A fading memory

A long time ago, in another state, far, far away, I was born.  I've been living in California since I was three years old, yet for the longest time as I was growing up, I called Indiana home.  California is home now, has been for a long time.  Interestingly, I have but one memory of Indiana, making a snowman and then watching my dad knock it down with a snow shovel later on.

Back in Indiana my dad flew airplanes as a hobby.  After we moved out here to California, that ended for some reason.  He was making more money out here than he had been in Indiana, but I know the cost of living was also quite a bit higher as well.  He took us to a couple of air shows, but that was the extent of his flying for the most part out here.

In 1966, my great uncle flew his plane out here from Illinois.  He had been a graduate of Purdue University and they were playing in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day 1967.  He took us up flying over Orange County.  I remember taking photos with my new camera out the window of Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland and the newly built Angel Stadium.  I'm sure we violated some kind of air space laws with regard to Disneyland, but it was great fun.

When we went back to visit Indiana the next year, we made it to Illinois to visit my great uncle again and we flew over the state capital of Illinois and the nearby cemetery where Abraham Lincoln is buried today.  I can remember my dad taking the controls on both of these flights.  I wonder if he ever missed it, or if it just became a fading memory?  Was it something that just got compartmentalized away, kept out of sight because he just couldn't afford it?  Any time I've asked, he's always said it was too expensive and he didn't have enough time with growing kids in the house.  I'll take him at his word.

Pen and Paper

When I first started to geocache 15 years ago, I had a new GPS unit, but you couldn't input cache pages into the unit because it had not computer cord to connect it up to the computer.  Nowadays, that almost seems like standard equipment, although I recently went to a Geocaching Event where someone gave away as a white elephant gift a GPS unit exactly like my original.

Back in those days, if we wanted to go out geocaching, we'd print out the cache pages and carry them with us, often times writing notes about the caching experience on them and then hopefully, keeping them in order so when we got home, we could then write our log write ups on the computer to lay claim to the find we'd found out in the field.

Now, the only pen and paper you see while geocaching is usually the paper log book inside the geocache and the pen that all good geocachers carry with them because most geocaches are so small that they don't have room for a pen.  You have to be able to sign the log book to claim the find.  

And so it goes with technology.  We've pretty much eliminated the need for pen and paper, yet we still use it.  Some things are hard to change.  It would be fun to see all geocaches go totally electronically.  Find the geocache, then once you have the geocache in your hand, input your electronic signal access code given to you from the website and you automatically get credit for a geocache find.  As with anything, I can see people hacking the system to cheat, but we see that all the time no matter what.  I guess it's a challenge.  For me, the challenge is the find.  I'm not going to lie about how many geocaches I've found, just to inflate my numbers and impress someone else.  The only one I'm in this for is me.

But I digress a little.  Totally electronic geocaching would be fun, but I really do like the pen and paper.  With the total electronic version, you'd have no need to look through all the stuff in the cache.  Even though I don't usually take anything, it's still fun to see what's in there.

Life wouldn’t be the same

This will probably be the most difficult post I've ever had to write on this particular blog.  When I looked over the list of prompts for P.J.'s 20 days of Chill writing challenge, I thought this post might be tough to write about.  The events of the last week make this post very difficult to write about, but not like you might think.  And actually, this post will be very therapeutic for me.

He came into our lives in mid February, 2005.  We had been dog-less for about 6 months after our dog Rocky had passed away at the age of 17.  I was kind of getting used to the idea of not having a dog under foot and when my wife called me up and said that I needed to go look at a dog, I decided to humor her.

She had called me up because she knew I'd look at the dog and say no and that would be the end of it.  She knew herself too well to be able to be rational about things like that.  So I went down to the dog grooming place where this two month old puppy was.  They put him on the counter, he looked up into my eyes and then put his paws up on my chest and that was it.  I brought him home, put him on my daughter's bed, which woke her up and said "Happy 16th birthday."

He was named Jack for no other reason than we all liked the name. It was far better than my wife's suggestion of Quentin.  Jack has been a member of our family ever since.  He'd greet my wife's dad at the door, because he knew Grandpa always brought treats for him.  He liked my lap the best sitting in it for hours while we watched a movie or a sporting event on TV, but he liked the foot of my wife's side of the bed at night.  He'd look at you and then sit, as if to say, "Look, I'm being a good boy.  Will you give me a treat?"  And he was a very good dog.

