No topic

No topic today. Just writing.

Is it just me, or does it seem this blog is becoming Duck's Hike blog? I scrolled down the page last night after posting and saw mostly just pictures from recent hikes.

It's been busy at work and my days off seem to be too few. My favorite part of the schedule rotation is coming up. I'll be off four days out of six. Cari and I are already planning our hikes during that time. I'm sure I'll be putting up pictures from those hikes too.

I just got home from work and I'm tired today. Stayed up too late last night and got up at five this morning. It was so busy at work and then I started really dragging around four this afternoon.

My car hasn't had a bath in over a month. Does anyone want to volunteer to wash it for me? It won't take long, but I'm just not motivated to do that. I'm too busy typing.

Well, more later. Have a good night.

Weekly hike update

Today's hike was Cari's choice. She took us into Table Rock State Park. We walked a trail called, "Carricks Creek". The trail is roughly 1.5 miles and changes elevation about 600ft. It takes about an hour to hike. One more bit of information about the State park that I learned today is that the land used to be the Southern part of the Cherokee Nation. We kept a watchful eye for stray Indians, but didn't see any.

This was a great hike. The first half of the trail follows along Carrick creek (imagine that). The creek cascades down rocks as it descends the mountain. We saw several areas where you could see how the water has cut into the rock over centuries of flowing.

We took our GPS for the first time today. We put some geocache locations in it before we left. We searched for one near the parking area in an old picnic area that had an old stone fire pit. At the time, the GPS unit said it was accurate to about 35 ft, so we had a radius to search. After a while of stomping around in the woods we gave up and left without finding anything.

When we got home, we pulled up the location on geocaching.com and realized the cache was inside that old stone fire pit. It was under a few small rocks that Cari and I both thought about moving, but didn't. We have a lot to learn about Geocaching.

Here's a few more pictures from our hike today:

Wo sind die Deutschen?

Helen, Ga is a cute small town in the northern part of the state. Several things would take you to Helen. We went for the tubing down the river. Others go for the town designed to be a German village. Oktoberfest is obviously an event that supplies the residents with a bulk of their tourism.

After tubing we wandered around town for a few hours. Several jewelry stores, a candle store, a few t-shirt shops, and of course seven chocolate stores lined the streets. It was nice to be there, but wasn't very interesting to the kids.

As we were leaving, I thought how something was missing. We hadn't seen a single German. I didn't hear one word of German. They could add so much more to the atmosphere of Helen by importing some Germans. The redneck woman that served us our lunch just didn't add much to the German feel of this town.

How hard would that be? Walt Disney did it at Epcot.

Why did they do that?

I was out taking pictures yesterday for a long term project I'm working on. As I was knelt down taking a picture, I felt something bite my ankle. I look down to my right foot and see fire ants covering my shoe and on my jeans up to my knee.

I quickly slid my hands down my pants to try and brush the bulk of them off. Then without untying my shoe, I pulled it off and tossed it a few feet away. My sock quickly followed.

All the while, ants are biting my ankles. Several had gripped onto my hand and started to chomp on my fingers. I was franticly trying to get them off of me.

Within just a minute or two I had most of them off of me. I killed a few more that I found crawling on my shirt. I had been bitten about eight times on my foot, ankle, and hand. Not bad for the amount that were on me.

As I was picking them out of my sock and crushing them between my fingers I started to wonder. What were they thinking? I obviously had stepped on a nest of them, but it didn't seem I was standing in it when they attacked.

Did they really think they were going to take me down? I'm close to six feet tall. A fire ant is about an eighth of an inch tall. Even with a hundred on me, I wondered why they did that. What were they thinking?

So I destroyed a portion of their home. I think if a giant came and destroyed my home, I would much more likely go build another one. Biting his ankle just wouldn't be my first option.

I finished killing the ants that were on my shoe and then I took the rest of my photographs. It's really too bad so many ants had to lose their lives yesterday.

Let there be light!

I went to Lowe's and purchased a chandelier on clearance. Once I got it home, Cari pointed out that we needed light bulbs for it. It uses the candelabra bulbs (small base) and we don't have any other fixtures that use them.

