Category Archives: Outdoors

Slacklining

Posted on January 3, 2008 by Scott| 5 Comments

Our friends, Greg and Missy Stebbing, introduced us to a really fun and addictive sport called slacklining. Jeana got me some gear for a Christmas present and I was really anxious to get out and have a go. We went to a local park and setup the line between two trees located right next to a playground (to help occupy the kids). The line was a bit too short, but was still a challenge.

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The day after we tried this, we went rock climbing, and setup a longer slackline. This line was a bit higher and more difficult to get up on. Now I find myself driving down the road scoping out possible slackline locations.

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Posted in Outdoors, Slackline

Camping at Oxford Ranch

Posted on November 9, 2007 by Scott| 3 Comments

Jeana and I have been wanting to go camping since we moved to Texas. I was given a new tent for father’s day which is big enough for the whole family, so all we needed was a free weekend. The planets aligned last weekend and we got some of our friends (the Birds) to come along with us.

The kids had fun exploring the cow pasture we camped in (Oxford Ranch). We got there just before dark, so they didn’t have much time to explore a whole lot. They were hungry because we got there late and the tin-foil dinners / Ramen noodles didn’t cook as fast as chicken nuggets in the microwave. Audrey fell asleep really fast once she got in the tent. Kate roamed around in the tent looking out the screen door at the adults talking around the camp fire. When we finally decided to go to bed too, I found Kate lying at Audrey’s feet where she must have just gotten tired of watching out the screen door.

The night was great, until about 12.30am. I’ll spare the reader of a play-by-play of the night, but I will say that about every hour from 12.30am Audrey woke up to say, “I’m thirsty.” The problem with this is that we put all our food and water in the back of the Jeep so that we had no problems with critters and animals trying to get it from our campsite. Neither Jeana nor I wanted to get out of the tent to go get a water bottle, so we kept telling Audrey to go back to sleep.

Finally, Jeana had reached her limit of Audrey asking, and of me not doing anything about the thirst problem and went for a water bottle at 6.30am. Five minutes later Audrey tells me, “I think I’m going to throw up!” I reacted much faster to these words that I did to “I’m thirsty.” We got out of the tent and Audrey vomited on our tarp and the ground next to the tarp. Poor Audrey. After that, she slept great.

Our intent was to camp at Enchanted Rock State Park and then go rock climbing on Saturday. The reason we camped at Oxford Ranch (i.e. the cow pasture) was because the camp sites at Enchanted Rock were all reserved and Oxford Ranch was the closest camping to the park I could find. We ate breakfast, broke camp, hit the road, and arrived at Enchanted Rock around 11am.

Enchanted Rock was nice. I’d like to go again when we can camp in the park and spend more time. By the time we got there, most of the climbing spots were occupied. We found one spot to climb on that was vacant, and realized why when I got up on the granite rock and could not find anything to hold on to! Jeana tried and was met with the same outcome. Lesson learned: reserve your camp site well in advance and camp in the park.

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Posted in Adventure, Camping, Climbing, Family, Outdoors

Carlsbad Caverns

Posted on September 15, 2007 by Scott| 2 Comments

Jeana really wanted to stop at Carlsbad Caverns National Park (New Mexico) on our way home. I’m so glad she did because it was so awesome! The hike down into the cave dropped 750 feet in altitude and Audrey hiked the whole way down! I was so proud of her. She was getting a bit scared about the hike down but Jeana reminded her about how Arthur (from PBS) whistled to keep from getting scared. Audrey did her best to whistle, but it was just no-tone air blowing out her mouth. We were asked not to touch anything in the cave, that was a bummer. I carried Kate in the backpack and we had a great time together. She couldn’t last as long as the rest of us and crashed near the end of the journey. That toddler back was worth every penny we spent on it years ago!

We learned a lot about caverns, of course. There was a funny name for all the formations, something that ended with “therms” … speleotherms, that’s the name. Audrey and Kate loved seeing the “popcorn” all over the cave. The “popcorn” was little balls of limestone which looked like, you guessed it, popcorn. Soda straws were long thin things that hung from the ceiling of the cave. You surely know of stalactites and stalagmites. The other two formations were draperies (long hanging flat things that looked like curtains) and columns (made when stalactite and stalagmites meet somewhere in the middle).

