Christmas Day

Kids opened some presents and then we sat around the house waiting for the turkey to cook. I turned a couple bowls out of Apricot wood that Scott Simmons gave me from their project house in Durango; nice stuff! We did get out for a little sledding too.

Christmas Eve skiing

With the family all in town, we took a trip to the top of the pass today for some skiing and sledding. Here's some pictures off Craig's camera.

Train Yard snow

A walk in the snow

Snow fun

Crazy!

Check this out from the Wolf Creek Ski report:
Midway Base Depth : 102 inches
Last 7 Days : 75 inches
Latest Storm : 8 inches
Year to Date : 182 inches

That is 6ft 3in in a week!

The great Elk massacree of Ought Seven

I went on my annual Tribal Employee cow elk hunt this morning with the guys; Tom: Wildlife Biologist, Stuart: Director of Game & Fish, Doug: BIA Natural Resouces, and Dave: Doug's friend. It was bitterly cold, somewhere around 8ºF when we met at 6am and set out for Willow Creek Ranch. We had progressed no further than 1/4 mile down the access road when a herd of 6 or 8 elk ran across the road in front of us. We jumped out of the truck but decided against shooting as it would have been impossible to get close to a downed one where they were. About a mile further we came upon a second small group and shortly afterward a third and fourth. The recent snow we've had (24") has apparently forced the migratory herds down out of the high country. There were elk everywhere we looked.
Stuart quickly dropped a small cow and Tom took a long, fast shot at another that was over 400 yards out. I was pretty sure he hit it and after a short discussion he and I hiked up the hill through the snow to see. I felt pretty bad for being so sure he'd hit it because when we got to where they had been standing there was no sign of any damage, let alone a cow down. We agreed it was better to hike a little and be sure than to leave a wounded animal out there.
After hiking down the hill, Tom and I got in Dave's truck the others had left behind for us and drove until we met up with them. About 3 minutes later we ran into a herd of over 50 elk milling around about 350 yard out on the side of a hill. Six shots later there were 3 more down and we were done for the day! It was 8:57 when I checked my watch.
Here's some pictures.... click to start:

Winter

Here are a few shots from our trip home from Durango on Sunday. You can click them to view larger versions.

The coolest video you will see today.

This makes you want to buy a suit.

Sorry, I can't directly post the video, just click the picture to load it.

A little ski video

Here's Holly cutting it up at Purgatory......

Ron makes the Blog!!

We went to Durango on Friday night in the middle of a rain storm. The rain that fell all day in town was snow in the mountains..... over 3 ft. of it! Sara watched the kids and Scott, Holly & I had a big powder day. Click the picture of Ron to go to the album.

A bit of snow

 
We got about 6" of snow last night. Here is the wife doing her duty and clearing the driveway. "FASTER, FASTER"

Potsdam Brass Quintet: Contrapunctus IX (Bach)

We went out for a little "Culture" tonight (hard to come by in a town of 1100) and listened to a nice concert by the New Mexico Symphony Brass Quintet. They opened with this piece, played here by the Potsdam Brass Quintet. A real treat, although the kids got a little restless sitting in the Episcopal Church pew for 1:20.

Aunt Pauline's funeral trip

I flew back to NH last week for the funeral of my Aunt Pauline Chappell. It was nice to see a bunch of cousins and relatives I hadn't seen for a long time. I didn't have my camera so here are a few pictures off my cell phone.

Greatest movie ever

Pictures from Lake City

I went up to Craig & Mandy's over Thanksgiving. We drove to Grand Junction and met mom and dad. Here's some pix from Lake City.

The Texas pictures

As promised...

A stop @ Carlsbad Caverns

We took a trip to Texas last week to Sara's Aunt and Uncle's ranch. On the way we detoured to Carlsbad Caverns that were only 30 miles out of the way. Here's some Caverns pictures and I'll load up the Texas pictures tomorrow.

A day at the dunes

Sara had an all day Board of Directors retreat (for the daycare facility in the town south of us). The kids and I went up to the sand dunes. Fun time.

