Spokane

Last week Angie and I decided to spend the weekend in Spokane. So we did! There was a lot we’ve heard about to do there and we wanted to go to the temple anyways, so off we went. Spokane is the second largest city in Washington and is known as the Inland Empire, home to about 500,000 residents and a pleasant 90-minute drive away. Our area’s temple is on the south end of town in a really pretty pine-forested area. We got to see it, but were bummed to find out it was closed for cleaning (also, we later found out that you have to schedule appointments if you want to do temple work. Now we know). We spent the morning downtown at this great riverfront park where they had some really cool things like a giant red wagon that was a slide. The park itself was right downtown and really pretty. I guess they’d had the World’s Fair there in the 70’s so they had all this cool stuff then. Within walking distance, the Spokane River runs over some falls that were really cool to watch. We drove north of town to this cat zoo were they take care of all kinds of big cats that people owned privately or found locally and gave to the facility to care for. They had Tigers from circus shows and private owners (Washington’s pet laws are pretty loose), a male lion, some jaguars, a couple cougars that were causing problems in local neighborhoods, and even a black bear. It was really cool, plus they had this tiger statue that you could climb on, so I got to fulfill every kids fantasy of riding a fierce battle cat like heman. From there we drove to Green Bluff, which is an agricultural area consisting of about 30 farms and every weekend is like this huge fair where each of the farms have all these events and vendors and fruit picking, amazing cider, shooting pumpkins from cannons, corn/hedge mazes, live music and just all kinds of stuff. There were thousands of cars all along the little country road that cuts through to all of the farms. It was really cool. On our way back we stopped in town to eat at a little burger place that was shaped like a milk can. Angie loved it. It was a fun weekend and we feel like we know Spokane a little better now.

Dangie and Granet

We had the honor of hosting Angie's parents this last weekend. Gregg and Janet were excellent company and we were thrilled that they would take the time to travel up and visit us. We took them to see all the sites we knew about (or could find out about from friends) and managed to make it a memorable and enjoyable weekend. We visited Elk Creek to look at the falls there and I loved walking through the forest, it was my favorite part of the weekend, the falls were cool too. We drove through the scablands of Washington to the Palouse falls and it was really impressive. The falls run down into a gorge that was really amazing. The falls themselves are 180ft! wow! Thanks, Granet for the visit, we loved having you guys!




On Labor Day Angie and I took the White Pine Scenic byway up to Coeur D'Alene and it was sooooo amazing! I've never seen more pine trees and the lake was incredible, it's so pretty and HUGE! we followed the lake for 20 miles weaving in and out of hidden little bays and just pine trees everywhere. We stopped in a fun little resort town right on the lake called Harrison and ate lunch and were obliged to dessert at one of the several ice-cream parlors. Coeur D'Alene itself is a beautiful city and we enjoyed driving around and getting acquainted with it. We had previously researched thrift stores in CD'A and mapped them out, we found that there are seriously 6 or 7 thrift stores literally within 3 or 4 blocks of each other! They were almost all closed because of the holiday, but we know right where to go next time! It was a pleasant 90 min drive home on the highway.

Moscow!

Wheeew! Well, we’re all moved in and it’s time to update the ol’ blog…
Angie and I sure appreciated mom and dad’s help moving up here and also the Nygards for the use of their trailer. It was 13 hours of driving with a full trailer through the mountain passes of eastern Idaho and western Montana, but we made it to our new home in Moscow, ID. Mom and Dad stayed for the weekend and we had lots of fun exploring our new city and spending time with them. We had fun one night playing with the wii and creating characters for everybody. Dad's was the best by far, we all got a really good kick out of his. When the time came It was hard to let them go. Now we're looking forward to Angie's parents who will be visiting us this next weekend!