Another trip to Lowe's to buy bulbs. Five bulbs exactly, 60 watts. In the bulb aisle I quickly realized that chandelier bulbs are sold in FOUR packs. I had to buy EIGHT bulbs when I only needed five. This is a complete scam!!!

Before buying my bulbs, I walked over to the lamp department. Sure enough, ninety percent of the chandeliers have five bulbs. I couldn't find more than two lights that held eight bulbs and less than five models had only four bulbs. I'm almost tempted to write a letter to Sylvania demanding an apology for making me buy eight bulbs.

Other companies will probably join in on this crusade to rip off the public too. Glove manufactures will start to sell three packs of gloves. Two lefts and one right in every package. That's not one for free, you pay for that extra left. If you lose the right glove, off you go to buy three more.

I feel I have purpose today. I'm looking for someone that needs three candelabra bulbs. 60 watts, never been used.

GeoCaching

In the name of safety while hiking, we went and purchased a GPS the other night. I had done a lot of reading and picked the model I wanted before we even left for the store.

At the store, I asked where the handheld GPS units were and a salesman took me there and started selling me on one of the units. As he was explaining features I interrupted him and told him I already knew what I was getting. He kept talking as I took it off the shelf and headed to the register.

Now that I have a GPS for the purpose of increasing my safety on the trail, I started thinking how else I could use this. I learned on a blog about geocaching.

If you don't know what geocaching is, I recommend you read their website. In short, people will hide things at various locations and list the coordinates on the site. I can download the coordinates and use the GPS to find the stash. The box may hold various trinkets, a log book, and sometimes a registered "travel bug". The travel bug is designed to be left at a different spot and travel as much as it can. By logging it on the website you can track its movements.

Cari and I went to the park across the street yesterday and found our first geocache. It felt like tresure hunting. We took a bullet casing out of the box and signed the log sheet. We left a red clown nose in the box for the next person. The box is hidden well enough that someone without the coordinates would not likely find it.

I'm excited to take it out and use my new toy on our next hike. Did I say toy? I meant "safety device". In the past we had honestly drawn arrows in the mud to help remind us wich way we had turned on a trail. No more mud arrows for us.

Falls Creek Falls

Another hike today that included use of steel cables. This time the cables didn't take us over a river. It was a support to keep you from falling into the bottom of the falls.

The trail is steep for the beginning and the end. Looking at the trail map, it looks like over 1.5 miles we went from 1200 ft above sea level to around 1900 ft. This was listed as a moderate hike and it turned out to be one of the more difficult ones for us yet. I can't wait to try one marked as strenuous.

We didn't find any bears or bear tracks today. What we did find was a rat. Sort of.
On our way down, I heard Cari scream. This wasn't a "I kinda stumbled" scream. This was a scared scream. I turned around and saw a mushroom head rolling down the hill in front of her. It was a big mushroom, probably had an eight inch diameter.
"What's the matter?", I asked.
She explained that she thought a rat run out in front of her. Not a rat, not a bear, just a mushroom head kicked down a hill. I ended the discussion by asking her if it had bitten her.

Here's a shot from the base of the falls.
There is a trail that goes up to that upper level of the falls. We decided against taking that trail today since a large yellow jacket nest protected the start of that route.

One of the coolest things Cari found was that when she stirred the dirt in the water with her finger, it had a lot of metal flakes in it. Many of the rocks at these falls have metal in them. Today was the first time we noticed so much of it in the sand. It was like a snow globe when she would stir up some sand.

We started talking a lot more about getting a hand held GPS today. Well, I started talking more about it. It's in the name of safety! Wouldn't want to get lost out in the mountains, would we?

The First Meeting

Last year as I was cast under some spell, I agreed to co-lead a group of cub scouts.
Last night was our first meeting of the year. My neighbor / co-leader had a meeting at work, leaving me to lead this group.

The week leading up to this put me through a few emotions. Denial, joy, and anger were three that flew through my body.