My new favorite musician

This guy rocks!

Pumpkin patch

We had to drive Quinn over to Durango on Sunday and stopped at the pumpkin patch to pick a few:

Abiquiu

We hiked up to some ruins and looked at pottery shards. We didn't take any, so don't get excited....

Feeding deer

Scott & Holly and Bonnie & Roger came over last weekend for a visit. We had a lot planned but couldn't pull it all off. We did get up to the Brazos and fed the deer:

Blakemore Well

This is located on the White Sands Missile Range so I don't think we'll ever get to visit:

View Larger Map

Good times, good times

Click here

First snow

We got our first real snow this morning. The mountains are white and there was 2 inches on the top of the pass.
Sawyer was running around and bumped heads with Mason.... hence the tears.

Scary!!

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

Trip to the White Mountains and Nathan's Wedding

One of the purposes of our trip to NH was to attend my cousin Nathan's wedding in the White Mountains. It was lovely......

Climbing in NH

While we were in NH we did get in a little climbing. Mason is really into it so we went over to the NE Center to some little cliffs that were over there.

A fine day at the beach

The weather was about perfect today. No people, a nice breeze, and some decent waves. All followed by a great meal of seafood at Newicks. What could be better?

Sweet jump

We went over to Scott and Holly's house in Durango this weekend for a little visit. Scott was showing me the new Mt. Bike trail he has cut through the woods behind their house. After that we were sitting around talking and he showed me this big bank on the vacant lot next to their house. We started out "High Marking" trying to outdo each other and one thing led to another until we were pretty much going as high as possible. We started out saying that you had to get both wheels above the flat rock in the lower left of the first picture.......

Sweet Jump

Plaza Blanca

We finally found this place. I've read some about it and Sara tried to find it when Mom & Dad were out here the last time. It is very hard to find but worth the hunt. We are thrilled it is only about an hour from home, we'll be back! A great Saturday excursion!

Plaza Blanca

Ummmm?

Bear

Brad and Olan spent the night with us last night. We went to bed about 11:00 and were sleeping pretty hard when Brad woke us up at midnight with "Mark, come see the bear in your trash"! We went out on the front porch and flipped on the light and saw the back end of a bear sticking out of our trash can. He was finishing up scraps from the big birthday party on Saturday. I yelled at him and he backed out and looked around. It was a BIG bear!
I grabbed a stick of firewood and hit him in the back and he ran across to the neighbor's yard. We picked up all the trash and put our trash can in the back of the utility trailer, thinking that would keep him from tearing it apart again. WRONG.... after we went back to sleep, he came back, climbed into the trailer, and tore into the trash again. This morning Brad and I found this in the mud puddle next door.

Twins Birthday

We had a birthday party for the twins (4 years) this weekend. Holly took this one of her boys on either side of ours. I'll get some more pictures up soon.

Broken Wood Grenade

I broke my Wood Grenade yesterday. I am sad because they are hard to find. I guess I should be happy because it lasted for more than 5 years and more than 10 cords of wood.
If you are splitting cord wood by hand, this is the thing to have. There is nothing better.

New pet

I found this guy at work a couple days ago. He is really calm and doesn't really run away when the kids try to hold him. Maybe he'll hang around for a while.....
















He looks less than thrilled..

New Swingset

New swing-set: $250.00
Rope in a tree: $5.00
which one will they use more?

Sawyer mixing

It's late, and I can't seem to figure out how to get this to post to the blog directly.
Click the link, it's funny.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8763367054968536510

Boulder

We got a call Saturday morning from my cousin Eric as he and Lori were landing in Denver. Since we wanted to get out of town anyway, we packed some bags, booked a room on Priceline.com, and drove north for 6 hours. We all met in Boulder where Bryant (their son) lives and spent a few fun packed days hanging out. Here's the evidence:

Boulder

Kids on a hot tin roof

 

Cat Faced Spider

Sawyer found this guy on the side of our utility trailer this afternoon. It appears to be a

Araneus gemmoides- Cat Faced Spider

Osier Station

We took a drive up and over Cumbres Pass to the Colorado side of the line. After 17 miles of dirt road we came to Osier Station, the midway point of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad line. The train stops here for lunch and to allow passengers to stretch their legs a little. We continued down into the mouth of Toltec Gorge and crossed the raging Rio de los Piños and let the kids play a little before heading home. There was a rare afternoon train just pulling in to the station as we were leaving.

