Back to School

The summer was a bust. We did not do very much. The kids started working on their National History Day projects in anticipation for the new school year. I tried to get the kids to catch up on their piano practice. I was hoping that they could finish their current levels and move on at the end of summer, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen either.

Emily had some summer reading also assigned to her for her honors english class this coming year. It was difficult to get her to crack down and work on it. She wanted to read fun books like her sister who was reading like a fiend all summer. She was going through a stack of books from the library every week. Emily did read a lot more than she did on previous summers but she was resistant to read the dry books assigned to her from school.

We were actually quite social this summer (much to Christian's dismay). We had dinners with friends and visited with relatives a lot this summer. We stayed in a lot as well and did a lot of cooking. Alas, lots of good food with little or no exercise does not bode too well for my waist line.

Since we were stuck inside a lot. We finally got around to doing a sewing project that I had gotten the kids a couple of years ago but never got around to doing. It was a simple envelope pillow case. We went through the basics of stringing the sewing machine, winding thread on the bobbins and they had some exercises in sewing along straight and winding paths before starting. They had fun and the pillows came out great. I totally forgot to take pictures of them. We are ready to start something a bit more ambitious next, but as summer is all but over, that will have to wait until next year.

We went to back to school orientation and registration for Emily. She is starting high school this year and was very nervous as the school (and the kids) are so much bigger there. We got there early and had to wait in a long line out in the sweltering sun. They let us in late and we had to wait in one line after another to get her books, have her picture taken, get her ID, etc. We walked her around the campus so that she could get a lay of the campus. In the end, we find out that we still don't have her exact schedule. Apparently, she doesn't get that until she arrives for her first day of school. She went back later that evening for the Freshman BBQ. We did not go with her but she arranged to meet up with one of her close friends from Junior High.

After what happened with Emily, we did not bother going early for Caitlyn's registration day early. We mostly knew what to expect since we had already gone through it all before when Emily went there. We had to sit through the chromebook meetings all over again and Caitlyn had to take her school ID photo and receive her chromebook. 

August

August went by as another hot steaming blur. It has been a pretty miserable this summer. None of our plans worked out and it is almost too hot to go anywhere.

The kids have been swimming a lot with their friends in the neighborhood. We even met up with Caitlyn's friend from school once at the public pool.

It seems to be the only thing we can do in this weather.

On the second weekend of the month, Christian and Caitlyn took off for their daddy-daughter camp out. They were headed out Friday morning to Laurel Mountain. They had been planning on the trip for a year now. I got several texts from Christian as the progressed up the 395. By the late afternoon, I figured that they had arrived to their destination and was setting up for the night as they were to get up for an early start. However, later that evening, I found out that they were in Lassen!

Apparently, there were fires all over the place and the air was thick with smoke. Plus, Caitlyn was getting cold feet about their climb. Christian decided to let her off the hook and let her choose a new destination on the fly. She chose to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park since she has never been there before.

The hiking was easy and the place was crowded and smelly, but beautiful. They spent the day exploring the park. Unfortunately, as they were going back to find a campsite for the night, Christian's truck started running roughly. We are not sure what the problem was. They decided that they had better just start heading home and see how far the truck will take them. It was a risky decision for them to go so far since my truck has been having all sorts of problems as well and we were not sure what a long drive would do to it. 

I got several messages during the night updating me on their progress. I thought for sure that we would have to pick up and go after them at some point, but they drove through the night. Christian only pulled over briefly to get in a quick cat nap before continuing on their long journey back home. They made it back safely in the morning.

While they were off on their adventures, we spent time locally as we did not want to drive very far with my questionable car. We did some shopping on Friday and went out to lunch. On Saturday, we went to Roller City so that Emily can practice with her roller blades. I stuck with the old fashioned roller skates.

I still fell once in the beginning as I had not gone to a roller rink since before I was Emily's age! It hurt a lot more than I remember from when I was a kid. I don't know if it is because I am bigger and heavier now or they just don't make roller rinks like they used to! It is basically a laminated cement floor. There was even some puckering on one side of the rink from water damage or something so the floor was not entirely even where I fell. Anyway, I was pretty sore afterwards and apparently hurt my right wrist because it hurt for the rest of the month!

Emily did pretty well, but fell several times still. I think her butt was pretty bruised in the end and we called it a day after her third fall. We decided to go out for Ice Cream to soothe or sore butts and egos.

