We went and checked out a ghost town called Bodie this past weekend with Mary, Faith's mom.

It was pretty neat, I'd driven by it a lot, but had never stopped.  It's only a few buildings and a sign.  It was a gold mining town, and between 1911 and 1940 they mined 1.3 million dollars worth of gold.  The history of gold mining in Ferry County is pretty impressive, when the area was opened up to mining, something like 96% of all new mining patents that year were for Ferry County.  

The link below will take you to a you tube video, the video uploader on the blog kept giving a an error message.  It should be ready to view by late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.  Dylan and I made a catapult today.  The plans for it were to build a rather small catapult, that launched wadded up pieces of paper, but Dylan and I decided to "Go big or go home" and made a scaled up version that can launch a fist sized rock 20-30 feet..  Then we set up the playmobile castle they got for Christmas about 6 years ago and started the siege.  Dylan kept the catapult (it's name is Dragon Bolt,  by the way) a lot closer to the castle than it's maximum launching distance.  It was pretty awesome.  When Simon got home from school they continued the siege, then painted the catapult.  Hope everybody's doing well.

http://youtu.be/6cRA3ZQA9xY

 This is the awesome cake that Faith and her friend Shannon made for Dylan's birthday, it's a Skylanders cake, which is a game Dylan really likes.

 About a month ago Dylan said he wanted a surprise party for his birthday.  His party was on Saturday, so we sent him over to his friend Blake's house for the afternoon and got all set up, then waited for him to get home so we could all jump out and yell "Surprise!".  It was really loud, I guess.

 Dylan hugged every present he got.

 All the kids kept edging closer and closer to Dylan as he was opening presents and he kept getting pushed back into the corner.

 Here's Dylan and Mckinley blowing out his candle.  She offered her help without even being asked.

 The picture above is a cake our friend Arwen made for a themed dinner thing we did a year or two ago, I just found it on my camera and thought I'd show it off.  It's supposed to look like a horse heart.  It did not taste very good at all, I don't think anybody there finished their piece of it.

 This is my wall tent that has been at my friend Mark's house in Portland since we moved to Republic.  I went down and got it this summer for a guy on the fire crew to live in on some property he had bought.  We got it back at the end of the summer and went camping on Halloween.  I had to camp out for work, and Faith and the boys signed up as volunteers so they could come with me and ride in a work truck.  I was unsure if the boys would be willing to miss trick or treating to go camping, and when I asked them if they would rather go trick or treating or camping Simon yelled "I don't care, cancel Halloween, we're going camping!".  The reason I had to camp out for work is this:

 The Capitol Christmas Tree came from the Colville National Forest this year.  The Capitol Christmas tree goes on the lawn of the capitol building, not the white house.  We found out in April of 2012 that we had been chosen for this "honor".  We had to find a few candidate trees, as well as arrange for 80 companion trees, and coordinate the making of something like 8,000 ornaments.  Candidate trees were selected by forest service employees, we were supposed to look for them while we were out working.  Then the head groundskeeper for the capitol building came out and made the final selection, which was on the Newport Ranger District.  The tree was an 88 foot tall spruce.  The forest decided to put together a small incident management team to manage the whole operation of getting the area set up for the cutting ceremony, cutting the tree down, getting it loaded on the truck, and transported down to Newport, WA.  In typical government fashion, they selected a guy named Brian to be the incident commander, then never told him.  I heard about Brian being the IC in early September.  Near the end of September, at least 3 weeks since I had heard that Brian would be the IC, my phone at work rang and it was Brian.  He said "I'm not sure if you heard but they're setting up a team to manage the christmas tree ceremony, and I was told this morning that I was the IC."  I stopped him and told him I had heard he was going to be the IC 3 weeks earlier.  He was a little frustrated, because the government shutdown rumors were flying at the time, and there was only about a month until the cutting ceremony, and a lot of work to be done to get ready for it.  Anyway, he asked me to be the operations section chief for the team, which meant I was in charge of getting the tree cut, put on the truck, secured to the truck, and transported down to Newport.  I agreed and after a few meetings we decided that it would be best if I camped out at the tree site the night before the cutting ceremony.  The tree is about a 3 hour drive from Republic and I had to be at the site the day before the tree was cut to get the cranes placed, go over how to cut the tree with the sawyers, make sure the climber and the crane company agreed on how to get the tree rigged, and make sure everything was ready to go.  We got through that day, then I was working the next morning by 0630 finishing getting stuff ready.

 The three folks in the picture above are Jim, who climbed the tree to set the rigging for the crane; John, who made the face cut on the tree; and Adam, who did the final cut on the tree.  Everybody that was interested in cutting the tree that was a C-sawyer (the highest level of sawyers in the Forest Service) had their name put in a hat and John and Adam were selected.  I'm the one who certifies the C sawyers on the forest, so I was assigned to make sure the guys knew how to cut a tree suspended from crane, and be the back up if necessary.  None of us had ever cut a tree suspended from a crane before, so we kind of made it up as we went along, with some help from the crane company.  The top of the tree was hooked to the crane, and once Adam cut it off the stump a second crane was hooked up near the bottom of the tree, that's the yellow crane in the picture above.  It was then laid flat suspended about 20 feet above the ground and the truck backed in underneath it.