The meeting was to last an hour, so I sat down to prepare. I flipped through the cub scout book and wrote down an agenda. I had enough notes to last roughly an hour.

Last night Cari came to the meeting to help me out. She was sure this would be entertaining. I also begged her for assistance.

Thirty minutes into my meeting and I had finished my agenda. I started sweating. I looked behind me and saw all the parents watching me lead their children. I smiled a nervous smile at them and looked back to the kids. Cari was serving the snack and stood beside me when she finished. I whispered, "I'm done."

She looked up and me like she didn't hear me.
"I don't have anything else.", I told her.
In my head, I started freaking out, "Where was my friggin' co-leader?!?!". I glanced back at the parents and whispered to Cari, "There is still twenty minutes."

Cari was calm and collected about it. Then again, she wasn't wearing the brown boy scout shirt. "I've got some ideas", she said so calmly.
"What have you got?", I asked her.
She smiled and looked down at the boys, "I'm not sure, but I'll think of something."

In three minutes, the boys would be finishing snack and I had to be ready to entertain.
I went inside and gave the parents a smile. "Oh yeah, I got this group under control. You better believe I came prepared for this, I was a Boy Scout once too", I thought to myself. I picked up the cub scout book and started reading.

I finished the meeting with a few things from the book and was able to generally hold the boys' attention. Cari did give me another idea, but I didn't have to use it last night. I'm holding that in reserve.

After the meeting one of the parents who is a leader for the older boys told me I had a good meeting. I kinda laughed at that comment. I felt like I had just barely made it.

I just looked over my work schedule and noticed that our next meeting I will have to be at work. Guess it's my co-leaders turn. I sure hope he prepares a longer agenda than I did.

The Performance

Children love to perform for their parents.

I can't count the times I've heard, "dad, watch this."

Last time I heard that, I told the kids to wait while I got the video camera. I didn't know what the performance would be, but they were excited to show me.

Camera in hand and a smile on my face, here's a two minute video of what I saw:

VIDEO

Eye in the Sky

I like to play with Google maps and zoom around various places. Last week I learned about another site, zillow.com.

It's a real estate website. It gives you satellite images of homes and also can give you values of each house.

There are gaps in the information, but it is interesting to look at different areas. The houses in my town don't show any values. It's not that our homes are worthless, it's just that they don't have the information. They also don't have any information for Alaska or Canada.

They also have a page that is famous houses. You can rotate the view on some of those houses and see it from different angles. link.

Here's a picture of my street. Ours is the yard fortified by a square of cypress trees.

If you want it done right. . .

. . .do it yourself.

I've been accused in the past of purposely doing chores badly just so I wouldn't have to do them again.

Examples would be; the time that the vacuum broke after my first time using it, mixing the colors in the laundry, not folding the laundry properly, and putting dishes away from the dishwasher in the wrong places.

I was asked to grill hamburgers last night. Here's one of my "prize" burgers:

Comfort level: 2

Yesterday was the day of another great hike for Cari and I.

We headed out to see Moonshine Falls. Named for the men that used to make moonshine in the cave near the falls. The more than three mile hike in wasn't that bad. We were able to see some animal tracks in the mud as we went. We identified two seperate tracks. We think one was a skunk or similiar sized animal. The other set seemed to belong to a medium size cat animal. We aren't experts and I didn't take pictures of the prints today.

Roughly half way into the trip, we came to a river. The water was flowing fast over the rocks. There seemed to be only one way to cross.I was a bit nervous as I crossed first. My hands and feet slipped on the wet cables. After I made it about half way I calmed down and started enjoying the scene. Cari didn't appreciate the cable bridge like I did. She threatened to wade through the river on the way back out.

At the falls the first thing you see is the cave holding the rusted out moonshine barrels.Climbing down a bit further allows an awesome view of the falls from the bottom.

We sat and ate the lunch Cari packed for us in this beautiful setting.

After we ate, I took my pictures and we looked around for a while.

Then we began our hour and a half hike out. We found another set of prints on the way out.
We are certain these were bear tracks. I looked at Cari and asked her, "What was your comfort level five minutes ago?"
She responded, "about a 9."
"And what's your comfort level now?", I asked.
"2.", she answered.