What a cool place to go! It only cost us $12 for the whole family to get in and we probably spent about 2 hours there.

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Posted in Adventure, Family, Outdoors, Vacation 2007

Jenny’s Lake

Posted on August 22, 2007 by Scott| 1 Comment

While we were in Idaho we decided to make a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and go to Jenny’s Lake. There is a ferry that you can take to cross the lake instead of hiking 2 miles. The ride was painful because it cost us $18!

Audrey got some new shoes and she turned into an awesome hiker! Her little legs were so cute to watch as she jumped from rock to rock and moved up the trail.

Kate enjoyed the hike from my back. We would step off the trail to touch the trees, leaves, and boulders so that she could feel like she was doing something.

We hiked up to Hidden Falls, which was about a mile or so from where the ferry docked.

We had so much fun being with our family!

Audrey is really into U.S. geography right now. We thought it would be fun to get pictures of us at each state line for the states we visited. On our way back from Jackson though, Audrey chose to ride with Grandma and Grandpa so only Kate got a picture crossing the Idaho/Wyoming border.

Here are some other pictures from the hike.

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Posted in Family, Outdoors, Vacation 2007

Jeana’s ARG Challenge

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Jeana| 1 Comment

Well, Scott somehow convinced me to write a blog entry, so here it goes: I officially completed my first adventure race yesterday and I am HOOKED! My friend, Jamie and I (aka: Team AOKE – the first initials of all of our daughters) signed up for the Adventure Race Girl Challenge expecting to canoe, bike, run and navigate through this 3-6 hour race. Well, the week before the race, a ton of rain fell and the day before the race the rowing portion got cancelled.

So, we started off the race with a team challenge where they tied our shoes together and we had to run up a hill to pick up our “3^rd teammate.” When we got to the top, we were given an egg that they called the “Fragile Male.” We were instructed to carry him (ours was named Homer) with us on the entire race and we would get a 10 minute penalty if he broke.

So, we ran back down the hill, got the string that connected our shoes cut, and one of us had to ride Jamie’s bike while the other one ran. I had a lot of adrenaline to start, so I ran while Jamie rode. We had 3 checkpoints that we had to make our way to in order to get our other bike. So we switched off running and biking until we got my bike and then we had to make our way to 6 more checkpoints using a map and going in whatever order we wanted.

We missed the first CP we were heading to (#7), got CP6 and headed to CP4. The hill leading to CP 4 was a killer. We didn’t read the clue very good for that one, so we spent plenty of time on the top of this huge hill wasting time until some other teams came along and led us to the checkpoint. Oh well.

After spending an hour making poor decisions to get to CP 5, we finally got it and finished up 7, 8 and 9 before heading back into the transition area to trade in our bikes for new maps. When we got there, we said a quick hello to our families, got our new maps and headed out on foot for our trekking portion.

A short ways into our trekking portion, Jamie noticed that some fluid was coming from Homer. There was a tiny hole in him but that white membrane was still intact, so he wasn’t gushing fluid – just had a slow leak. Luckily when we got back they didn’t consider him broken, so we didn’t get the 10 minute penalty.

Since we could hit the CP’s in any order, we didn’t see people very often, so we had no idea what our standing was. Because of how long it was taking us, we figured we must be in the back of the pack. So, after hitting CP’s 10 and 11 easily, we totally screwed up on our way to 12 and had to backtrack a mile. We got it, got 13 and headed back in. When, we got in, Scott said, I think you came in 9^th so we went and checked it out and sure enough… WE CAME IN 9^TH!!! Not bad for not having a clue what we were doing. It took us just over 4 hours.

It was so fun to have our families there to see us come in. Audrey actually looks a lot happier than she really was in this picture. A: she was freaking out about the flies around her and B: she had no desire to touch me since I was so dirty.