Last week, age and illness caught up with him.  He got sick just about the time Christmas break rolled around and a couple of days after Christmas we had to take him into the vet because he just wasn't rebounding like he'd done in the past when he was ill.  After a night in the hospital, it was clear we had to make the toughest decision anyone who has ever loved a furry friend will ever had to make.  

Jack was surrounded by love as he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge on December 30th last week.  He is missed by all who knew him.

Life wouldn't be the same without dogs.

My favorite place.

When I saw this prompt for the 20 days of Chill Challenge, I knew my answer would be Yosemite.  There's something about this place that just speaks to me.  My first visit was when I was four years old.  I don't remember much of that trip, but I do know that I've been back numerous times in the course of the last 50 years.  I know I will go again in the near future.  I don't think I could ever get enough of this grand spectacle.

I've been to Yosemite in all sorts of weather and all the seasons.  Most of the time I've gone in the summertime, as that's when I have the most time off in which to travel to this scenic spot, but I've done a one day weekend trip to the park in the fall with my daughter.  I've also visited in the spring time with my dad when we were scouting out colleges for me.  I walked on the valley floor during one of the heaviest snowfalls on record on a late December day back in 1988.  

Each season changes this park, but you just can't beat the scenery at this place.  And there's the constant that attracts me, the scenery.  I know there will be detractors out there who will say that it's too crowded.  And they would be right.  But that's not going to stop me from going.  Each time I visit, I go to my favorite spots, take in the view, compose photo shots and just enjoy myself. Many of my favorite shots are along trails, which don't have as many people.  The people that venture out on a trail away from the valley have a different sense of purpose and a different respect for the park.  We know the masses are there for a day or two, to take in the sights and to move on.  We have a different feel for the park.

Every time I camp there, it's for at least a week and there's still so many things to see there that I never get it all done.  Just another reason to get me to come back later on I guess.

I took this shot from the valley viewpoint as you exit the Wawona tunnel on a June day in 2014.  I have to say I've been fairly fortunate in that most of the times I've been to Yosemite, there's been weather.  The clouds just help the shot, no matter where your taking a photo, but here, it just makes the spectacular shot even better.

Who am I?

I have to say, I'm a man who has strong convictions, but not a whole lot of follow through.  I've made resolutions in the past, especially with regard to blogging, but usually have fallen through.

Just last year, I participated in P.J.'s 20 days of Chill Writing blog challenge and swore I was going to do better with my blogging.  I posted 23 blog posts in January of last year, but only 34 overall.  Needless to say, January was the high water mark of my blogging last year.  So I'm not going to make any promises this year.  All I know is I had a lot of fun with this writing challenge last year, so I'm going to participate in it again this year.  

Today's prompt is "Who am I?"  

I'm a teacher.  I've taught in the same school for 32 years, plus one additional year at another school.  Interestingly, I've taught at my school longer than four other teachers at the school have been alive.

I'm a husband.  I've been married for 27 and a half years.  As in every marriage, it's not perfect, but I know for sure I got the better end of that deal.  Why my wife would want to put up with some of my antics and shenanigans for the past 27+ years is beyond me, but I'm glad that she has.

I'm a father.  I have three children, all beyond their teenage years.  My daughter, my oldest, is a teacher up north.  She is a fifth generation teacher in my family.  My son, my middle child, is in between jobs right now, but just moved back down here to Southern California.  I hope that means I'll bee able to see more of him in the coming year.  My younger son is still at home with us.  He's attending community college and looks like he's going to major in Psychology once he gets to a four year institution.  We will be making the rounds to different colleges this spring.

I'm an outdoorsman.  I enjoy being in the outdoors.  If it's hiking, or camping, or geocaching, I'm probably doing it and doing it for much of my off time when I'm not working.

I'm a photographer.  Believe it or not, my parents bought me my first real camera when I was in 3rd grade.  I wish I still had that old camera that took roll film, but somewhere when I graduated to better cameras, that one went by the wayside.  I still enjoy taking photos and you'll see many of them in this blog and on other sites as well.

Day one done.  I'm looking forward to the next day of this challenge.

