No Family!

I am on my own this weekend and for most of next week.  Its a weird feeling.  Kind of like when your parents used to leave you home for a few days.  I can get up whenever I want.  I can go anywhere I want.  I don't have to think about anyone else.  Its.....WONDERFUL!

Ashley is in Phoenix getting our home ready to sell.  Truth is, it should be me down there.  I only have finite vacation time and it was either go to Phoenix and fix up the house or accompany my family to Island Park Idaho for a week of family vacation.  Ashley wanted me to go with the family, so she is down taking care of business.

I have so may things I want to do.  I am grateful that our kids are generally up for some good out door adventures.  Still, there are some locations that are too far away, or that kids just cannot do.  I had it down to a final three.  Hike to Genoa Peak (6-9 hours), Hike to 4th of July Lake (Winemucca Lake is 2.5 mile hike and the kids can make it, but 4th of July Lake is over the ridge, and additional 2.5 miles - 10 miles total.  I want to see it), and fish the Silver Fork of the American River.  I have been there twice, but both times I had underestimated how long it took to get there and I arrive as the sun is setting and have not been able to put in a good days work.

SO - Today I got up at 7:00 am made a lunch, stopped a Maverick for a 44 oz diet Coke and a breakfast burrito and went fishing on the Silver Fork of the American River!  All Day, by myself - saw one other fisherman.

On a serious note, I wrote down some Geocaches to find on the way.  I got a new I Phone 6 from work this week (gave Ashley the 5), so my Geocache App was not working properly.  I got it working at the end of the day, so I found this Cache on the way home.  It was at a place called Tragedy Springs.  Why is it tragic?  I don't know, I never heard of the place.  I actually thought this was the turn off to go to the stream, but it was before.  I decided to look for the Cache anyway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_Spring,_California

So there you have it.  It is tragic in a sense.  I don't blame the Indians as we were just as ruthless to them.  I have been watching "Texas Rising" on History Channel which is a fictional account, but with alot of truth about the Texas Revolution.  Santa Anna viewed the revolting Texans as "pirates" not as an organized army under a country.  As such, he did not apply the rules of war to the game. 445 Texians were retreating from Goliad to meet with Sam Houston, but were intercepted by Santa Anna, they surrendered and asked for passage to the United State.  Santa Anna marched them in three rows and slaughtered them.

I have been thinking about that time - 1836, Texas Revolution, 1846-1848 Mexican American War, 1861-1865, Civil War.  For What? So you could scrape out some miserable existence living on 120 acres in Texas.  Constantly away from your family with a great potential that you would not see them again.  

We think that we have life hard today (and aside from health problems).  Life today has mild inconveniences, and its annoying, but man - I can work for 30 years in Minden Nevada and get a pension?  Not fight anyone?  Have collegefootball?  Sign me up.

Anyway - enough serious stuff - visiting his spring did make me feel for those who had a hard life as it was, and then had to end it that way.  The 3 that died were between the ages of 19-49.

The spring was nice.  I decided to take a drink which I don't usually do, but I was thirsty after a day of fishing. Also - I did find the cache inside a hollow log under some wood.  This is what geocaching is about - getting you to see something you would not have stopped at before.

The Silver Fork was awesome!  I made it so far and fished for about 6 hours.  I saw as much as I need to see.  Total, I caught around 40 fish.  Sounds great.  Only two were of any substantial size.  They were mostly 4-6 inches.  I did fish a small portion of this stream with Curt two years ago and he noted that it is a very clean stream - no bugs in the mud, so anything the fish are eating is falling into the water, it doesn't produce enough food for the fish to get big.  I did well.  Caught 9 below the surface with a copper john, and caught 30+ on the surface with an elk hairs caddis.  Its actually the most successful I have been with a nymph in California.  They were not taking off the surface when I started.

My work gave me the new I phone, and I don't have  a water proof case for it.  I kept in in a zip lock bag while I was on the river, so some of the pictures are not very clear.

One of the bigger ones - 10 inches or so

Pretty standard for all the other fish - 4-6 inches.  All rainbow trout.  Nothing for dinner

The biggest catch of the day was a 2-foot "Sierra Garner Snake."  I thought it was a king snake.  Garner snakes release a secretion that smells like skunk.  I picked this guy up and my hands smelled the rest of the day.  He swam right up to me.

From Yosemite Park Website:

Gartersnakes are the most common snake observed in the park. The park contains three species of gartersnakes, including the Sierra gartersnake. The Sierra gartersnake is highly aquatic and is most often found basking on the banks of rivers and streams or foraging in the water for fish and frogs. Aquatic snakes spend the majority of their time in and around water.

Biggest bummer of the day - both boots on my waders tore.  I did not even know that was possible.  I didn't even do anything crazy.  They are 3+ years old, so I will live with it, but man, I had freezing cold wet feet all day.  The right one I think I can patch, but the left one is large and in a difficult location.

I wish I could put a map in to show you where I went, but this program is a pain.  I could show the parking area - you can follow it way up to see the red bridge in the picture below.  I went so far.

