Little Fish

My friend wanted to try out a new spot that he heard of that has good fishing...so he called me up and one evening we went out to the lower Salt River.

We saw some free ranging horses (which Bryce thought were wild), otter, lots of birds and a skunk.

When we heard the skunk, it was in a shadow and we couldn't tell what it was, so naturally we started tossing rocks in it's general direction. Finally the skunk came out of the shadows (a little irritated about the rocks) and we decided we needed to leave.

I can't believe I was throwing rocks at a skunk....

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The otters sort of creeped me out. I like wading into the water to fish (when possible) and having the otters dive in near me and not knowing where they were going or their intentions made me want to fish from the shore.
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This was the only fish we caught and it was sooo tiny.

But I still managed to drop my pole with the fish on there...(I'm glad I got it back...)

Here's my good fishing buddy Bryce (I know we are friends because even after he starting having kids he still wanted to hang out).

We definetly are going to come back and fish this spot again. I know there are some big ones out there.

Gaslight

Right before Independence Day, Lynette and I went down to Tucson. Lynette's parents bought us tickets to go see a show at the Gaslight Theatre. The Gaslight is an awesome little theater that puts on shows every night. This is my second time going and both were incredibly entertaining and fun.

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The show this time was "The Adventures of The Freedom League of America" and was about superhero's trying to save the planet. If you are ever in Tucson and are looking for something fun to do, go to the Gaslight theater (but be carefull often reservations are required).

One neat thing about visiting Tucson is seeing my mother-in-laws turtle sanctuary.

She has lots of turtles and loves and cares for them well.Lynette wearing my sunglasses. Me, not wearing my sunglasses. Lynette's old dog, Joey.On the drive back home we went through several miles of bugs. Our windshield was perfectly clean one moment (basically) and then it started sounding like it was raining. But it wasn't raining H2O, it was raining bugs. All the marks on the windsheild are from the bugs. I wish I had a before and after shot....

Here is a 'during' shot:

So, when we got back we went through the car wash.

and the car was clean again.

Entrada

Our big Varsity Scout event this year was to go to a camp especially designed for older boys. One of the closest camps of this nature was up in Moab Utah. This camp was great. Instead of focusing on leatherwork or beadwork or wood carving like many scout camps do this camp was all about the high adventure.

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We were up there for three days and this is what we did: 1) Climbing and Rapelling 2) White Water Rafting 3) Mountain Biking and Shooting.

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There can't be a better spot to do all this than where we were in Moab, UT. The whole week was awesome and better than anything we could have prepared on our own.

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I got to borrow this truck from one of the boys dads. This truck was so awesome that I was sad to start driving my S-10 again after returning home.

A couple of times we went into town to eat...this book was on the restaurant table and the boys tried getting some tips (little do they know that men can never understand women)

I probably took 3 or 4 hunderd pictures the entire week. Here is me looking at them.

Rapelling down a rather high cliff.

We did some rock climbing too. One of our guys was the third person to climb up and touch the carabiner all summer. (it was a fairly challenging wall...even the climbing directors couldn't make it to the top)

I gave it a try and failed miserably (as was expected)

This snake distracted my belayer at just about the same moment I was about to fall...so, I got a huge bruise on my leg from the harness. Ouch. Here is me falling: We asked some locals were a good place to swim is and they directed us to this swimming hole.
I'll be happy if I never go there again. I didn't think it was very safe, and it was BUSY.

But it sure was pretty.
Night time:
Bus ride up to the Rafting put in spot...our bus driver thought he was very funny.

Here is me and my new best friend rafting down the Colorado River.

Here's some more of the group.
We did some site seeing in Arches National Park, and that was nice.

This is the exact moment when I found out that Michael Jackson had died:

The mountain biking was great too.

Here is me doing some shooting.

The truth is, I've never liked guns...and probably never will. I know how to shoot them, and I'm glad they exist and believe that responsible gun ownership is a key part of our nations identity, but I personally have never found guns to be interesting, useful or fun.

Still, I went shooting...

but I didn't hit much.

EMT

So, one evening for scouts we went to the top of a nearby hospital to hear about what a helicopter EMT does on a daily basis. If I wasn't so interested in engineering, and wasn't so quesy about blood I definitely would consider this as a profession. It sounded really cool.

Planning

I thought I'd put these pictures up of when the varsity scouts and I went up to my parents cabin for a planning session. We outlined the whole year with fun activities like the AutoMechanics Topic we previously completed.

We did a service project for our neighbors and put some fence posts in. I think we should have done more fence post but we were content with three.

We also made some awesome hamburgers. They were very tasty...thanks to the worchestershire sauce.

Yum.