On Safari

I've been recently reading about the Minnesota dentist who went to Africa on Safari and the killing of Cecil the Lion.  The hue and cry over this has been just short of amazing in my opinion.  I have yet to weight in on the subject very heavily, mainly because what I say will little matter in the grand scheme of things.  I've found, many times over, that once people set their opinion about something, there are two chances that you will have to sway them to change their opinion - Slim and None.

Now, my opinion is this.  I was dismayed that the man chose to kill a magnificent beast such as Cecil the Lion.  I do not condemn hunters.  In the past, I've eaten elk and goose that were hunted.  Therein lies the difference in the two.  If a person is hunting and will eat the meat, then I'm all for it as long as the hunting is done humanely.  To hunt, just for a trophy, I feel is despicable.  We already know that we are superior to animals due to our superior intellect, but to take a life of another animal, just so you can mount their head on the wall I feel is just wrong.  That being said, I do feel that keeping the head of an elk, or deer as a trophy is fine, if you're also going to eat the animal.  

Now the uproar over this incident is really interesting. Take a look at the photo I've added to this  entry.  The photo is not mine and is in the public domain.  One of our most beloved presidents, one who is on Mt. Rushmore, was an avid hunter.  Theodore Roosevelt went on an extensive African safari following the end of his presidency.  Roosevelt spent about a year in Africa, collecting specimens for the Smithsonian and other museums.  Collecting specimens basically means shot and killed.  Roosevelt, in a year's time, was responsible for the death of over 1100 animals, including over 500 big game animals.  17 lions, 11 elephants and 20 rhinoceros were among the harvest, including 4 white rhinos.  Today, there are only 4 Northern white rhinos in existence anywhere in the world.

I find it rather contradictory that Roosevelt, who preserved many of our national monuments, including the first national monument, Devils Tower, and helped start the conservation movement in our country, could go on this kind of hunting expedition.  Yet, one could argue that his collecting of all these animals might result in better knowledge of the animal because now those specimens are displayed in museums in many different places.  Roosevelt was quoted as saying, "I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned."

Had Roosevelt gone on his safari in today's Internet climate, he would have been vilified.  I doubt that many people out there know about this chapter of his life. I don't like this aspect of one of my hero's life, but there's not a whole lot I can do about it, because it's in the past.  This is part of his life that balances out some of the good he did during his life.  All people are like that.  

I used to revere Thomas Edison when I was younger.  The more I know about Edison, the more I've come to know that Edison wasn't a very nice person.  But that's beside the point.  Are we going to condemn a man for one incident?  Even if it's a series of incidents, are we going to condemn this man for all eternity?  If that's the case, where's the condemnation of Theodore Roosevelt?

In reality, the uproar over this incident has buried something else.  Social media has excoriated this dentist and in the process has basically forced him to shut his place of business.  Perhaps he can afford to do that, seeing how he could afford $55,000 to bag a lion trophy in Africa.  I would be willing to bet that all of his employees, however, can't afford this time off.  Where's the uproar over that?  And don't try to justify it by saying that they worked for a guy who kills for sport.  Do you know what your employer does in his or her off time?  Probably not.  Think about that for awhile, especially the next time another firestorm runs rampant via social media.

Photo Blogging Challenge (June 2015): Anything goes

So this is a little late this month, but I've been waiting until the photos publish in the Sharpshooters International Photography Club's weekly album.  Surprisingly, June was majorly busy, since usually it's less busy, being my first month of summer vacation.  I had things planned, most of which got done and that just kept me from a lot of things, but the one thing that I really wanted to do, I got done.  P.J. has his monthly photo challenge, so here's the story of how I checked off something off of my Bucket List.

Because my daughter is getting married in July, I figured the best time for me to get out on my annual camping trip would be to go in June before it got really busy.  My wife doesn't camp, my older two aren't around anymore and my youngest had school and Jury duty about the only time I could go camping, so I emailed a geocaching friend of mine and talked with him about a geocaching road trip.  The trip had several purposes.  Get as many different caches as possible while having fun, get a couple of specific caches for challenges that I was working on and climb to the top of Mt. Lassen in Northern California.

Several of the geocaching challenges I've been working on involve finding caches on each page of a particular atlas.  The DeLorme atlases are really detailed maps and people have put together specific state atlas challenges for almost every state in the country.  California actually has three challenges because there's a state atlas, a Northern California atlas and a Southern California atlas.  Living in Southern California, I'm closest to completing that one, but I'm getting very close to the other two as well due to my extensive traveling within the state over the last fifteen years.

