Yosemite Trip

Nancy and I are combining a business trip with a little pleasure trip this weekend. We left yesterday morning and drove about four hours north to Visalia where we did an enrollment meeting for one of our larger clients. We then traveled another two hours north to Merced and did another meeting. We then ate a quick lunch and travelled east and drove to Yosemite. We had never been here before, so we thought it would be a pretty drive. We were not disappointed.

As we headed east into the mountains we drove through beautiful green hills past cattle ranches and horse farms. We saw a lot of orchards where the most common crop was almonds. When we got into the pines it was equally picturesque. We made several stops to enjoy the view. We really enjoyed Bridle Veil Falls. Not only was it beautiful, it was impressive to hear the sound of the water pounding the grainite at the bottom of the falls.

We stopped in a little town called Oakhurst, where we located a Shiloh Inn with a vacancy and booked a room. We found a little mexican restaurant called El Cid where we had a great meal and watched the end of the Michigan game and the Duke game.

We are on our way to see the giant sequoia trees today, and then we will be home later this afternoon.

Swallows Day

We made our annual pilgrimage to San Juan Capistrano to watch the Swallows Day parade and participate in some of the festivities. The parade starts at 11:00 am, so we usually leave our house at 6:00 am to take my truck over to park it along the parade route. This year we found a place in the Ralph's parking lot and I backed my truck into a spot facing the street. Then at 10:30 we drove back and unloaded the cooler and snacks and lawn chairs and set up our viewing stand in the back of the truck for the best seats in the house. J.R. and Casey and their kids joined us just as the parade was starting.

It's always an interesting parade. There are lots of equestrian entries along with the usual bands, clowns, baton twirlers, and dancing groups. I'm a big fan of the horses. Ethan seemed to have the same interests, although he was equally interested in the frosted cookies and licorice in the cooler. The girls liked the colorful costumes and the horses. This year's parade had 192 entries, so it was longer than we had patience for. About two hours into it we folded up the chairs and crossed the street to the Mercado to get some lunch and look at a few of the booths. We had a great time, and it was a good excuse for me to put on a cowboy hat and my boots.

Looking For a Recipe!

Yesterday Nancy and I were running a few weekend errands and after going to the OC Swapmeet we stopped at Omar's Birds on El Toro Road and purchased a few things for Tango, our African Grey Parrot. We bought his normal mix of seeds, some wood chips for the bottom of his cage, some extra goodies including peanuts, some seed he particulary likes, and two different mixes that you soak and then warm as an extra treat. You would have thought we had ten birds when you looked at all the stuff on the check out counter. It cost a small fortune.

While we were there we saw some large parrots climbing all over a cargo net that they had draped over some large tree limbs that were part of an out-of-cage play area. It looked like the birds were having a lot of fun with this net. In fact, I was so intrigued by it that when we got home I drove over to Lowe's and purchased about 50 feet of 1/2" hemp rope with the goal in mind of building my own mini cargo net to create a climbing area inside Tango's large cage.

After about 45 minutes I had created the net and the next step was to hang it inside his cage. I opened the door to let him crawl out and then with the assistance of Nancy, I began to secure it to the cage. Tango was watching me rather intently from the top of the cage as I began to tie the net to the top right corner of the rear of the cage. Suddenly he dove at my hand and clamped on to my left thumb. I reacted by jerking my hand away. Unfortunately for him, he didn't let go resulting in him being jerked from the top of the cage and into the wall and then falling to the floor. The end result was two large wounds in my thumb and a parrot with some likely body bruises and and an expanded vocabulary of cuss words.

Nancy has talked me out of just killing him and throwing him in the garbage, but I have decided that after spending all that money on him and his upkeep, I am going to cook and eat him. Does anybody have a recipe for parrot? The nearest thing that I have found so far is a recipe for cream of asparakeet soup.

Carranzita Revisited

It had been too long since I have been hunting in Mexico, so this past weekend I loaded my dogs and my gear in the truck and joined my buddy John Anderson in Carranza. It normally takes about 3 1/2 hours to make the trip there, but this time the border guards decided that John must have looked suspicious because they decided to search his truck and the utility trailer he was pulling. They also had to inspect his guns, ammunition and paperwork, so we spent an extra half hour while they satisfied their whims.

We grabbed a couple of tacos from a roadside vendor about a half an hour south of the border and then got to Carranza about 7:30. After putting the dogs in the kennels we laid out our gear for the morning shoot, watched a little T.V., and wandered off to bed.

On Friday we had a morning hunt and an afternoon hunt for doves. Rigo, our guide, had located a harvested maize field that had a lot of feed left in it and the doves were swarming to it. We probably saw four thousand doves that day. Between John and I we reduced the population by 200 birds which means that we shot around 500 shells.

Saturday morning we went to the lagoon where we hunt geese and ducks. It was a beautiful morning. We set up the goose decoys by the light of a very bright full moon and then watched a beautiful sun rise. We killed a few ducks at first light and then waited for the geese to arrive. We were able to call in about four small flights of snow geese and we downed four geese. This late in the season they are pretty suspicious and several groups wouldn't even take the time to examine our decoys. We were able to get a few more ducks after the geese stopped coming in, so we ended the morning with four snow geese and ten ducks. Not bad for a late season hunt.