Angie and I have really enjoyed it here so far. Moscow is a really cool city. Everything is really close and we love our neighborhood. There are so many little roads to explore and really great unique houses. Oh, and Moscow is the best city ever for yard sales! We've only been here for 2 Saturdays, but they've been the best 2 Saturdays of yard sales ever. There are great bike trails and campus is easy to bike to. Last week we went to the Lentil festival at the Washington State University campus in Pullman and today we drove to Troy for the Augustofest, also there was Hogfest here in Moscow today. Between the two universities there is always something fun going on, that’s cool.

I am slowly getting my bearing returning to school. For those of you who may not know, I am pursuing a Masters in Bioregional Planning from the University of Idaho. I like graduate school so far. The same people are in all of my classes and I work with them too in the lab. I have an assistantship with a professor of landscape architecture who is really nice and it keeps me busy reading articles and things. Between school and work I’ve read more this last week than any week in my life for sure and I’m still behind in my readings. Kind of stressful, but at least I stay busy.

Angie has been looking for work and has an interview Tuesday to teach at a preschool in Pullman. Wish her luck! We met most of our married student ward last night at a social. They’re almost all law students, but they seem nice.

Patience pays-off

Since I've been on furlough from work I've been biking to first dam and fishing 2 or 3 times a week. It's good exercise and it helps my furlough feel more like a weekend than a lay-off :)

Some days I do pretty good, catching 2 or 3 little rainbows or browns, but they're never big enough to get excited about. In fact I think the biggest I'd caught (or watched anyone catch) in first dam was around 9 inches. It's kind of a fun little community up there, lots of old timers are there every day at the same time in the same spot. They all come separately but they know each others' names and there are some funny little chats that I over hear. The weather is always really nice and every once in a while I'll see a deer or something to keep me interested. I usually take a book and spend about 90 minutes there before coasting home.

Today I was taken completely off guard when I reeled in this monster brown trout:


I never keep anything that I catch, but I made an exception today. He was 19" and 2.4lbs, easily the biggest fish I've caught in Logan canyon. There were some other anglers nearby and they were floored! It was pretty exciting

Wind Rivers

Adam and I have gone backpacking almost every summer for the past 4 or 5 summers and we wanted to keep the tradition alive this year as well. We decided to head to the Wind River range of western Wyoming. Neither of us had been there but we'd heard great things. They were all true. We spent 3 days hiking from Big Sandy trailhead to the famous Cirque of the Towers. The fishing was... easy. I don't say "great" because we caught a zillion fish, but the biggest was about 8 inches. The fish were so easy to catch that I literally caught one by dangling my worm over the water! Adam kept one of his and cooked it up, it was yummy. I got to finally field test my jetboil camping stove that Angie bought me for my birthday. It worked great and made us some wonderful soup, ramen and oatmeal. The scenery was incredible up there and we couldn't believe that we'd gone our whole lives without knowing what we were missing out on. The Cirque of the Towers was a real tough hike (at least with our packs on) and we finally reached the Cirque at what we estimate to be around 11,500ft. In the Cirque all those peaks are 12,500+ ft, it's crazy! We got so used to amazing scenery all around us that by the 3rd day it felt normal. The original plan was to loop around the Cirque and work our way back to the car via the Highline trail, but there was so much snow at the Cirque that the trail was completely impassible. We camped on Big Sandy lake both nights under tarps with relative success. All in all it was an awesome hike of about 25 miles, also Adam is pretty sure he's the first person to play Bejeweled at the Cirque.