Osier Station

New (different) baby pictures

This should be considered the "Official" baby album for Alden Faroni. Please disregard and erase from your memory any previous postings on the subject.

I guess there is less bosom on this one......

Some good readin'

You have to look at these police reports from Española, a town about an hour south of us. Amazing!

Brad & Olan's visit

Brad & Olan visited us for the night and most of the day Saturday. We had a really good time and went up to Trujillo Meadows Reservoir and the Rio de los Piños.
Here's some pictures:

Brad & Olan's visit

This is good!

Colorado Alligator Farm

Saturday we took a drive to the Colorado Alligator Farm outside Alamosa. The alligators live in a series of ponds that are fed from 87.5ºF water from a natural hotspring. They also have a bunch of "exotic" animals that people bought as pets and could no longer care for and dropped off. Pretty cool, we even got to hold our own live gator. The kids thought it was really cool.

Horses

We went over to my co-worker's house to check out the horses on Friday night. They were getting some new shoes and then did some roping a little later.

An interesting expedition

Check out this blog, it looks like a really interesting expedition in a remote part of Siberia:
LINK

Summitville, Colorado

We took a drive today up the Conejos Valley to the abandoned mine at Summitville. It was nice to get in the "high country" again in spite of an afternoon thunderstorm. We ended up going down the west side of the Continental Divide and then climbing up over Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs and then home. It was probably close to a couple hundred miles, most of it on dirt.
We saw a Lynx cross the road about 20 yards in front of us. Amazing!
The kids were most impressed with Summitville and the "Ghost Town" of abandoned miner's cabins.

The bowl trade.

So Paul Olson makes some amazing hand blown glass art:

by paulolson5
I make hand turned wood bowls:

Bowl Trade

I thought it would be cool to work out a trade. Paul finished his in short order and shipped them to us. I, on the other hand, was not so quick. I got one done pretty quickly and started on a second. I wasn't happy with how the second one turned out so started 3 others that I ended up abandoning before finishing. I finally got a couple more I was happy with and will ship them off on Monday.... It's been like 6 months that he's been waiting.....

Paul, I'm done!!!

Finally!

Gambel Oak bowl

A few more Camp pictures

For your viewing pleasure:

Our trip to New Hampshire

We just got back from a two week trip to NH. We had a great time and did a lot of fun stuff, beach, camp, beach again....
The kids really wanted to fish this year so here is a "Fishing at Camp" slide show. I dumped all my pictures to Dad's computer and then forgot to burn them to CD so I'll have to wait 'til they arrive in the mail to upload any more.

Trip down to the river.

I got the kids an inner-tube yesterday and we took a little hike down to the river tonight to give it a try. Looks like we need 2 more.....

Mandy's ready for bear

Getting some practice in for the big bear attack.

Shotgun: 1, Watermelon: 0

Here we have the effects of a 12 gauge loaded with 00 buck on a spoiled watermelon from 7 yards:

Amazing Chain Reaction - The Way Things Go

For the guys.....

Scenes from my Birthday & the 4th of July

I like this kid

First of all, he's the first Navajo to play professional baseball, second he can really play!
Here's a good story about his second game in the "Bigs"

Solifugid

Here is a Solifugid (Camel Spider) we caught under the kitchen table. They are not spiders, not scorpions, and not insects but related to all of them. Even though they look scary they are pretty harmless and eat other bugs. 10 legs is pretty unique!
Arden wants everyone to know that "Mom catched it."
If you want to read more, click here.