We gave all of our doves and most of the waterfowl to the guides and their families. We grilled up half of a goose breast for lunch. It was very tasty.

It was good to be able to get down there again. I didn't do it very much this year for various reasons. As I sat in the blind watching the sun rise and listening to the sounds of the blackbirds and the coots as they awoke to the new day, I was reminded of the comments of a friend of mine who was an officer in the marines. We were enjoying a similar morning a few years ago, and as he observed the beauty around us he said, "We ought to do something like this for the enlisted men". On similar occasions, my Grandpa Dickson, who barely had two nickels to rub together, would often say, "I wonder what the poor people are doing today".

It's a privilege for me to be able to get out from time to time and have these kinds of trips. I know that I feel like a twenty year old when I am watching my dogs work and enjoying the outdoors. I'm looking forward to some trips with my grandsons if I can talk their moms into letting them go. The world is different now than when I grew up.

I just noticed that I haven't had any entries here for over five months, and it's mostly because I always like to include a photo or two and I have been having camera problems. My digital SLR has had problems with the software and won't recognize the lenses on the camera, thus everything that is automatic, including the focus, speed and light has not been working. I have sent it in twice, and hopefully it is now fixed.

A lot has happened since my last post; Thanksgiving and Christmas, the birth of a grand daughter, a couple of deaths in the extended family, the ups and downs of the economy and how it has affected our company, etc.. In the mean time, I have been a little involved in facebook and I waste too much of each day checking in there. For every good thing that you read, there are about 10 things that are marginally interesting or just plain dumb. I have decided to check it once a day, and never at work.

We had a wonderful Christmas season this year. Even though the funds available for Christmas were a little tighter this year than seasons past, everybody seemed to appreciate the gifts under the tree and I don't believe anybody felt deprived. What was really special is the number of children and grandchildren that shared our holidays with us. We were able to visit Mao and Cathy just before Christmas and get hugs from Hunter and skeptical stares from Isabella. We also travelled to North Carolina to visit Sam and Lindsey and their boys and see their new little Ruby. We also opened a few Christmas presents with them. We then spent Christmas with almost everybody else. Besides Adam and J.R. and their families that live in our area, we were lucky enough to have Ashley & Todd and the boys, Sunny & Steve and their 6 youngest, and also a surprise visit from Lindsey & Harmon and their kids. Sunny and Steve and their family spent most nights at the Price family beach house, and Harmon and Lindsey and their kids spent a couple of nights with us and the other nights at a good friends beach condominium. We would often have breakfasts as a group and evening meals together. Nancy and I would make daily food runs to Costco, and we would fill our garbage cans with paper products, etc., about every two days. When garbage day arrived I had to deposit the overflow that wouldn't fit into our cans into three different neighbors cans that were sitting out by the curb.

What great fun we had and what beautiful grandchildren we have been blessed with. It was total chaos at times, but what wonderful chaos. It is so nice to be able to spend time with the little ones that we don't get to see often enough. There were a couple of things that stand out in my memory. One, is seeing about 16 or 17 grandchildren in my pool all at once. The other was our lunch at Ruby's cafe in Laguna Beach up on the open air room above the cafe. There were children everywhere and lots of smiles and laughter. What great memories!

We have a new year in front of us and I hope that we will all have the things we hope for and accomplish the things we have set out to do. I gave a talk in church a couple of weeks ago and spoke about the resolutions we should make if we truly want to be happier in the new year and for the rest of our lives. It was built around four distinct areas. I suggested that we all resolve to do the following: Resolve to expand our intellectual horizons and to increase in wisdom by reading out of the best books. Be resolute in preserving and strengthening our physical health. Resolve to be truer friends and become socially acceptable to people of high standards. And finally, to grow spiritually and increase in favor with God. I hope that my children and my older grandchildren will review this and determine ways that they can apply this in their lives.

I have also resolved to be a better blogger. My camera is now working properly and I will make better use of it. I will also spend less time watching t.v. and wasting time. It is going by way too fast.

An Incredible Story!

This is truly an incredible story!

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down it's foot.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but the possibility of being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over near to where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peters legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Road Trip

I've decided that if I can't be a cowboy and own a horse, maybe I should buy a Harley and live my mid-life crisis that way. There are always going to be a few detractors that will say it's too late for a mid-life crisis and that there is no way I will live to be a hundred and twenty eight. Others, (Nancy in particular) will say that there is absolutely no way I am going to get a murder cycle. And others, like my buddy Gary Hadley, who has more toys than F.A.O. Schwartz, will help me pick out the model and color and then order one for himself.

What inspired this latest of my many delusions was our ward 50's party. As part of the decorations they brought in a pretty nice bike for people to have their pictures taken on. It wasn't a Harley, but it served the purpose. When I put on that leather jacket and the "do rag" I heard a voice in my head saying "you can live this dream". I also heard Nancy whispering in my ear to "not get any crazy ideas". We'll see which voice wins out.

I mentioned that the party was a 50's theme. You can't tell that by my outfit. I wore my wranglers and cowboy boots and topped it off with a hawaiian shirt. When people questioned my choice of clothing, I just told them that I was quite certain that this was what a hawaiian cowboy looked like in the 50's. They couldn't argue with that logic and I was far more comfortable than a lot of people in their tight blue jeans and phony side burns.

Anyone for a road trip?