So my friend Craig and I worked out a plan to travel up the eastern corridor of California up to Lassen Volcanic National Park and then come down through the great valley of California and home.  Highway 395 runs up through Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  It's pretty hot in the summer, but it was early June, so it wasn't really bad.  We actually ended up partially in Death Valley National Park for a part of the run, but we didn't stay, just sort of traveled through.  

One particular geocache we ended up finding was Have You Found What You're Looking For?  And yes, go ahead and start humming or singing along, because this took us to THE Joshua Tree featured on the cover of the U2 album.  Unfortunately, the Joshua Tree is dead as evidenced in the first shot, but it's become a shrine to U2 out in the middle of the desert just outside the boundaries of Death Valley National Park.  Yeah, the song's going through my head right now as I'm writing this.

Eventually, we got up to Lassen about day four of the trip.  Before Mt. St. Helens blew its top in 1980, Mt. Lassen was the last volcano in the contiguous United States to have erupted.  It began erupting in 1914 and continued off and on for the next three or four years.  During that time span, it also became a national park.  These if a lot to see there and a lot of great hiking opportunities.  

One of the hikes we took was a hike out to Bumpass Hell, a thermal area that looks very much like the thermal areas in Yellowstone.  The only thing that Lassen doesn't have that Yellowstone does are geysers.  Bumpass Hell is named after Kendall Vanhook Bumpass, a local miner, who, in 1865 had the misfortune of breaking through the thin crust of one of the boiling mud pots.  He ended up losing one of his legs due to the scalding mud.  Bumpass Hell is not very pleasant to be in if you have a sensitive nose since it has a sulfur smell to it, but it's an interesting feature.  

But the first hike of the day was the one I really wanted to do.   We got up had breakfast our first full day in Lassen and got ready for a hike to the top of Mt. Lassen, the centerpiece of the park.  This hike has been on my Bucket List, probably since before the term Bucket List was coined.  My first adventure in Lassen happened when I was 8 years old on a camping trip with my family.  Because we did mostly things together, the hike didn't happen that year, but I decided then that I wanted to climb the mountain.  When I graduated from high school, two of my buddies and I traveled all around the state during that summer.  We ended up in Lassen, but couldn't climb to the top because of extensive snow cover.  We ended up hiking through five foot drifts of snow just to get to Bumpass Hell.

Five years ago, my youngest and I went up there on a camping trip, but this was after an incredibly wet winter, the last wet winter we've had in the state.  The road through the park still hadn't been plowed and so to even get to the trailhead, we had to exit the park and drive all the way around the outside and come back in through the southern entrance.  The trail to Bumpass Hell was even closed that year.  There were ten foot drifts above the bathroom's room in the Lassen trailhead parking lot.  That's right, you read that right - ten feet above the roof of the building.  And this was in July.  Apparently, the mountain did not want me to climb it.

This year was different.  One thing that actually helped us immensely was the drought we've been suffering through in California.  We caught a tremendous break with that, because the snowfall has been minimal for so many years that the trailhead opened up early.  As you can see from the fourth shot, the snow field my friend Craig is walking through was about the extent of the snow on the trail.  We had about 6 or 7 of those crossings, but none of them were very treacherous.  

The trip to the top was fairly easy, but the elevation gain of over 2000 feet in just about 2.5 miles of hiking can cause problems.  There were two people we encountered on our way up who never made it to the summit because of altitude sickness.  One was smart enough to rest and head back down while the young girl was prodded by her family to continue on.  She made it almost to the summit, but never quite to the top.

As you can see, the views from up there were phenomenal.  If you look closely, on the left hand side of the last photo, along the cloud line, you can see Mt. Shasta about 100 miles away.  We probably lingered up there for about an hour, eating lunch and just taking in the views.  I ended up taking about two other group's photos and one of those groups we employed one of their party to take our shot at the summit.

Elevation gain? - 2000+ feet
Miles of hiking? - 5 miles round trip
Checking off something on your Bucket List? - Priceless

There's my five photos for the Anything Goes theme for the month of June.  Check out P.J.'s page to see his interpretation of the theme and then scroll down to the bottom to see the link for others who have participated in this month's challenge.