early Spanish missionaries, were working on converting the locals to there way of thinking and so.
They needed a painting of the Last Supper, so the missionaries commissioned a local painter to paint this piece.
When it was done, it was found that the artiest had add to the plates of food, the type of food that only royal persons were aloud to eat in the painter's country.
On the table was found the bread and wine, and in front of Jesus was a plate of roasted guinea pig.
Weird.

On Easter Island, the place with the big statues all over it.
The statues were cut into the images of the chiefs, of the 18 tribes.
Most of these statues, had been turned over because of the 18 waring tribes, on the island.
The archaeologists put the statues back up, and never finished the job.
The statues, had eye ball, and now there is no eye ball in the statues.
There must of be short sighted archaeologists, haha.
The first eye balls were made of wood.
Interesting.

I have finished book so no more stuff to add at this time.
But there is others stuff to read about when you pick-up the book to read it.
The Sparks guy has wrote 9 other books as will, and two were made into moves,
"The Notebook" and "Message in a Bottle"

The story of going around the world is pretty cool, only for rich any ways.
I checked the web site of the travel agency, 55k to 65k.

The name of the company goes by TCS check out the link.

Interesting Points, Three Weeks with My Brother

I pick-up this book at a book Geocahes, over the week end at the coast.
It had to be good one because its on the New Yorks best sellers list.LOL

Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks.

So these brothers, Nicky and Micah, start out in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
First stop was in Yaxha' and Tikal, Guatemala.

So there walking down this path, following there guide as He is talking about Yaxha' temples and building, pointing this way and that way and saying this building was used for this and so and so was done here.
And the last time some one lived here was about 900 A.D., that was over a 1000 years ago.
The two brother were looking at each other, thinking WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT, all they could see, was lots and lots of trees, brush and vines every were.
So the guide explained that the trees and vines drop there leave, 3 times a year, it turns out that it is really is 3,000 years of drop leave and it turns into lots of dirt and more trees and vines, grow on top of this and so on..........
The Guide went on to say:
One of the Stone Temples was on earthed about 80 years ago, they run out of money to finish the job.
It is right over there, that big mountain of trees and dirt and that is only 240 dropping of leaves, and there nothing to see.

What is it ??

As I was going into one of my shops the other morning this monster was parked next to the entry door.
Pretty scary!

I really like the pattern on the wings.

And if you look closely it looks like a face of come kind.
Looking back at you. LOL

Spent some time looking around to ID the little guy.

Grammia parthenice, or better know as a
Tiger Moth.

Check out the link.

Normally not from this area.

The Night Hike On The Table

For Rochelle's B-Day, she wanted to hike Upper Table Rock at night.
So we drove over and made the hike.
As you can see the 2 baby made the hike as will.
The hike was great at this time of night, not to hot.
We started about 10pm and got back to the cars about 12am.

List L to R: Robyn, Alex, Paul, Serena, Daniel, Ben, Felipe, Randy, Pat, Molly, Dominic and (Rochelle, John and Dan not in picture).

Log Cabin

Caching south of Applegate Lake and came across the two story log cabin.
It was in pretty good shape, I would say it is about 50 years old.
It looks like someone was or is trying to restore it, a little at a time.
Even comes with a star gazing rock on the other side of the house.
The drive to town would be a little much, about 50 miles to the nearest story, one way. LOL
A way cool creek running near by as will.

Lost Creek Lake Bike Trail

Looking for a Mountain biking trail to ride Saturday and found a really nice ride at Lost Creek Lake off of Highway 62 that goes to Crater Lake.
The trail starts on the north side near the boat launch.
X 's marks the beginning of ride, the trail I have mark in orange color.
I started late, about 1:00pm, the air temp was about 65 degrees and about half clouds and blue sky's.
It was a single track about 24 inch to 6 feet wide in places.
The trail was not to bad, I did cross over about 37 bridges, the bridges had numbers on them.
This as much like driving the road to Hana, on the island of Maui, I thinks there was about 65 bridges to cross.
It was 12.5 miles one way, from the boat launch to the big bridge on the east end of the lake.
It did not rain a drop the hole tripe to the bridge.
But about the time I turned around to head back, the clouds just opended up and start pouring, I mean it came on so fast that the rain was falling out of a blue sky, the clouds had not had a chances to move above me as of yet.
Then the thunder started booming about a mile or so away, and the rain stopped.
The thunder followed me all the most of the way back a started to gain about 4 miles from the car.
I was thinking maybe the thunder like aluminum bikes that I was riding on. LOL
All in all it was 25 miles in about 3 hour and 40 minutes.
Only bad thing was there was poison oak across the trail at times, so I had to ride through it.
John and Paul, will like this trail, it is a lot like the Applegate lake trail.

