Summer Vacation: Day 2

	This morning we made our way toward Devils Postpile National Monument. Wow. The entrance to the place was VERY high in altitude and very chilly for summer. I believe it was somewhere around 9,000 ft. At this point there is a Minaret viewpoint where I shot these two pictures. I never feel natural posing for the camera. I suppose that is why I like being behind the lens.
	Devils Postpile is seriously one cool place to visit. I was not sure if it was going to be worth the extra driving to get there but in retrospect it was worth it all. I mentioned that at the overlook it was chilly and windy. To get to the postpile from there you have to descend about 2000 feet down mostly a narrow one-way road with steep drop-offs. The weather was nice. It was not windy and warm. What a different a little elevation makes. I need to tell you a little about this formation. It is one of the finest examples of columnar basalt formations because of how many columns have 6-sides (hexigons). We took many more pictures but these will suffice to tell the story. Notice the cool arrowhead like formation where the columns are lateral on the left and vertical on the right. That's cool to see. Then we took a close up of the column debris at the foot of the formation. Tracy loves this stuff because she took geology in school and can recognize volcanic things like this. The other pictures don't really give you scale of the formation so I took a panoramic picture that lets you see the whole thing. We'll talk about the top of the formation in just a second but first let's talk people. On our way up to the top of the formation (they let you walk on it) Ryan posed for me through this decaying tree. What a cute kid. Tracy and Ryan showed their cuteness in this pose. If you look closely you can see the formation in the background. The walk up to the top is short but very interesting. You walk through an area that has a lot of fire damage and it's a bit like a forest graveyard of sorts. Ryan just loved all of the dirt and dirty things; the more the better. When we got to the top of the formation I'm not sure what I expected to say but I did not expect to see a tile looking floor. The picture I selected doesn't show that feature off very well. Looking down, the ground looks like a bunch of hexagonal tiles. They were smoothed by ancient glaciers and as as you can tell from the included picture it is curved. The curve is not all that noticeable from on top but the camera sure picks it up. All in all we enjoyed this part of the national monument. We were not sure what else there was to do but we did know we needed lunch.
	I had to fight every temptation to keep the table out of this picture. The scenary around this lake near the Postpile was enticing. However, I realized I wanted to capture what our view was as we munched on lunch. There were ducks, fly-fisherman, etc. Ahhhh. Relaxing!
	I guess I had really no idea that this national monument had a big waterfall attraction. It does and it's called Rainbow Falls. It is about a 1 mile hike from the trailhead to the the falls. Just a few steps in, Ryan conked out. He did that a lot in his child carrier. Like the postpile trail, this one was marred by fire. This fire in the 1990s was apparently a very big deal for the area. Huh? The waterfall only looks about 3 feet high in this picture with Tracy. However it is really about 100 feet hight; darn optical illusions. This was a fun place to shoot. On this one photo of the trees and roots winding through the rocks you can see me camouflaged. Tracy likes to shoot me taking photos. (grin) We hung out at the falls for about an hour as Ryan continued to sleep and I found new angles to take photographs from. We liked this waterfall. It was definitely the most impressive one we saw on the trip. Actually it was just about the only one that had water so I guess that is not hard to award a winner (smile). We closed out the day by going back toward the postpile and try to find the soda springs which was proof of volcanic activity. They were okay, but I liked the bridge we had to cross better.
	When we go back to the hotel, Ryan cooked us up some dinner and made sure we had good plumbing. Every pipe checked out and no leaks.

Summer Vacation: Day 1

Over 2000 miles in a car with a toddler. What were we thinking? Ryan was probably wondering that same thing by the time we made it to Delta. It was one of the many planned stops along the way to our first destination in California. We picked Delta because we knew they would have a park that Ryan could run around in. He is just at that stage where he can walk around fairly freely and we knew that sitting in a car for a day would be challenging. Surprisingly he handled it quite well. He loved it so much that when we got to the park he wanted to look at the plexiglass on the playground equipment to simulate looking out the car window. Crazy kid...

