Floatin' Down the Snake River

Our AWESOME summer vacation started at the Bride&Groom's-to-be home in Idaho and then out for a 2-day trip floating down the Snake River. The water was too cold to brave, but the views were spectacular. Scott and I started out the first day in kayaks as others rode in the boat.













We stopped for a little break at a beautiful spot, where we soaked up the warmth from the hot stones.













Later, we found the best campsite in the area and spent the night hanging out, eating some chicken cooked for hours, watching the man show as the guys broke open logs with their bare hands, and just relaxing.






















The next day, we saw some more great views and even tried out some fly fishing. Scott looked like he might be a regular, I got a little too cocky, but Beck looked and was the pro. A butterfly and eagle were on our wildlife list too - FUN!

Breakfast Party!

Before our great summer trip (which I'll tell all about over the next few days), we had a very fun breakfast party will all kinds of yummy AM goodies. Thanks all for joining us! And thanks to the Krochaks for the BEST coffee cake recipe EVER!!!!

I Am A...

You Are Root Beer

Ultra sweet and innocent, you have a subtle complexity behind your sugary front. Children love you, but so do high end snobs... when you're brewed right. Your best soda compatibility match: Dr. Pepper Stay away from: Diet Coke

What Kind of Soda Are You?

Let's all help our planet!

I've been wanting to do a planet friendly post for a while, but needed more suggestions on how we can help our planet. I went to see a presentation by Al Gore a couple of weeks ago, where he addressed the issues in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". I liked the presentation, but I had the same issues with it that I had in the movie. Basically, he gives a good case for problems that are occurring and says that we can do things to help stop the problems of global warming, but he doesn't give a lot of suggestions of what we can do. There was an article in Cosmo magazine a couple of months ago that I'm going to steal from to list some suggestions here. Scott and I are trying to change more and more of our habits all the time in order to help our planet. I know this may sound hokey to some people, but there really are issues that we should not ignore as the scientific community has agreed that this is a real problem and will not stop unless we make some big changes. If this long, possibly annoying e-mail puts one idea into a few heads that changes even just one habit, then it's worth it!

1. Change a bulb. We've just recently gotten these new Compact fluorescent flight bulbs (CFLs) to replace our old ones with. They used bout 65% less energy than regular ones, last a lot longer, and only cost a little more. This is a super easy way that you can make a big difference.
2. Drive a fuel-efficient car. Driving a typical car for a year produces 95,000 pounds of global-warming pollution. Most of us need to drive to carry on in our daily lives, but our choices for more fuel-efficient cars are getting better and better. Europe is SO FAR ahead of us on this front and we can catch up if our population will just start to make better choices.
3. Recycle! Scott and I have been bad about this because our complex doesn't offer recycling. I've finally decided to quit making excuses and find a place where I can still recycle. It's soooo ridiculous how much trash we all produce (the average American tosses 21 bags of rash a month). Imagine how much difference you can make recycling a large percentage of this! Even e-waste is causing a lot of problems s we have more and more electronic goods that we throw out. You can recycle these as well!
4. Clean green. I don't do this, but it's a great suggestion and I might try to start using eco-friendly household cleaners. Ordinary ones can have potentially toxic chemicals that if you pour down the drain, can get into our groundwater. Examples of Eco-friendly cleaners are Seventh Generation and Mrs. Meyer's.
5. Eat local or organic. I had never thought of this before, but most of the veggies we get are transported long distances, which in effect takes a lot of fuel. If we buy from local farmer's markets, this can save a lot!
6. Buy energy-saving things. This Cosmo magazine had a few suggestions that were clever, but it also suggested looking for the "Energy Star" label on everything from computers to air conditioners. I haven't seen these, but will keep my eye out!
7. Conserve water! This is something that very few people even think about. We saw some info on this at the science center in Balboa Park the other day and there are so many ways that you can conserve water, which can help curve the increasing pollution and drought caused by the more limited water supply around the world. How many people water their lawns every day or every few days, especially in Southern California? I know it's nice to have beautiful lawns, but isn't it a lot nicer to have a beautiful planet! Think of rock or cactus gardens, maybe. Come on, it will grow on us! No pun intended. :D We can also all try to take shorter showers (I'm aweful with this!), try out the water-saving shower heads, turn off the water while we brush our teeth, etc. etc. etc.
8. Adjust your thermostat. How many times do we turn the heat way up in the winter so that we can throw on less clothes? Why not turn down the thermostat and throw on more clothes? If you move your thermostat down a degree in winter and up a degree in summer, you can spare the air 500 pounds of carbon dioxide! Not to mention saving 15% in energy bills (which by the way you could then put to say solar panels!)
9. Use re-usable things like water bottles. We all love to buy the handy single water bottles that we can just trash after one use, but it's cheaper and a LOT more eco-friendly just to have a re-usable one.
10. Shopping bags! I've recently realized how must waste is generated every day by so many people just by shopping bags. I've started taking my paper bags from shopping back to the store every time I shop so that I don't have to get new bags that I would then throw away. It's easy and just think about how much waste is generated otherwise!