After Christian returned, we tried to figure out what was going on with his truck but it seemed to be running fine and normal after that!

July

July has been a scorching blur. It has been an incredibly hot summer. I am woefully behind on my posts.

We celebrated the Fourth of July with the usual friends.

Caitlyn and Christian were supposed to go on their daddy-daughter campout at the beginning of the month, but since there was still snow at the end of June, they delayed until the end of the month. 

Meanwhile, Christian has been working on my truck. We've been having transmission problems on and off for some time now and it seems to be getting worse. Since it has been too hot to do much of anything, we have been spending a lot of time tuning up the car and trying to diagnose the problem with the transmission. Unfortunately, because of the heat, the only time it has been cool enough to work on the car is usually in the middle of the night.

We have not gone climbing all month. The girls have been spending a lot of time swimming and playing with some of their friends in the neighborhood. They have been spending a lot of time indoors between swimming. They even finished their Summer Reading program at the library in record time. Too bad the program rewards were less than spectacular.

The girls finally finished their crochet projects that they started two summers ago! Neither of them actually finished with the original project that they started with but they finally managed to finish it!

We've been spending a lot of time tinkering around in the kitchen. Christian got some mooncake moulds for Father's Day last month.

It's been fun and we've been enjoying all Christian's new experiments and concoctions!

Marian came by one weekend to spend some time with the kids. She took them out for treats and a movie.

Emily gave her first Sacrament talk as a youth. She was really nervous about having to go up to talk in front of so many people but she did great and gave a really good talk on choice and accountability. On the same Sunday, she had to play the piano for the young women as their leader, who normally takes care of the music, was out of town. It was the first time she has done that and she did really good. She messed up a little once, but she was able to continue on without any trouble. 

By the time that the end of the month came, we were having additional problems wth the car. The radiator is now leaking. We were not having any problems with it before, but in our tune up of the car, we flushed the radiator to clean it out and now it is leaking quite badly. 

In the end, Caitlyn and Christian put off their trip once again until the beginning of August. 

Suicide Rock, Idyllwild

It has been exceptionally hot out this summer. Ever since we returned from Yosemite, we seemed to be stuck in a never-ending heat wave. It has severely damaged our apple tree. A ton of apples are rotting off of them. It is a pretty sad state. One of our roses in the front looks like it has been fried to a crisp. It has been through many summers and has never suffered like this. The rose was already established when we moved in but we don't know if it will survive this.

It was supposed to be a bit cooler this weekend, but that is all relative. We decided to take advantage of the slightly better weather conditions and go out to do some climbing. Our choices are pretty limited as it is still pretty hot out. We decided to go out to Idyllwild since it is at a higher elevation and therefore, a bit cooler.

We got up as early as we could to take advantage of the cooler mornings. Plus, if we don't get there early, we won't be able to get parking. There are not a lot of parking spots and it is a holiday weekend. We arrived in good time and got parking, but the place started to fill up pretty quickly as we  had our breakfast and applied sunscreen/bug repellent for the day.

We opted to got up to Suicide Rock instead of Tahquitz since it is usually the least crowded of the two.

On our hike up to Suicide Rock, we ran into veritable swarm of bugs. When we waved them away from our faces as we walked, it would not just disburse them temporarily, we would actually hit them with our hands because they were so thick in the air. We started to think that we should just go home!

Luckily, as we ascended higher, the bugs were a little less thick and we started feeling a breeze now and then that kept them from being so highly concentrated. We decided to continue up and hope that it would keep getting better. By the time we reached the base of the granite portion of Suicide Rock, the insect situation was much better. We headed up the rocky trail where our climb was supposed to be. There was 3rd and 4th class scrambling up a gully to our left. The trail started to get pretty steep and sketchy at some point. We tried a variety of ways up but none of them seemed good. We retreated back down a bit to see if we could find a way around, but to no avail.

We stopped for a rest break to take off our packs and get a drink. Christian would not accept defeat and took off again in search of where are trail should go, leaving his heavy pack with us. The kids played around for a bit but after a while, we settled down on a rock and we all took a nap as Christian was gone for quite a while. The girls were tired from getting up so early and I did not sleep very well the night before.

Eventually, Christian came back after successfully finding a way up. We had our lunch and had to decide what to do next since he noted that although he found the way through, it was not easy. We decided to go ahead up to the climb, since we came all this way already. Caitlyn was a little nervous free soloing a couple of the spots and Christian had to spot her. She was mostly nervous about having to come back down some of the places where we had to climb up!