Next we stopped in Ely, Nevada. I have nothing to say about Ely. We just stopped and got gas. It was cool and windy and we were not feeling the love so onward we went to mysterious Tonopah, Nevada. I was not really sure what to expect. A co-worker of mine, Nick, mentioned that his dad almost detests Tonopah when he has had to visit there for his job. One thing is for certain and that is there really is not much going around in the region. It's really isolated. The drive across Nevada to get to Tonopah was more scenic than we thought. Tonopah is apparently one of the best places to gaze at stars. I wish we could have seen that. I miss seeing all of the stars in the sky that I used to see when we sleep outside at night for sleepovers with friends. We saw a few interesting things in town. The high school mascot is the "Mucker." Click on the photo to find more of what that means. There is a classic McDonald's there. It looks like it was stuck in the 60's or 70's. Those both interesting and disturbing at the same time. There is a cool cemetery in the heart of town. Tracy snapped this photo. You can tell life is harder here. We snapped this picture of the liquor store next to the gambling establishment. All we need now is a payday loan place . This is the strangest gas fill-up I ever had. Usually prices are pretty close with gas stations but here one gas station was like $4.29/gallon and the other was $3.70. That was a head scratcher. We went with the cheaper gas and made it to our next location so WHEW. There is not much vegetation in Tonopah. I guess only getting 6 inches a year of rain helps promote desolation. The scenery was interesting. Even this little neighborhood park that we found was interesting and Ryan enjoyed it. As we left the sun was setting and we snapped a picture of the beautiful sunset while driving down the road on our way to Mammoth Lakes. Since the sun went down, Ryan got a chance to play with Daddy's sunglasses. Anything to entertain....anything to entertain...

It's All in the Name

We went on vacation a few weeks ago (pictures and posts forthcoming). Along our journeys in Fresno, CA. I noticed signs for "Swearengin for Mayor." What an awesome last name for political office. I wonder what will be in her acceptance speech. I don't know much about Fresno, but I think her vision for it is cool. Good luck!

Ryan is An Animal...errrr...Well He Saw Animals

All the planning in the world can be thwarted so very easily. Ryan celebrated the night before his birthday by awaking several times. Needless to say, we were all tired as this day of celebration began.

Thankfully, Ryan had slept for a little bit on the journey to the zoo. However, you can see he had not quite worked out all of his sleepies as he awoke to strange creatures like a barn owl.

We spent the morning at Hogle Zoo and the evening at a nearby park. The zoo has really made some improvements since the last time I was there (about 20 or so years ago). Back then me and my Mom would go to the Zoo and then after we would go to the Red Barn Hamburgers on North Temple and 9th West. Red Barn is long gone, but their legacy and pictures live on the internet (barnbuster.net Wikipedia article)

He wasn't really sure what he thought of the merry-go-round (carrousel) but his cousins enjoyed the ride. If Ryan had his choice he would rather play in the dirt and mulch around the zoo than look at the animals. By noon he was exhausted and running short on sleep and the albino alligator/crocodile (I don't know how to tell the difference) sealed the deal and he crashed.

Six hours later he was ready to go again for the next party. He enjoyed the cake but was not as messy as I wanted him to be. He enjoyed opening the gifts that were given to him and he is surprisingly good at opening things. It's a little scary truly.

Birthdays provide a good time for reflection and Tracy and I comment about how rewarding this year has been as we are learning to be parents and have greatly increased the gratitude we have for our own parents and how they raised us.

Here is to many more birthdays and loved ones to share them with....

Bubble, Cabinets, Parks, and Lake Mary

	Ryan is in a phase of life where he is trying to figure things out like in this classic where he is contemplating the life-cycle of a bubble.
	Ryan has to discover everything. Like most kids, who needs toys when you have kitchen cabinets to rummage through. This is definitely one area we didn't consider child-proofing. You can see in this second picture just how much he moves around in the cabinet.
	We took Ryan to the Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life and he had fun. By far the most fun he had was playing in the sandpit at the end of the walking tour. He could have stayed there hours just picking up sand and letting it drop.
	We went up as a family recently to Lake Mary near Brighton ski resort. He enjoyed it quite a bit. Of course, who wouldn't enjoy their own personal sherpa. Well, I guess I'm not an elite mountaineer but I was sure gasping for oxygen hauling an extra 20 lbs on my back. Along the trail someone had made a mini-little snow man that I just had to take a picture of. Ryan enjoyed doing three things: Bouncing on the rock outcrops, playing in the dirt and splashing in the water. Needless to say when you mix dirt and water you get mud. His one-year birthday is coming up, maybe we should get him a cake that has MUD in the title. I'll bet he would really be happy! We just enjoyed watching him have fun and discover.
	Tracy wanted me to have more bonding time with Ryan so I decided to take him to the park to see how he would react to the slide. He seemed to just enjoy the colorful playground and did enjoy the slide. He was so energized he started doing pull-ups on the jungle-gym equipment. Doctors have always said he had good strength for such a small baby, but who knew.