Just a few thoughts - thanks for reading!

Idyllwild

I have way too many pictures to post from this trip, but it's the most fun we've taken in a while and I'm back on the blogger kick again - so here you go! Scott and I, along with friends Gerard and Yoppy went up to a closeby mountain town of Idyllwild for some camping, hiking and relaxation. You may remember that Scott and I went here before when doing a hike of the San Jacinto mountains. We didn't do a trek quite that hard this time, but we did do a lot of hiking anyway.

We found a great campsite (best one we've been to up there) called Stone Creek campground. We also had the best campsite in Stone Creek was was #5. We've got to remember that to get it again next time we go up. There was a lot of tree coverage and plenty of space away from other campsites. There wasn't a whole lot of flat land, but we found enough for a couple of tents. There were tons of these manzinita trees, too, which I absolutely love. They have a beautiful red bark on them and great, green leaves. We were there at the perfect time when they were also blooming!


Scott and I were alone on Friday night and got up and went on the Deer Springs hike up to Suicide Rock. The foliage was beautiful and the scenes magnificent. We kept seeing these pink flowering-like plants randomly placed throughout the forest. I'm not sure what they are, but they looked very striking, adding a lot of color to the areas. If anyone knows what these are and can let me know, I'd love it! There were lots of different types of trees as well and we read that the many different types of pines here is very amazing, but it is due to the quick drop in altitude. I'm not sure what this other tree was, but it was huge, so I had to have Scott pose with it.

I felt like we were back in Costa Rica again with all of the lizards that we saw everywhere we turned. This one was really cool with the blue belly. When we got close to them, they'd start acting like they were doing push-ups, which is apparently their stance when they are challenging something. We also saw two mating on a rock at one point, but I didn't catch a shot of this.



Once we got to the top, there were a lot of great views. We could see Taquitz (another big rock that Scott has rock climbed) across the way.

On the way back down, we encountered another couple standing and looking at a rock. We realized that there was a baby rattlesnake on it! The guy was a huge fan of snakes and we were lucky to run into them so that he could point it out to us. He even got it up on a stick and wasn't even scared as it crawled towards him! Apparently, baby rattlesnakes can be more dangerous because they'll inject all of their venom into you whereas an adult probably would not.

When we got back to the campsite, Gerard and Yoppy were waiting. We had a great night at our wonderful campsite (can you tell that nature makes me incredibly happy!?) There were pines cones as big as our heads there (Nancy - I knew you would appreciate this).

There was this bluejay that was flying all around our site as well, trying to capture any crumbs that he could.






As it started to get a little bit cooler, I didn't want to put on my hiking shoes again (feet were still sore from hiking), so I had to make due with the German look again (Helloooo, Joshuaaa!) Our campfire area was separated from the tent area and was a great place to spend the evening with cooking and enjoying the campfire.

We even got a visit from Pikachoo!

This was the wonderful view that we had in the morning getting out of the tent - how lovely and relaxing!



The next day, we did a hike up to the base of Taquitz, the rock that we had seen the day before. It was a very tough hike with quite a bit of scrambling, but had great views when we got to the base. We could see Suicide Rock that we had hiked to the day before as well as some people climbing Taquitz. Everything about the trip was really great.

Catching Up

I haven't had any postings in a while, so this is a catch up post. Scott had a visitor in town one weekend and he brought us great entertainment (thanks, Beck!) It was the best weekend we have had all year, so we enjoyed a great, warm, sunny day at the beach.


A fun hair night on the town has to come every few months or so and I was way past due, so here was my do for a night out.







Jo is getting closer and closer to popping out her little peanut and Shelly and I went to a really fun baby shower at her place. Isn't she adorable!?






A weekend night out brought fun times, lotsa heads, and karaoke and dancing. Almost all caught up now!