Our last hurdle was having to crawl through a small tunnel between boulders in order to get to the upper portion where our climb was. It was dark and Christian had to shuttle our packs through for us. It seemed pretty crazy.

The climb looked pretty good. It was supposed to be a clean 5.3 fist crack up 90'. Emily was not so happy about leading it as the crack was not so clean. The crack was dirty and muggy and not deep enough to get your fist in a little ways up. She had to come back down after a bit and let her dad go up first.

I sport led the climb after Christian and then cleaned his gear on my way back down. I agreed that the climb started out as a dirty fist crack, but it quickly became too wide for my fist and I had to do a variety of hand and fist jams or even a double fist jam to work my way up. The top of the climb was definitely off-width as I had to even do a chicken wing in a couple of places. My biggest hurdle was getting a place for my feet as the crack was too wide for my feet but too narrow for a heel toe move. I would rate the climb closer to a 5.5 for someone my size.

Emily went up next and she attempted to lead the climb again. She got stopped at the same dirty shallow crack area a little way up. This time, she managed to get passed it, but it took a while. Unfortunately, she used up all her easy to place big cams in the beginning and ran out of gear halfway up. She was totally distraught. Christian ended up handing over her belay over to me while he free soloed a slightly "easier" crack to her right in order to bring her up some more gear.

She was then able to finish up the climb without too much more trouble. She cleaned most of her own gear on her way back down as Caitlyn was unsure of whether she wanted to climb and it was getting late.

Christian quickly jumped on the next climb to the left of this climb to a route called Major (5.7), which is a much wider crack. It seemed to alternate between being a large off-width to being a squeeze chimney. Christian was the only one to make this climb.

It was difficult and we now how to race the setting of the sun back down retreating, as Caitlyn had feared, back down the way we came.

We made it back down in good time, but my aged bug repellent was no longer effective by this time and we left our extra supplies in the car.  I started getting eaten alive by mosquitos. The kids got bitten up a bit as well. We jumped into the truck and fled the mosquito infested area.

Father's Day

We returned from our trip and had a brief day of rest. We had a small Father's Day celebration for Christian after church. Emily lent a little hand in making some chicken curry for dinner. Caitlyn made some tasty shortbread cookies for dessert.

Caitlyn started summer school this past week after we returned. It actually started a couple of days ago, but since we were on our vacation, so we skipped the first couple of days. The summer school only lasts another 3 weeks and just consists of a bunch of light elective type classes. 

Her main class is this kind of ridiculous class where they start a toy company. They make a toy and logo for the company with posters and stuff to advertise their product. Then they cycle through a few other classes. Her first class was woodworking. She got to make a birdhouse. Her next class is a class in physical fitness and then she will complete summer school with a class in nutrition.

She's not exactly learning anything of consequence but she is having fun and getting used to her new school and that's good for now.

Summer Vacation - Part 3

We broke camp the next morning and bid farewell to our extended family. Our goal for the day was to climb Gunsight. It is the gully between Middle and Lower Cathedral, across the meadow from El Capitan.

We did not know quite what to expect from the climb. It is supposed to be just a bit of 3rd and 4th class scrambling to the top. We originally had considered, packing our gear and making a bivouac somewhere at the top without our tent, but after so many cold nights inside our tent, with the extra blankets, we were not about to attempt this without a tent or extra blankets. We were sick to death of the cold nights. 

Christian didn't think we should have too much trouble doing the climb and back down in a day anyway. There is a good 1,300 feet of elevation gain up this gully, so it is fairly vertical. It starts off with easy 3rd class scrambling and getting harder as you work your way up. Near the very top, I would say that it goes beyond 4th class scrambling and introduces you to some easy 5th class climbing. The exposure is quite severe, so we were happy that there was a fixed rope on that section.

Our route is across from El Capitan, so we had some nice views from our gully as we climbed. We found lots of bear scat at the top. Apparently, a bear spends a lot of time up there, so we were a bit wary. It was a good thing that we did not plan to bivouac anywhere here. Firstly because of the bear, and also because there is no flat ground. There was a lot of brush. Apparently the top of Bridalveil Falls is just across from where we were, but you would have to do a lot of bushwhacking to get there.

We did not take our packs up the 5th class climbing area, so in order to have lunch, we had to climb back down a little ways to get to it. We were able to rappel down a couple of sections but had to down climb the rest of it. Down climbing is always a bit more tricky than climbing up.