The Saga of my little red Schwinn

It was Fall of 2003. I was living in Logan on Canyon Rd down in "the island". It's called the island because its a low part of town with hills to the north and south, a canal on one side and the Logan river on the other. Its a really cool area and Kent and I enjoyed the year we spent there in our "beach house". Our beach house was so named because it was a small two story building with HUGE windows in the front and a cool balcony above. It was right up against the hillside below the canal and further uphill the USU campus. The hill behind our apartment was pretty thickly vegetated with lots of old trees and shrubs etc. The hillside was always muddy and we were pretty sure that we'd wake up one day buried in a mudslide (which, incidentally, happened next door to that apartment 6 years later and killed 2 people, crazy!) But I digress- The reason I'm writing all of this is to tell the story of the bike I found while living there. In a big pile of mud and leaves behind our place I happened to see some handle bars and a bit of tire exposed one day. I pulled the thing free from its resting place, cleaned it off a bit and was thrilled to have a functional bike. It was a woman's 1977 red Schwinn road bike and had probably spent the greater part of it's 26 years buried in that hillside. Needless to say, it was in extreme disrepair, with no rear brakes, a stuck gear shifter, rusty and squeaky everything, etc, etc. it was however, rideable and I rode it for the rest of that year before giving it to Angie so she could have transportation to work. She used it a little, but it went largely ignored until 2006 when Angie and I were married and I started riding it to school. I attached a basket and would run all sorts of errands in it. For all of it's problems, it was a great bike and I grew to really love it. For the last 12 months or so I've been shopping around for a new road bike. There are some really nice ones, but everything is sooo expensive! I really don't need a bike that's going to win the tour de France and it seems like there's no simple, inexpensive options for road bikes. So about a month ago, my heart turned towards my little red Schwinn. I decided to check a local bike repair shop and see what it would cost to "pimp my ride". It needed 2 new wheels (one was missing several spokes and the other was no longer spinning true), 2 new brake mechanisms altogether, all new cables and housings, a new chain, 2 new tires and tubes (both of the old whitewall tires were so weathered and frayed that they were ready to fall away any day), new shifters (which was a trick because Schwinn hasn't been making that style of shifter since the 80's), and a new manifold for the chain (I don't even know what that is or the importance of its function, but the old was was bent really bad and was eating up the chain). At the shop they all told me I would be better off to buy a new bike or check the DI for a bike with less problems, but I was really attached to this bike and the estimate they gave me was surpirisingly reasonable. So after 4 weeks in the shop I picked it up this morning and road it home! It rode so smoothly and nicely, everything works so well and it looks so great, I am super excited about it! I spent the morning cleaning it up really nice and even giving it a coat of wax. I just wanted to tell everyone my bike's story, include a picture and say "Look out world, I'm on the road again!!"

The Expedition of Callister and Callister

I had the awesome opportunity to accompany my older brother Josh on a road trip of biblical proportions this last week. He is starting his own business (Great Basin Asphault) and had just bought a tank online. He got a great deal on it and it even came with a trailer, pretty sweet except it's all in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was going to be starting my summer job this next week and was therefore available to come along if he needed me, so we made the trip!

The first day we pretty much drove straight to Des Moines with a few stops for gas. We passed some legendary smells in Nebraska that were well off of the funkometer. We were both impressed with how many deer and turkey we were seeing all over the place. Probably around 150 turkeys in all. We spent each night in the truck at rest stops crouched into a fetal position. That was really uncomfortable at first, but after a few nights it wasn't so bad.

Day two was spent driving to the farthest point away from home on our trip. We continued through Iowa and Illinois, then we decided it would be cool to continue on to Michigan via Indiana (which was really only another 40 miles or so) and we'd get to see some nice lake Michigan scenery. Lake Michigan was huge. After that we drove back through Chicago on our way to Milwaukee. We were expecting to fly through Chicago before traffic got bad, but little did we know what was in store for us. I was driving (if you can call it that, it was more like parking) when we stopped south of Chicago. The traffic was soooo bad it took us about 2 hours to move 10 miles or so through town, but we saw the city in all of its glory, we were both blown away, it was so big! From there it was a quick hop to Milwaukee and we met up with the guy who was selling josh the tank. He was nice, but he totally wasn't prepared and we spent 7 hours trying to load that huge thing onto the trailer so we could get it out of there. Once it was loaded up we had to buy lights for the trailer so we wouldn't get pulled over. We were lucky to get into a walmart after they closed and we got the lights. While we were installing them we were visited by 3 policemen who had been called about suspicious activity (it was about 2am). They questioned us and told us to leave asap, so we finished up and left.