The Fly Boys

I was driving up to Applegate Lake area to do some geocaching, and these hang glider were flying just out side of Rush. They take off from a place called Bishop Creek.

Book Report Time, Gentleman of the Road

Gentleman of the Road, by Michael Chabon.
The story takes place in the land of Khazaria near the Caspian Sea.
The time period betweem 600 and 1000 AD.
Zelikman is a jewish doctor who has left is home land and wonders the county side with and huge Africa, by the name of Amran who carries a Viking ax by the name of Defiler of Your Mother.
They come across a prince by the name Filaq, who's family had been killed by the next ruling Bek(king).
They travel the roads of Khazaria till they come across an army from the capital city, and they take over the army and headed back to the city of Atil to take back the Prince family king seat.
A good story and with lots of funny things happing to them all the time.

A Ride Around Applegat Lake

Ben, John, Paul and myself(Dan), made the trip up to Applegate Lake and road the mountain bikes around the lake.
We parked by the dam, and unloaded the bikes there and road across the dam for about 1.3 miles till we came to the little parking lot and the trail head started right there, how could you get lost.
Whooo, what a get trail, about 12 to 18 inches wide in most places ha ha.
So at about 1.5 miles into the trail, we came to this fork, and someone had made the decision to go right, so up the hill we went, down the other side, then we started side hilling in this little ditch of a trail and then it ended at this steel cable?
Bikes on our shoulders, and up the hill we went, till we came to a really nice trail that went no place, so we turn and went the other direction and came out at were we started, in the first place, LOL,
What a great day, air temp was about 65 degrees, and some clouds, snow cap mountain in the distances.
Fish jumping in the water and people trying to cache them, and boats on the lake. Most of the trail was in the shade of the trees, so we really only go hot near the end of the trail.
The lake was empty in October 07 when I was geocaching near here.
Its completely full now, right up to the top.
The ride lasted 3 hours and we coved 18 miles. A really great ride, and it was easy till you get to the last 1/2 mile and I pushed my bike up that hill .

The Really Big Fish Story

On Saturday, April 26, the three of us were diving in Brookings.
I was hunting fish and I saw this sea trout on top and small rock.
So I took aim and let it go and got it.
It was about 12 inch long and a nice size, sea trout I thought.

Now Ben and Paul were just about 5 to 8 feet away watching me with my big catch.
And so I have witness, to what happened next.

As I placed my right hand next to the trout, so as to get my fish stringer up to hang the trout on it.
This 4 feet ling cod, came out from under me, out of know were.
And then He clamped his mouth over my poor little trout, and over the rest of my spear.
His head was so wide, it made my hand, which was right beside his head, look only a quarter of the size of his head.
The fish shook my spear, and I shook the spear trying to get it back from this huge monster.
This lasted about 4 or 5 seconds, and he was gone.
And the worst of all, the dirty monster.
He took my poor little trout and left me with nothing.
I tried and tried, to get another, but all the fishing magic was gone.
I found some pictures of what the fish stealing monster must of looked like.
I will be hunting this one for days to come.

1st Dive/Fishing Of The Seasons

Saturday April 26. A perfect day at the beach.
Ben, Paul and myself diving at Mill beach in Brooking.
Air temp was 70 degrees and water temp was 50 degrees.
We had 15 to 20 vizes.
Dove at low tide, 10 am.
Left the house around 7:30 and pick Paul up in Grants Pass, and off to the coast.
As aways we have to kick out to the best fishing spot, and it is aways about 400 feet out from the beach.
We did really good going down to the bottom, when we hit the bottom we were all three they together. This never happens, normally.
As you can see, Paul, finally got to spear some bottom rock fish.
I think He got four fish on the first dive and maybe two on the second dive.
Now Ben and myself, had a different story to tell.
As we were starting out into the water Ben found that the rubber band had broken on his spear. So we had one spear between two dives, haha.
So we had found some fish, and I was looking for one that I could get and I pull back and let it go, I was to far away, so it only half got him, and he swim away.
Ben lost control at this point, and grab the spear from me and pick off the first one He saw. Ben got one and Dan zero.
One the secound dive Ben nailed a 24 inch ling cod.
I did get one sea trout, about 12 inch long, but theres a story about that in the next log. LOL

Dominic Is Here, Finaly

On April 26
Dominic Joel Bermea
Dominic, was born at 6pm on Saturday to my daughter Molly and John.
He was 7 lbs. 4 oz. and 21 inch long with blond hair.
Born in Medford, at Rogue Valley Hospital.

Isn't He so cute, sleeping on Grandma in picture.