We got back down in good time but decided to head out of Yosemite as we had nowhere to stay and we were very tired of being cold all night. Plus, Obama and his family was due to get into town the next day and we didn't want to be caught up in any of that mess!

There was a storm that hit just before our trip so some areas got pounded with rain and the higher areas actually still had snow! Which accounts for why it was so cold but does not account for why the weather reports were so off.

We considered staying above Mammoth or near Bishop but after checking some more weather reports (we went to McDonald's in Bishop for dinner), we found that it was not a whole lot warmer here than what we've been in and decided to continue to head further down south to camp in Alabama Hills.

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We woke up from the best sleep we'd had all trip. Everyone was toasty and warm. In fact, I didn't even use my extra blanket and had to unzip out of my bag by the time I got up. Christian had some fun doing a neat time-lapse of our campsite while he waited for everyone to get moving. Emily slept in quite a bit. Meanwhile we got breakfast going and Christian got our gear ready for the day.

Caitlyn picked out our climbs while we were getting ready. Most of the climbs were on a formation called The Leaning Tower of Pizza. They are all sport climbs in this area. Our first climb was supposed to be It's a Pisa Pie (5.6). Emily lead it, but it was dicey. Everyone agreed that it was not rated correctly at 5.6. Caitlyn and I top roped it. When Christian went up, he was pretty impressed that Emily was able to do it because, there were some pretty difficult parts on it. No one really liked it very much though. It was awkward, and just not very well thought out.

Our next climb was just to the right of this climb on the same formation. It's called Deep Dish (5.6). The start of the climb is a bit difficult, but overall, everyone liked it better than the first one.

These are short routes, so both Emily and Christian did a couple of laps on some of these climbs. Caitlyn and I just top roped this one once. Then we moved on to Panzarotti (5.7). We all ended up top roping this one except for Caitlyn. She decided to skip it all together. There are only 5 bolts and it's all friction climbing on slab with lots of exposure. It just didn't seem worth the risk.

The sun was getting pretty high so we were getting a little baked by this point. Plus the wind was kicking up. Since the first climb that Caitlyn picked out was kind of sand bagged, we decided to find her any easier climb to lead. The climb we found was just a little ways off in the general area. It is another short climb called Burnt Bacon and Beans (5.5). It was a pretty nice climb, but the first bolt was quite a way up. You could get seriously hurt if you fell before you reached your first bolt for protection. The rest of the climbing was pretty nice but the wind was really blowing by now and we were afraid that Caitlyn would get blown around too much since she is so little, but she did a great job.

We looked around for a little more of something to do here, but we didn't like what we saw and in the end, decided to call it a day and head home. It was a little earlier than we planned, but we were pretty much done and ready to go home.

Summer Vacation - Part 2

We all got up fairly early the next morning to prepare for the day. We had to get back into the Valley early if we wanted parking. We planned to hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls. We attempted this hike before (in November) and made it most of the way up but got side tracked by the beautiful rainbows at the bottom of the upper falls. We ran out of time and had to turn around before we finished the trail. It was so nice and we had the place to ourselves so it was hard to pass up the opportunity to just stay there in Middle Earth and enjoyed it.

This hike was going to be way too strenuous for Christian's dad, so he stayed on his own and explored a little of the valley at his own leisure.

We had no problem getting a parking spot. We first took Christian's sister's family to see the bottom of the lower falls as they had never seen it.

Then we headed out to the start of the Yosemite Falls trail. The trail is 7.2 miles (round trip) which doesn't sound too bad but it is pretty strenuous as there is a 2,700 feet elevation gain.

Everyone broke off in different clusters and hiked at their own pace for the most part but we met up at various points to get pictures. Everyone stopped the bottom of the upper falls. Christian and Emily wanted to show our nephew, Austin a closer view of the falls in Middle Earth. There is a LOT more water there than when we came here last. 

Christian's brother-in-law and I were trailing the most on the trail, so we decided not to go down into Middle Earth and continued to inch up the trail. Christian, Emily and Austin hiked all the way down to the fall and managed to get into the little cave in the back of the waterfall. The waterfall was pretty powerful so with the spray, they could not hardly see, much less take pictures but they got totally drenched and apparently, it was cold! The rest of the group just sat there waiting I think. Christian's sister had to try to motivate her youngest kids to continue up the trail.