The prints were pointed in the same direction we were now heading. We didn't notice the tracks on the way in, so we felt like they were made recently. The print was a little bigger than my fist. What size bear does that equate to? I have no idea and I wasn't prepared to find out today. Unfortunatly, my fear prevented me from snapping a picture of the prints. After walking about five minutes, I started calming down a bit only to come across yet another set of the same bear tracks.

As we were packing the car at the end of our journey, I told Cari I wished I had pictures of the bear tracks. She offered to wait in the car while I hiked back for that shot.

The Sonic Dog

This is going to be a bit tough to see, but trust me.

Cari came up and had lunch with me at work one day last week. We decided after lunch to head over to Sonic and get slushes. We placed our order and as we were waiting, I looked over to the car next to us. This is what I saw:
"Cari, I think that guy looks like a dog.", I whispered to Cari. Our drinks were coming and Cari responded without looking. "That's not a nice thing to say." She made a comment that he might hear me.

Some reason I didn't think he would mind if he did hear me. "Cari, I'm serious, that dude looks like a real dog.", I repeated.

Cari finally looked over and saw that indeed a dog had driven itself over to Sonic.

FREE pool!

FREE pool to a good home with someone who is prepared to: lose a lot of sleep, spend a lot of money, and cry a lot.

My neighbor was so proud the day he got his free above ground pool. If he had known then, what he was about to go through, I guarantee he would have never taken it.

Here's a short description of what he went through.

His yard is a giant hill, so the first thing to do was hire someone to come cut part of the hill out. The tractor driver accidentally ran over part of the pool, so my neighbor purchased more parts.

The other end of the designated spot had to be built up. He purchased truckload after truckload of dirt and gravel. Then he purchased several pallets worth of retaining wall blocks.

Imagine that these first few items had some cost to his free pool. As he built his retaining wall, he realized it wasn't quite big enough. A calculation error. He took the wall down, expanded it by purchasing more blocks, then rebuilt it. Repeat this process twice.

Amazingly, he didn't give up yet. With the wall built and the dirt filled to the top he spent several nights working under floodlight to pack and level the dirt.

After he got the walls up I learned something quite horrible. Cari had volunteered me to help one day after work. She told me I would only be there for an hour. RIGHT. I saw how late this guy worked into the night. So, I went to help my neighbor put the liner in. We left at 11:30pm. We started around 7pm. Hardly an hour.

The pool is up and filled with water. His retaining wall has held the weight. It looks good. So why did I hear a grown man wailing last night?

It's Labor day, the day that most people shut their pools down for the winter.

Doing my chores

Last night the dishwasher started making some crazy sounds. Cari and I opened it up and looked inside for anything odd. I tapped on the inside of the door. Looking back, I'm not sure what purpose that served. Anyway, the door sounded normal. We closed it up and continued the wash. The noise had not gone away. It was a buzzing sound. It reminded us of maybe an electric problem. Maybe we should have stopped it. The dishes were dirty so we let it finish it's cycle and decided we would start thinking about a new one.

Dishwashers are easy to install. You pull out the old one, hook a drain and supply line to the new one. Connect electric to the new one, push it into place and start cleaning dishes. Maybe a two hour job.

Today at work I found a dishwasher that was going through a model change so I got a good deal on it. Cari came up to take a look if it met her standard. She approved of it and was making plans of loading it into the car. That's when I started REALLY thinking about how this install would go. The last thing I installed was the storm door, and it almost killed me.

I don't use the dishwasher very much. Ok, I've used the thing once. I knew that it would be my job to get it in. I started campaigning to Cari. "Maybe we should pay someone to install this.", I pleaded. I argued that the dishwasher was such a good deal that paying for the install would be almost free. I got the salesman (who works for me) involved with the conversation and we were soon signing the papers for the professional install.

Tonight, when I got home from work, Cari showed me the newly installed dishwasher.
I smile and nodded as she showed me the features. I was happy to see that I did a great job getting my part done.