Son Chips

Ryan is in a phase of life where he wants to imitate *EVERYTHING* we do. Recently I grabbed a bag of Sun Chips (my favorite chip) and started eating. Over my left shoulder I caught sight of Ryan staring me down. He was intrigued by the crunch the bag made and the crunch my mouth made. Being a typical man, I thought nothing more of it, finished the bag of chips and threw it away.

A few minutes later I again looked over my shoulder and Ryan had retrieved the bag from the garbage. He managed to find some crumbs in the bag and was eating them just as I had done. I know think of that bag of Sun Chips as "Son Chips."

Who will squish the moth first?

This morning I was walking around with Ryan by the french doors in the kitchen when we saw a moth. I left Ryan for a minute while I went for a tissue. I intended to squish the little thing, and was a little worried about how Ryan would take it. When I got back to the window, Ryan was poking the moth. He'd touch the moth, and it would take flight then land on the window. He touched it like this another two or three times. Then he decided to pick it up and squish it between his fingers. Guess I didn't have to worry about his tender sensitivities...

Ryan's First Fourth of July Celebration

We were excited about making Ryan's first Forth of July special. The day before, I took him shopping at Walmart where we bought his first wading pool along with a big box of fireworks. I thought for the 4th, Ryan would enjoy time in the pool and a few fireworks. As it worked out I didn't take him out in the pool, but that was okay because I let him play in the pool the night before. By the time I got him ready for the day, he had a nap. When he woke up, it was super hot. I thought I'd put him in the pool after dinner, but then he went back down for a nap. That was the strangest part of the story. Historically, Ryan pushes himself to the brink of exhaustion before he'll settle for a nap. If Ryan had a motto it would be, "Sleep is for the weak". The forth of July was no different. He had a short one hour nap in the morning, then pushed himself through the rest of the day. When Mom and Dad came over for dinner, I could tell Ryan was pretty tired. I gave him a bottle after dinner and he finally crashed. He doesn't usually sleep at 7:00, but under the circumstances I thought the nap was perfect. He'd be all rested and ready to go by the time we started the fireworks. While he slept, I played Scrabble with Mom while Steve and Dad visited in the front room. After Dad went downstairs for a little snooze, Steve joined us for a few rounds of Boggle. One hour went by, then an hour and a half. Still no sound from Ryan. We decided it was probably time for him to wake up, so we started shaking the Boggle box of cubes rather loudly. Still no sound from Ryan. It was starting to get dark, so Steve and I went in to check on Ryan. I rubbed his back and his head. He was out like a light. Steve and I started a conversation right there at his crib, but he didn't stir. I figured if he was that tired, we should let him rest. Maybe he was experiencing a growth spurt. I hoped he would wake up when we started the fireworks. We took our chairs out to the sidewalk. I had Ryan's monitor receiver with me so I would hear him when he woke, which I was sure he would do, after the first couple of fireworks. I lit the fireworks, which popped and screamed like fireworks do. We listened at the monitor, and all I could hear was the steady tick, tick, tick from the clock in Ryan's room. We lit firework after firework and regularly ooohed and aaahed. Steve took lots of pictures with his fancy camera. All four of the neighbor boys came out in their PJs to watch the show. After what must have been at least a half an hour, we had our finale. The monitor was still silent except for the tick, tick, tic, from Ryan's clock. I saved a few fireworks to show Ryan the next day. After our show, we watched either the Draper City or Riverton City fireworks from the front porch. We had a great view. Between our small street fireworks and the show we could see from the porch, we had the best of both worlds. After the last firework popped in the sky, we cleaned up our things, said our goodbyes and headed off to bed. I was sorry that Ryan missed the show, but was glad he was getting some much needed sleep. I brushed my teeth, got my PJs on, had my prayer and laid my weary head on my pillow. Suddenly, Ryan woke up with a cry. Steve said I should entitle this "It was not Bombs Bursting in Air, but Pillow Hitting Hair that Awoke Ryan."