Mike and I slowly worked our way almost to the top before we were overtaken by Christian, Emily and Austin. They went quickly to warm their bodies back up. They were still fairly wet when they found us.

As we were close and our group was still pretty fractured, we waited to have a late lunch at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail.

Everyone was pretty tuckered out. Christian, Emily and Austin had to take off their shoes to try to get them dried out. We had lunch and rested for a bit. There was some trouble with our younger nephew at some point though and they ended up all taking him back down the trail before they even got a chance to explore the top of the falls. 

After they left, I took the girls through the crowds to check out the top of the falls. When we got back, we decided to head down as well. We originally had considered continuing up to Yosemite Point to take a look, but since everyone left, we decided to head down as well. It was supposed to be another mile up a pretty steep trail to Yosemite point. I'm not sure I would have made it as I was pretty tired.

On our way down, the sun hit waterfall just right to make the classic rainbow at the bottom of the upper falls again, so we could not help but stop to take a few more pictures.

We have literally hundreds of pictures of these falls! It is so mesmerizing to just sit there and watch the falls explode over the edge and down the steep walls of the Yosemite granite. We took some videos as well.

We met back up with the rest of the family back at the campsite. They through together some tasty grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and made a cherry cobbler in the dutch oven.

Every time the kids had some down time, they ran off to work on their fort. There were too many coals beneath the dutch oven so some of the crust got a bit burnt. We ended up eating all of what was edible without them, since they didn't come back until it was nearly too dark to see. The kids made themselves some smores instead.

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The next morning, we were up again somewhat early. But we did not get up and go, we stuck around far too long making breakfast and stuff.  We got into the valley a little later than we had hoped but we were still able to find some parking near the falls again. We took the shuttle to the hotel formerly known as the Ahwahnee Hotel to start our hike. We planned for a hike that everyone could do today. Our destination was Mirror Lake. Our family made this hike from Camp 4 some time ago. Unfortunately, it was bone dry at the time, so it was decidedly less than magnificent.

The hike was relatively easy so it was perfect for Christian's dad and since some of us were a bit stiff from yesterday's hike, it worked out for everyone. The kids hopped around on boulders or made little boats of bark to amuse themselves while they waited for everyone.

The lake itself was beautiful. While we did not run into too many people on the trail, there were hordes by the time we got there. Apparently, there is an even easier paved trail on the other side that the rest of the cattle came on.

We had lunch next to the stream and the kids sailed their boats and played a bit in the water. Austin could not resist jumping into the water at least once even though it was icy cold. He ended up jumping in one more time for posterity. The rest of the kids just waded a bit in the water.

We retuned to the hotel and went in to use the facilities and let Grandpa Caldwell get some rest. But we ended up staying longer than we planned. Uncle Mike got us soda pops and he got the kids ice cream. 

We went out to get the shuttle back to our cars, but decided not to fight the hordes of pushy tourists to get onto the shuttle and opted to walk back instead.

We had planned to take Austin climbing at Swan Slab afterwards but we just took a lot longer with everything than we originally planned. We were in charge of dinner tonight, and we did not want to have everyone wait until 9 or 10 to eat, so we opted to just return back to camp and start dinner.

On our way back, we stopped by the bridge in front of El Capitan to see if there was any big climbers there. We found Brandon Adams there. He was one of the interpretive rangers that we met over the winter. He is a climbing ranger now. He had some telescopes set up to see some of the climbers on the wall and was talking to some of the tourists. Christian went to talk to him and he seemed to remember us from last time. Christian talked to him about which climbs he would recommend to our family as our first wall. In the end, he invited Christian to come back and climb with him. Christian was pretty excited and it definitely overshadowed some of the disappointments of the day!

We got back to camp to make dinner. We made a hearty potato soup and a apple cobbler in the dutch oven afterwards. The kids played in their fort and made some weird movies of each other. We cleaned up and organized things as we were leaving for parts unknown the next morning.

There is one thing that I forgot to mention, but it has been excessively cold on our entire trip. We had been checking the weather reports all week before coming and they indicated that the lows would be in the 50's and the high's during the days would be in the 70's. We packed light and brought our lightest sleeping bags which have a range from 45 degrees to 55. Plus we had a couple of light blankets. We were cold every night. It was very cold in Shuteye and I did not get a lot of sleep. When we first got to the valley, we found it to be warmer so I managed to get more sleep but I could't exactly say that it was comfortable. It got colder overnight. We measured the temperature this last morning to be in the 30's. Not pleasant.