Just an example of how fast and clear the water is running.  This photo had no plastic bag over it.  Huge pools full of tiny fish.  There were a few that I wanted to take a fishing break and swim in.  The river has huge boulders all the way down - impressive.

A few were cracked and then hollow in the middle.  I thought that was really cool.

An example of my view all day.  So many pools to fish, so little time.

This bridge was way upstream - 1.5 miles or so.  It was really nice, just for foot traffic.  Surprised they went through the trouble of building it.  I pulled about 8 fish out of this hole and had another 10 go after the fly.  I think some of the fish were too small to eat the whole thing.

This is the confluence of the Silver Fork of the American River (coming from the right) huge steep cascading water falls - hard to see with the trees. Caples Creeks is to the left coming in straight.  I followed Caples Creek up Silver Fork looked really steep.

This one is for the kids - we enjoy the "california snowcones" (actually called snowflowers).  I have never seen so many snow flowers as I did on this hike.  I took one picture that had 13 of them.  Usually you find them one or two at a time.  These were also huge.  Red is not a color seen in nature often, they really contrast with the forest ground.

Finally - on the way hiking back to the car after a full day of fishing - Am I back in the Redwood Forest?

Cool - Check one item I wanted to do off the list.  So much left to explore.  Streams, lakes, and mountain peaks to visit.  Came home tired.  No church tomorrow - stake conference.  Going to try and make it to 4th of July Lake.

Svea's Graduation

Hello,

I am making this post with my I.T. Department in Phoenix getting our home ready to sell and in a different program than I am used to.  We will see how this goes.

Svea had her kindergarten graduation on Thursday.  I didn't go to Soren's.  I figured that graduation from High School and College I need to be there for, but miss work for kindergarten graduation?  Anyway it turns out its a big deal.  I think its a bigger deal in Nevada, because its the only graduation many of these kids will have.  The program wound up being really nice.  Even Liv paid attention.

The girls were dressed really nice thanks to Grandma Linda sending over some new dresses.

I was wondering about the geography lesson they were teaching California and Washington DC are to the right and Hawaii and New York are to the left.  Doesn't make sense.  They should have California and Hawaii to west and New York and Washington DC to the east.  Who does the sign proof reading around here?

The program was really nice.  They had a slide show with all the activities and field trips of the year.  They also showed two pictures of each kid, a baby picture and their kindergarten picture.  Then the kids all came out and the classes did two funny songs and dances. To finish it up, all the kids came on stage and said what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Tons of future zoo keepers, soldiers, teachers, police men, one vampire, one engineer.  A few months ago Svea said when she grew up she wanted to be a Civil Engineer and work for the county!  Ohh boy - I was wondering if that was what she was going to say.

Svea wants to be a farmer - who knew?  She is following in her maternal great grandparents.  I asked her what she was going to grow.  She said "Whatever it is that you want to eat." I told her "corn and soybeans." She said "Ok, and carrots too."

We then went into their classrooms and had cookies and punch.  Svea got a card and two sets of flowers.

There you have it.  One year down, twelve left.  Svea got her report card and is doing wonderful.  Soren is very smart scientifically and logically.  I see Svea as just as bright, but with other interests.  She has an artistic side that Soren does not have.  I think she is going to be a fabulous student.  I knew Soren was going to be an engineer/scientist from his first birthday on.  I don't know what path of study Svea will follow, but know she will do well.

Geocache 2

(Our computer is having a difficult time publishing these things and has forced me into a different program.  Its more difficult to import, resize pictures, print screen, and set it up to look nice.  Sorry)

I would say the kids are hooked.  Most nights I came home this week it was dinner, scriptures, geocaches.  Kids ask “Can we go find a cache?”  There are quite a few around, so we load up one or two on the gps and head out.  There are all different kinds.  Big ones, small ones, some stashed in trees, under rocks, on posts.  Some have treasures you can trade for, all have at a minimum a log sheet you can sign.  You really have to pay attention to your surroundings and look for something out of place in order to locate it.  The gps can generally put you within 8 feet, but there is some searching involved.  Soren is pretty good at finding them, Svea has found a few, but it can be a challenge.  Of course, a few we have been unable to find, does that mean we didn’t look good enough or that they are gone?  Luckily, when you search for one you can view the last 10 logs on the website and there are sometimes additional hints, but you can see if the majority of the people are able to locate the cache.  You can also see the dates they searched.  The ones that people have a hard time finding or have been gone for a year are not worth following up on.

Tuesday Night – one behind the church:

Wednesday Night – found two on Buckeye Road.  One was a magnetic altoid box on the back of a guard rail and one has attached to a wire hanging on the inside of a roadway delineator:

Thursday and Friday it was really rainy.  Saturday was clear, but 60% chance of rain in the Tahoe Basin, so we stayed low and decided to hike the Fay Luther Trail.  It is also going to rain on Sunday and supposed to rain through the week.  We will take the rain as we are desperate, but has killed my fly fishing the last two weeks.


We went from purple to yellow (Sandy Trail) then did the red loop – round 2.5 miles, good hike to tire the kids out so that they do not wig out.  The good news was there are a ton of geocaches along the trail.