Book Report Time, His Dark Materials, I, II and III

Title: His Dark Materials, I, II and III.
I had not planned on reading these, but there they where, so I started the story, and so I had to see how it ended.
The story is not a bad story. But the writing style is just ok, it just did not flow as will as I thought it should have.
Mrs. Coulter was her mean self, was mean all the time.
The poler bear was cool and the different animals, they helped keep the story alive and interesting.
Lyra, was this funny girl, that seem to have grown up in a rich family, and didn't know how to washer her hands and comb her own hair, all this by the time she was 12 years old.
The thing about, fighting God and not believing in a God, is just a story line to build the stories around, and nothing more.
And how it was ended, just when you think it is over it seem to run on, with to many lose end to pull together.
I understand the start of a story is important, but the way it ends, is even more so, if you want to bring your readers back for more.
I would not read it again.
And I would only give it 2 stars out of 5 rating.

Geo Chaser On Wheels

This picture was taken, from the Geocaching web page.
And if you look closely you can see that she is carrying a torch, an Olympic torch in London parade.
It turn out that she is a geo cacher and her geo dog.
Retired Mathematician
Geocaching handle is: Dorsetgal & GeoDog
Live in Dorset, U.K.
Reading Windy's blogg, she has lead a very interesting live.

What New.

Whats been going on in Dan's world.

On the 1st of April, I turned 51 years old or young depending on who you are talking to at the time.
So now I am more than a half century old.:)
What happed in the passed half century:

Man walked on the moon.
Jet plane flight.
Computers that fit on a desk.
World Wide Web.
Cell phones, for everyone.
Cars and truck that can travel half million miles on one engine.
These of the first thing that come to mind, I'm sure there others just as important.

On the 7th of April, I became a Grandpa, first time ever.
Alexander Paul Sutherland was born at 5:11 AM in Medford, Oregon,to Robyn and Paul Sutherland. Weight of 6 pounds and 13 oz.

On the 9th of April, we met Chris Jentzsch at the Medford, airport, at 5:30am to see Him off on his mission for two years in Spain, northern part.
To teach the gospel of Jesus Christ for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

On the 11th of April, I install a new well pumping system in the well on our place.
The old pump had started leaking at the main shaft seal about 2 months ago and was all most spraying water to the door of the well house by the time I replace it.
The old pump was install in the well in 1974. Only about 33 years, about 15 years more then it should of lasted.
I replace every thing, meaning, the piping that goes down into the water, as will as the pump motor and pump it self, and the piping to the holding tank.
It was a major jigsaw puzzle trying to get all the part together in one run to town.
It took about 6 hours working as quick as I could, so that you would have time to go back to town and get, what ever you may have missed, before the store closes.
After I got it all together, and turned on the pump it run beautiful till it came time to turn off and it started, turn on and off repeatedly.
This is really hard for the motor to do this, over and over, they get hot and burn up in less then and hour or so.
I had to do some out of the box thinking to figure out what was happing.
The pump, when it came out of the box, it had the pressure switch mounted to it with the read line, hook to the pump head.
Bad thing, this set up, it only reads pump pressure not the house pressure, which is were it should be reading, so, I had to pull the line and move it in front of the check valve to get house pressure reading.
It worked great after that. Only had some very small pipe leaks, will go back Monday and finish it up these leaks.

Whats New For Geocaching

As of to day I have:

75 First To Finds, only 25 more to go.

28 Find in one day, on March 28, 2008.

1381 total finds, only about 120 more to go.

The game has added a lot of new members, so we are seeing a huge number of finder, but on the other hand, these people are placing a lot of new caches.

To show you what I mean.
I usually down load about 450 caches into my GPS, so if I'm going some place, I'm pretty much cover to to find a cache near by.
About a year and half ago, that would cover a 75 to 80 mile circumference.
But today, it only get me about 40 mile circumference.
Thats good but, it seem that I'm seeing a lot of caches that really don't take you any place new, and cool.
Lots of lamp post, and mico caches in the woods, not the best place for mico. in my opinion.
What I mean is, they have got all the room in the world, and they have to hide a cache the size of a postage stamp.
All these new cache are great for number building, so my numbers have grown pretty fast these days.

I went out today, and found 16 cache in about 4 hours, a great run.

3 FTFs

5 Mico.
9 Film canister
2 Big cache

This one cache I went to was way cool, had to work at it, even had to get around this rock. This was a FTF, it had been around about 3 week, the snow kept people away.
CRAZY!
This rock roll off the bank, in the last two days or so. But there was just enough room to get by on the right side.
Only .3 of a mile to the cache from here.
The rock was as tall as my car. LOL