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

Interesting Pictures

This is what I found when I was coming back from picking up the only cache on the top.
Rochelle and Holly laying down in the sun on Table Rock.
Notices Rochelle feet, the weather was very nice the day we were up there.









This is Chris, 007, planning his next mission. Or maybe the new member of the Men In Black. Of course He is planning his mission haha. I understand He has a big mission in Spain, the norther part. This is top secret so keep this information to your self. He flies out on April 9, out of Medford, Oregon to MTC in Salt Lake for 2 week and off the Spain's MTC for more training.











This is Shannon at the Portland Temple on her wedding day. Looking beautiful as ever. She looks so happy.


This is Rochelle on a hike in the Portland wilds. This took place after Shannon's wedding. We had to walk the cake off, and of cores we waited till it was dark as it could get. We had one headlamp between the 5 of us, so the person in the middle of the group carried it and shine it on the ground so that we would all have some light to guide are feet. I did find one out of three geocache in the dark.

Goals For 2008

Thing I would like to do.
(I'm a big dreamer)

Fitness :
To ride 125 miles or more a month.
To ride 1500 mile before 2009.
And do a 100 miles ride in one day.

Fun stuff:
Make it to 1500 geocaches.
Get to 100 FTF geocache.

Diving:
Make it to 75 dives.
Spear more than 2 fish, maybe 10.

Hikes:
Hike to the 1944 plane crash site.
Hike into Seven Lakes Basin.
Hike in the Steen Mountains, easter Oregon area.

Church stuff:
Do better at Home Teaching, get 75% to 80%.
Read more then once a week.
Write 5 letter to family missionary, (Chris)

Reading:
Read 5000 pages of books.
Finish writing the short story of 20,000 words.LOL

Time to be real, at best, I'll only do about half of this stuff.
But half is better then no stuff.

My Favorites Links

This is a list of some of my favorites links.

GeoCaching
This is were I find all the geocache, just type in your zip code and see the nearest cache to you home.

HowStuffWorks
How stuff works, is always interesting to me, or if you have any question.

Wikipedla
Wikipedla-- is fun to read and look at what happed today in history.

Coral Sea Scuba & Water Sports
This is the place I get my air fills and scuba gear, but if you check out the Resources tap, you can see what the weather and waves are doing in Brookings.
And if look through the gallery pictures, you could see Dan, Ben and Randy

Maui Webcam
It seems, the weather is never bad in Maui.

Sic-Toys
Really easy fun sic toys to make from stuff you would find in the trash.

Shore Diving
This is the dream link, places to dive from shore, no boat needed.

The Last but not least.LOL
NUMA
The place that Dirk Pitt can be found and buy the watch he wears.

Book Report Time, The Treasures of Khan

A great book, loved it.
Clive Cussler, best book so far.
He ties in some sort of history thing about Genghis Khan.
Dirk Pitt and Al Giordine, start saving the day right at the crack of the first page.
It starts with a seiche wave thats 30 feet tall, and a old resreach ship(that moving about 15 mph)that is trying to out run this wave, that is moving at 100+ miles per hour.
And when you just think there going to make it.
They pull over, and stop to help this little fishing boat, to save the little fish men, and the pretty researcher.
To save the crew of the fishing boat, Al bring over decompression chamber, and the crew of 5, squeeze inside just before the mighty wave hit the boat and knocks the chamber over board, into and 1000 foot deep lake.
Meanwhile, Dirk Pitt puts on his diving gear and jumps off of the fishing boat because there is no room in the chamber and dives under the face of the 30 foot wave. Way cool.LOLOLOL You will have to read the book to see how it comes out.:)

Caching In The Snow

Out caching today and was going after hard to get ones.
Altitude was 3300 feet.
The snow should have been gone, but guess what, lots of snow.
There is two or three more caches down this road.
I had planed on riding the mountain bike to the others, but guess what, it did not happen to day.
The reason for the name, a bridge was washed out, about 3 miles down the road from here.
Great little lake, called Miller lake, with a cache.
All in and days fun.
This Thomas Creek Road, the top.
Just as you get to the green bridge in Applegate town, you turn left, before you cross the bridge.
This one isn't washed out