Neil and Ashley (Sadie and Madoc) Visit

Neil, Ashley, Sadie and Madoc stopped by our hose to visit on their way home from Indiana on Monday, July 14. They continued home Arizona on Tuesday morning. Since Madoc’s birthday was on July 9th, we had some presents for him to open. He got some clothes that he seemed to have marginal interest in, and some really cool size 5 Keene sandals that the adults liked more than he did. We also got him a string pulling alligator toy and a sock monkey jack in the box. When Neil was a child, he had a sock monkey, so when Mom found a sock monkey Jack in the Box, she had to get it.

This is Madoc opening (with some help) the sock monkey Jack in the Box.

After the presents, we had dinner which was broiled salmon with teriyaki sauce and rice, salad and honeydew melon. After dinner we had ice cream made in Mom’s new ice cream maker using one of Katie’s recipes. We had strawberry cheesecake ice cream with fresh strawberries. It was really good.

After dinner, Madoc found a light saber. This is his Yoda impersonation.

Sadie and Madoc went outside and jumped on the trampoline. This is s short video clip of their energetic jumping(Sadie) and bouncing (Madoc).

After they were done getting dirty playing outside, they got baths. Madoc has great hair.

Sadie was learning how to play the shofar. We tried to teach her how to say “Shofar, sho good”, but I don’t think she quite got it.

Madoc played with the sock monkey in the box again.

Sadie was learning how to play carroms.

Madoc had one last ride on Grandpa’s shoulders before it was time for bed.

The next morning I made pancakes with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. It was a tasty sendoff. Neil, Ashley, Sadie and Madoc left shortly after breakfast and made the quick 23 hour drive to their house in Arizona.

Mom's Birthday

Mom's birthday was on July 12. She is about the same age as last year, maybe younger. Instead of having a birthday cake, we had a birthday bowl of ice cream (Bryer's Mint Chocolate Chip) with a single candle, representing the number of years since the last birthday celebration. It also represents the number of her favorite husbands.


She had presents to open from an assortment of people.

She got got an ice cream maker like Katie's that makes 2 quarts of ice cream and does not use ice or salt. We tried it out When Neil, Ashley, Sadie and Madoc were here, but that will be in the next blog that covers their visit. Mom also got a new down pillow and a new watch. It was nice to have a really great discount through employee sales on Citizen Eco-Drive watches. I have a photo of Mom's new watch below.

Mom's watch battery died the first week she was in California, so she was without a functioning watch for a couple of weeks, which was driving her crazy. When I was in California with her, I let out a hint that suggested that I might get her an Eco-Drive watch that does not need to ever have battery replacement. After we got back to St. Louis, I got a new battery for her old watch and replaced it. She thought that meant she was not going to get a new watch, now that she had a watch that worked. She was pleasantly surprised and likes the new one a lot.

On Mom's birthday, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch and shopping afterwards. It was a good day and I think Mom enjoyed it.

Half Dome - Yosemite

Several months ago, when we were talking about going to Eagle Lake this year, John and I talked about hiking to the top of Half Dome while were in California. Even though the schedule was very hectic and we were all tired, we still did the trip to Yosemite to hike up Half Dome. I’m really glad we did it. Even though the hike was exhausting, it was worth it. The views were spectacular and now we can say we did what many people never do. John had hiked to the top twice before, but Sarah, Joseph and I hade not made the hike before.

Since Yosemite is more than a three hour drive from San Jose, Mom volunteered to be the designated driver so we could sleep on the way there and on the way back to San Jose. We arrived in Yosemite after 7:30am on Tuesday, July 1st. We started hiking about 7:45am.


We stopped for a photo on the bridge early in the hike.



We hiked on the Mist Trail for the first part of the hike which goes past Vernal Falls. It is pretty obvious where the name Mist Trail comes from.

I could not get a good photo of all of Vernal Falls from the trail, so I took two photos and pasted them together, but they did not match up well because of the camera angle, but it is still an impressive waterfall.
When we got to the top of Vernal Falls, we took a break.

The next waterfall further up the trail is Nevada Falls. Both of these waterfalls are the Merced River.

Before the Merced River and the trail separate, we stopped to filter water with John’s new filter and refill our camelbaks and water bottles.
Next to where we filtered the water, there were some shrubs with white and yellow flowers. I thought they looked a little like orchids.

This is Sarah at about the half way point. The back side of Half Dome is in the background.

The trail went by some “small” redwoods.

Here we are about three quarters of the way up. The top still looks far away.

After you good and tired, there are stairs in the form of switchbacks up the side of the mountain. The stair steps varied in height from a few inches to as much as 20 inches. My old knees did not like the stairs. As you can see, I could not even come close to keeping up with the younger legs.