Day three we were still pretty nervous about the trailer and decided to take I-80 home instead of I-90 like we had talked about. By the time we reached the Iowa Nebraska border we had enough confidence in the trailer to try I-90 after all. We drove north up to Souix Falls, South Dakota and took a quick jaunt to Minnesota. We travelled clear across South Dakota and we were both really impressed with how pretty it was. We spent the night just outside of Rapid City.

Our last day started with a trip to Mt. Rushmore. Neither of us had ever seen it and it was pretty cool, though kind of smaller than I would have thought. The highlight of that detour was actually not Mt. Rushmore, it was Custer State Park. It was all these really pretty rolling, pine-forested hills and rocky crags with all kinds of wildlife. We saw deer, antelope and even 2 bighorn sheep! We were the only car on the whole road for most of our tour and got to get out a time or two and explore. It was really pretty and we both loved it. We entered Wyoming and decided to see Devil's Tower. Its the cool rock tower from the movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind and also the nations first national monument. It was a total whiteout blizzard and we were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to see anything, but we got there just as it cleared up a bit. One crazy coincidence is that the odometer on Josh's truck turned over to 66,666 right as we got to Devil's Tower. CRAZY!! we took a picture, of course. The rest of the drive was long and blizzard conditions. It was pretty awful, but we pulled into Kaysville at about midnight.




When all was said and done we had passed through 10 different states and travelled over 3,300 miles! It was an awesome and memorable experience that I'm sure we'll be talking about for the rest of our lives. Thanks again Josh for having me along, that was a blast!

Quick update

So, Angie and I are now choosing between graduate school at Arizona State, University of Utah and the University of Idaho. We drove to Moscow Idaho to see what it was all about and really liked it. We wanted to check out Phoenix, but we're pretty sure we're not going to end up there (it's too hot and too many people and too expensive). I heard back from my old comrades in Richmond where I worked last year and they want me back on board this year. I am thrilled to quit my lame graveshift job. I have kept myself entertained there by collecting interesting funny names that I see on pieces of mail (I see literally 100's of thousands of names everyday). Here are some of my favorites:

William B. Bumgardner III
Richard Nixon
Tommy A. Morrow
Dedmon
Blood
Freeze
Estelle Cake
Puh
Cynthia Peeple
Marlin D. Mullet
Margit M. Loser
Daniel Christ
Amy Caution
William Fagg
Tina Outlawwaters
Eliuth G. Moron
David S. Bottoms
Michael Butts
John Buttram
Ralph R. Boring
Peter Bushyhead
Leroy Brown
Diane Reminder
Mertle Turnipseed
Ramona Hooker
Dan Pickle
Survive W. Freedom
David Dang
Jean Goodenough
James P. Lady
Theresa Pubrat

It's amazing the kinds of things you find to occupy your mind while your standing for 12 hours staring at a belt line.

Nile to be published!

For those of you who don't know, I've dabbled in designing games for the last few years. It's just been a hobby, and I've had lots of fun doing it. Recently I've had some fun new developments that I've been really excited about. First off, a card game I created called "Nile" has been picked up by a company called Minion Games to be published later this year! Secondly, I entered a few of my games into an annual amateur game design competition called the Ion Award which is in conjunction with the Saltcon board game convention. My game "Sprawl" was selected as a finalist and I was asked to present my game to a panel of 8 judges who are professionals from the boardgame industry. It was nerve-racking, but lots of fun and my game was really well received by all the judges. At the convention they announced the winners and I took 2nd place! What's more exciting though, is that the judge representing the largest of the companies said that he wanted to show my game to his company (Fred Distribution). So I'm in the process now of tightening up the game and making a final prototype to send to him in Oregon. Anyways, lots of fun stuff happening! I'll be sure to keep everyone posted as there are more developments

I Finally Did It!

so after lots of talking about it, i finally opened up an etsy shop! i just did it today and there's not much in it but go check it out! you can see the project i've been working on most recently...it's been a lot of fun. go to stinksopurdy.etsy.com