First one was a tiny pill box that was wrapped in camouflage tape and attached to a sagebrush.  Many of the previous geocachers were not able to find it.  Good find by Ashley (Actually her first find):

Soren found a good sized one and then I found one next to a burial ground:

Found a really nice one under a pine tree – it was in one of those large ammo boxes.  This one had lots of treasures. Liv decided that she was going to keep a plastic kitty.

Soren found a really good one that had a swiss army knife he decided to pocket.  Svea took a bobble head rabbit out of it.  The cache was full of about 20 items to keep or trade:

Kids with the daily loot.  Amazing how finding these items motivates them to hike:

We did stop by Fay Creek.  Number of our favorite flowers blooming – the red California Snowcone (actually called the snowflower)

We found one last cache on the way back.  Liv traded her kitty in for a squirrel. We tried to tell her it was not a good trade, but she did it anyway.  About 100 yards down the trail she started crying “I want my kitty back.” But – it was gone.  She cried for a while about that one.

So our geocache map is looking pretty good.  You also get little “souvenirs” from the website.  Now we have a “California” souvenir since  we found our first California Cache.  Good day, got the kids out.  All worn out and tired by the time it is over. So you can see what we have found.  Still a whole bunch left to get.

The last one is Soren's first pack meeting.  He was able to earn his bobcat badge in cubscouts.  He also took part in his first flag ceremony.  Funny to watch.  He looked so official, and you could tell he had pride in what he was doing.  He was really smiling.

Geocaching

The Nilssen Family has a new hobby – “Geocaching.” For those who do not know what Geocaching is, there is a website Geocaching.com.  On this website are coordinates where people have stashed little treasure boxes.  They are all over the place – thousands of them.  Each “cache” has a description and a sign in sheet and maybe a small treasure.  I had heard of it, but never tried it. Here is a screen shot – each “cache’' shows as a box on the map.  You click on it and get a hint of what you are looking for, the coordinates, and you can view a log to see how many people found it and how many people could not find it.

Last week at scouts Soren discussed geocaching with a fellow scout and became interested in giving it a shot.  We downloaded the coordinates for a cache located at Jakes Wetland into the ETrex GPS  and went to look for it.  The ETrex is an early generation device and did not have the accuracy to find the cache, plus is was raining and we did not know what we were doing.
On Saturday we decided to look for “Sierra Canyon 3” the description of the cache was a “camouflaged honey bear” thats it. We set out up the Canyon.  It wound up being a longer hike than we originally planned.  About 2.4 miles round trip 600-feet elevation gain.  I downloaded a GPS app on my I Phone and had the coordinates typed in.  It really put us right on top of the cache.  The ETrex has us 46-feet away.  We would not have found the cache with the ETrex:

Soren was actually the one who located it.  He was so excited – shaking with excitement, "Ohh Ohh, I found it!", our first successful cache!  We didn't know it, but all caches have sign in sheets.  We didn't have a pen, but now we know better for next time.  They also may have small trinkets, so we need to buy something to stick in the cache next time.

When you find a cache, you go back to geocaching.com and log in your results.  It changes the “box” on the screen to a yellow smiley face.  If you don’t find it it changes into a blue frustrated face.  Our cache up Sierra Canyon shows our successful find:

We have been up Sierra Canyon more than a dozen times and usually make it to a stream crossing.  This was the farthest we have ever made it, all so that we could find a camouflage honey bear.  Good bribe.

After church on Sunday we decided that we did not want to go on a long family hike because of the hike yesterday.  We loaded up two geocaches into the I phone and went to look for them.  Liv asked where we were going and I told her to find geocaches.  She threw her arms into the air “I love to find geocaches” and she ran to car. We went back to the wetland and this time we found the geocache. Soren had the IPhone and lead us to the location. It was difficult to find.  Looked like a normal irrigation sprinkler:

Almost went right past it, but since yesterdays experience I knew better what I was looking for.  Luckily before we left house Svea handed me a pen so that we could sign the sheet:

Lastly we went to River Fork Ranch in Genoa to look for one other cache and hike a little.  This one was hard to find.  I was ready to give up.  Svea was about 10’ away from the coordinates and turned over a log.  Success!!! Kind of like a world wide Easter Egg Hunt.

This one had a tiny pink ring.  We need to buy some stuff to put back in these, but we left a mouse skull that we had found.  The value of the ring and mouse skull was about equal value so I don’t feel too bad:

So that’s our new hobby.  Fits our family perfectly.  Combines technology and hiking which is 100% Soren’s perfect match.  He has fun with the GPS alone, this will really get him out.  Dad pointed out it is too bad there are not some neighborhood kids with bikes that they could go around town finding geocaches.  Thats how it would have been back in my time with kids all over the neighborhood, but we really don't have any here - its odd, all old people.  Its exciting and now we know what we are looking for.  I have always been interested in trying geocaching, but have always been a little intimidated.

So this summer in Monterrey, Island Park, Big Trees State Park, we are going to have to bring some coordinates and look for some of these.  We need to stash a few for fun.

Dad – there is one by your house next to the church – you need to go get it.