Trip to Atlanta

I took a class about 40 miles west of Atlanta this week. In a stroke of good luck, I found out the Red Sox were playing a three game Interleague series with the Braves and went to the first game on Monday night. The Sox lost but it was fun to go to the game. I hadn't been to a Red Sox game in more than 10 years! I got out of class at 4:00 on Tuesday, went back to the hotel and took a nap and woke up with nothing to do. I figured I'd drive back into Atlanta and see if I could get tickets. As I was walking up to the stadium I heard a guy say something about getting rid of tickets. It turned out that he had two extra tickets and gave me both of them! The Sox shut out the Braves 4-0 and it was a fun game to watch.
Wednesday I did the same thing as Tuesday and scored another free ticket behind the Red Sox dugout. It was a great game, the Red Sox got a home run on the 3rd pitch of the game and the scoring didn't stop.... 11-0 by the time it was over. The best part was the foul ball I caught in the 8th off Alex Cora. It came down about seven rows ahead of me, passed through all the grasping fans, hit the top of a seat, and bounced right to me. I was thrilled. My total expense for the night was $9.50, five bucks for parking, and $4.50 for a frozen lemonade.... good times!

Some good lookin' chiluns

I think they get their good looks from me. We need to get dental insurance.....

Rafting trip on the San Juan River

Here are a few pictures from Saturday of our Rafting/Kayaking trip on the San Juan River through Mesa Canyon. The rafters included Sara & the kids, Mandy, Ed & Audrey, and Mom & Dad. Craig and I kayaked. Running about 1200cfs when we did it. (Click the picture for more)

Rafting the San Juan

Back to the Swell

Mom and Dad are on another driving vacation with Uncle Ed and Audrey. They were coming down from Wyoming and I drove up to meet them on Friday night in Green River, UT. I've been to Green River three times now in the past 2 months. I think they will have to name a room after me at the Holiday Inn Express. We spent the weekend driving around looking at Indian art (pictographs/petroglyphs) and hiking. Good times. Here's some pictures:

San Rafael Swell

Kayaking

I finally got the kayaking season started this weekend. I met Craig up in Buena Vista and hit Brown's Canyon on the Arkansas on Saturday, followed up with a town run in Pagosa Springs on Sunday, and finished up with a Upper Rio Grande trip today. Here's some pictures from the Rio Grande:

Just one more....

One of Craig's from today. We finished up the season with a 5 nest day and a total of 25 chicks banded. A new record!

More eagle pictures.

These are Craig's pictures. Click the picture to start.....

eagles2

2007 Golden Eagle Banding

This week I had a great privilege. I got to work beside my brother, hanging off ropes and banding Golden Eagle chicks. I have been working on this project for the past 4 years for the Nation's Department of Game & Fish, but my friend Jim who has been my climbing partner for those years has taken another job and left the state. We needed a strong climber and I got to pick him, so Craig got the job. It is hard to imagine being paid to do something this much fun. There are bad times too, some hiking and bushwhacking through thick oak brush, rattlesnakes, scary nests with no ledge to sit on, thunderstorms, piles of rotten rabbits in the nest, etc. We set a new record on Monday and banded 9 chicks in 5 nests. Craig was invaluable; setting anchors, hauling gear and even banding 3 chicks. The rest of the week was not as productive, but we still visited 12 active nests (out of 19) and got 17 chicks banded. We have some follow-up work to do next week and should finish with around 25 chicks banded.
Here are some pictures from the first week, I'll have more a little later: (click the picture to get started)

Eagles_07

Springtime in the Mountains

Hazardous weather condition(s):
Hazardous Weather OutlookShort Term ForecastToday...Windy. Thunderstorms with rain and snow showers likely in the morning...Then numerous thunderstorms with rain and snow showers in the afternoon. Snow accumulation 1 or 2 inches above 8000 feet and near the colorado border. Cooler. Highs in the upper 40s to lower 60s...Except in the 30s to mid 40s over the higher elevations. Southwest winds 20 to 30 mph becoming west 15 to 25 mph in the afternoon. Gusts up to 40 mph. Caution advised on area lakes.