The last part of the trail has steel cables to help you get to the top. The cables are much easier to use if you are wearing good gloves. There is a pile of gloves that people use on the way up and return on the way down.

These are the cables that helped us up and down the top part of the rock. As you can see, the top part of Half Dome seems to be one solid chunk of granite.

Sarah is dangling her feet over the edge. It is a long way down.
More photos of us at the top.

The cables were pretty easy going down, but some people were pretty nervous because you can see how far down it is if you should fall. Many went down backwards and did not have to look down. I enjoyed looking down. It was cool.

John stopping for a drink when we got down to “flat” ground and trees again.

We were running low on water again, so we stopped at a small spring and re-filled our water supply. There were others that also wanted some water that did not bring anywhere close to enough water. We shared.

On the hike down, Joseph heard a rattling sound and found rattlesnake. We kept our distance. The telephoto lens allowed us to stay back and still get a photo.

This is Nevada Falls on the way down with the sun shining on it.

We stopped above Vernal Falls to wash off some of the dirt and sweat. It felt really good.

We made it down to the car about 7pm, making the entire hike a little over 11 hours long. We stopped at Jack in the Box for dinner on the way home. It really tasted good.

Sheri's Wedding

Since the Photographer was taking some really good photos as Sheri's wedding, we did not take very many. Katie and Ashley have already posted some photos, so I will not add any. I would like to thank everyone for all the help in making the wedding such a wonderful day. To Sheri and Mckay: "You chose well."

A week after the wedding was a reception in Colorado on Saturday, June 28. Since Mom went to California to take care of Grandma Daugherty, Joseph and I drove to Denver and picked Mom up at the airport. The reception was nice. It was at the church but it was outside on the grass with lots of canopys. Besides meeting lots of people and seeing Sheri and Mckay happy, the two things I enjoyed most was not having the stress of being in charge and the freezer full of ice cream bars. They were good.

We went to church in Denver the next morning at the same building as the reception and then drove to Utah and had dinner at Katie and Ryan's apartment.

My First Blog - Scout Float Trip

Writing a Blog seems to be the thing to do these days. Sometimes I do things or take photos of things that I think others might be interested in. I am calling this blog “Adventures of an Old Man”. Even though I do not normally think of myself as old, sometimes I do things that used to be easy and my body complains. But I am determined that I’m not going to let that stop me from doing cool things.

For my first blog entry, I thought I would talk about the 3 day canoe trip Joseph and I went on with the scouts on June 10-12. In the past, we have done 3 day trips on the Current River about once every two years. John, Neil, Bret and Joseph have each done these trips multiple times. We have been hearing some good things about the Elevenpoint River, so Jon Wood and I decided we should try it this year. We had 3 adults and 11 boys on this trip. The three Adults were Jon Wood, James Wood and me.
The water level was up higher than normal this year, so there were some really good rapids; even some class 2 rapids in one spot. It was pretty fun. There were two things that everyone decided was better about the Current River. The number one difference is the cliffs for jumping into deep water. There weren’t any on the Elevenpoint River. This was a disappointment to the adventure loving boys. The water was not as clear as we had seen in the past on the Current River. Some of this may have been due to the increased water flow due to the way above normal rainfall.

Almost everytime we stopped for a break, the boys were playing in the water.


Most of the Canoes ended up capsizing or at least filling up with water and needed to be emptied out.

Since there were no cliffs to jump from, the boys improvised by jumping out of trees that grew over the water.

And river banks that really did not count as a cliff.
It has always been a tradition to catch crawdads or crayfish on the first day and cook them up for dinner the first night.This is captain Joseph with the mighty monster.

When it came time to start cooking, one of them tried to escape.

He ended up getting cooked with the rest of them.

This was our campsite the first night.

When they found a cave, they just had to explore it.

We carefully planned all of the things we needed for the float trip, but we forgot to bring any eating utensils. We did not let that stop us from eating. The first night, we made chopsticks by carving sticks with pocket knives and used them to eat our foil packs of chicken cooked in Yoshida’s sauce over rice. We used them again for our breakfast foil packs of bacon, scrambled eggs, and hash browns.

The second night, we had beef stew cooked over a small backpacking stove. I made a new pair of chopsticks.

Joseph made a spoon from a large stick for eating his beef stew.

Joseph ended up giving it to someone else who needed a utensil and he used chopsticks also.

The last morning I made pancakes with our standard made from scratch recipe and cooked them on a backpacking stove in a frying pan. We had butter and syrup and plates to eat them on, but again used chopsticks.

They tasted Great!!!

We ended out trip without losing a single person, by I think a few belongings got eaten by the river. Everyone was tired and ready to go home.