Sunday, January 2, 2011

New Year's Day Hike

New Years Day dawned bright and cold!

Lets get out of the house! We took a fun hike along the Columbia river on train tracks with the whole team.






Lots of fun junk to find and collect... at least for a while, then the weight of it sunk in and it was discarded (fortunately) back where it came from.

Plenty of ice to throw rocks at, too.





After a mile or so of swamp land, we hit the rocky cliffs for some variety.

Pretty good current running again in the stream.






Alot of water and ice coming down the rock face.

We had to take care not to linger by the rocks... quite a few were falling.






The icicles were a big hit.

Just the right size for swords... even if they didn't last long in battle.






We found this little buck dead along the tracks.

It looks like he either fell from the cliff, or this rock fell onto him and killed him. No signs of trama, dragging, or other indications of how he died.

One set of tracks very deep in the mud. His head was mashed under the rock.


Both his little antlers were busted off by the rock.

We only found the one - the other was probably under the rock.







Several neat waterfalls, with frozen decorations.

This was the biggest and favorite.







On the eastern side of the mountain, the sun went down quickly and cast a beautiful, if cold, hue across the river.

Many geese were reluctant to leave the shallows of the river to flee into the current...





Someone's old fishcamp along the river was holding up pretty well... we left it alone, because nothing every good was left behind at fishcamp.

It was a great way to get out of the house and start the new year off exploring more of this beautiful Pacific NorthWest.

Slowing Down the Goat

All the fireworks on New Years Eve freaked out the goat, and she drug her 45# cannon ball through the pasture, under the fence, and into the garage, where she ate our Samoan Creme Pie!

Bad goat!

We needed something more difficult to drag...



So we tethered her to a concrete block.

Not as heavy, but not as easy to drag as the cannonball... at least for now.

In about a week, when she realizes she can drag this one, we'll have to put the cannonball AND the block on the chain...

They've Kept Portland Weird

With all the dark, dreary, and rainy days this Christmas Vacation, there haven't been many outdoors things to do...

So, we went downtown, and had donuts and visited Powell's.

Is there always a line outside in the rain at Voodoo? Every time we went there was...



The kids quickly found the donut they wanted...

They they tasted the salty, greasy icing on it and left it alone.







The glass was covered with smudges of their little faces pressed up to the glass.

Lots of fun donuts, and some very good ones. Of course we had the bacon maple bars... they were good.





We grabbed our loot and ran back to the van.

A bunch of weirdos, carrying pink boxes...







The peanut-butter crunch, mango, and grape donuts were the most favorite ones.

The voodoo dolls were the most graphic...






And then after washing off all the sticky fingers, we went and wandered Powell's World of Books.

A great day in downtown, and "educational" too!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Some Videos of the EL Target and RocketCAM

Here is the toy rocket launched with cameras on it. This one turned out pretty good- especially with the slow motion.