 When the team we had set up first got involved the forest was planning on there being around 50 people in attendance at the cutting ceremony.  Brian and I spent a lot of time convincing them that there would be way more than 50 people.  They somewhat reluctantly agreed to let us plan for more than 200 people, but I don't think they believed that there would be that many.  It ended up being just over 300 people that showed up.

 Here's the tree laying on the truck.  It rested on 8 cradles on the bed of the truck.  Once it was laid down the branches were all dragging on the ground and we had to get them all tied off so they wouldn't drag.

Here's the truck, donated by Mack Trucks to transport the tree to Washington.  The truck was so long it couldn't make it around all the corners to get down the dirt road to the highway, so we had a front end loader hook onto the back of the trailer and lift the rear wheels off the ground and move the trailer around the sharp corners.  It took 2.5 hours to make it 25 miles into Newport.  Once the tree got to Newport it got all packaged up so it fit on the trailer, then it headed for the Capitol.  It's making a bunch of stops on the way, right now they're in San Antonio I think.  I was going to sign up to travel with the tree, but then I found out it's a 5 week long road trip and I decided not to sign up.    Overall it was a pretty neat experience, and the boys really enjoyed seeing the whole thing, but I sure don't want to do it again.

The Pain Gain

 The boys and I went backpacking for the first time on Friday.  The GPS program on my computer said the trail was 2.3 miles long, Google Earth said it was 2.8.  My gps track after we got there said it was 3.5 miles. However long it was to get in there, it took us 4.5 hours to hike in.  We stopped for breaks.  A lot.  But it was a nice hike along a ridge to a place called Emerald Lake.  We got in and found the huge rock pictured above, the boys spent most of the time lifting rocks onto the top of the big rock and throwing them in.  If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can see a fire ring out in the middle of the lake.  Apparently it dries up in late summer.  We got to the lake and started to set up camp, but it was bloody hot, so we decided to go swimming instead.  The lake is mostly snow melt, so it was super cold.  We swam for a few minutes, then decided to get out.  I walked back up to camp barefoot and was getting dressed when I noticed blood all over the place where I had been walking.  I then was lucky enough to discover a gash in my foot about 2 inches long and 1/4 in deep.  Simon (who was very eager to help and very concerned) and I got it cleaned up and mostly held shut with a couple of bandaids (the butterfly bandages wouldn't stick on my foot for some reason). After the emergency room trip today, I discovered that if you come in more than 8 hours after getting a laceration, they won't give you stitches because bacteria has likely established and would have a greater chance of causing an infection.  So, steri-strips and a huge bandaid are in my future for the next few weeks.   Cue the next picture.

 After assisting with first aid, Simon crawled up on the rock and fell asleep.

 We brought hammocks and tarps in to sleep in.  The blue hammock is mine.  It took 100 feet of parachute cord to string up the tarps into a semblance of shelter when it looked like it would start raining.  I was initially planning on using the p-cord to make a bear hang for the food, but shelter seemed more important at the time.  I ended walking a few hundred yards from camp and sticking the food bag way up in the branches of a tree.  We all went to sleep and I was awoken in the middle of the night by a strange noise.  As I lay there listening for any follow up weird noises I heard what sounded like something splashing in the water at the edge of the lake.  Then I heard a bunch of really strange noises that in the dark that at 1 in the morning I was sure was a bear snuffling around the camp. Turns out it was Dylan snoring and clicking his teeth together in his sleep.  As I replayed the noise in my head I thought it sounded like a tree cracking, whooshing as it fell over, then hitting the lake.  Thinking that was unlikely, I stayed awake straining my ears for the sound of a bear getting ready to tear us apart.  I finally fell asleep again, and woke with the sunrise around 4.  I got up and decided to walk along the shore of the lake to see if I could figure out  what the noise was.  Turned out my first guess was right, a big dead tree had tipped over in the middle of the night and fallen into the lake, the splashing I heard at the shore was branches that had broken off bumping against the rocks at the edge.  Crisis narrowly averted.

 Here's Dylan asleep in the morning.

Simon won the award for the best camp this weekend.  He had the only open spot that allowed the tarp to be set up properly.  We started hiking out at about 9, and started up a series of switch backs out of the canyon the lake was in.  We stopped to take a break (one of several) and I was standing talking to the boys and looking up the hill.  I saw a band of cliffs that we had hiked along the base of on the way in, and it looked like I could almost throw a rock and hit them.  I convinced the boys to take a short cut, and we ended climbing 100 feet in elevation over about 300 feet distance (it had been raining and there were some tense moments on a fairly steep rock face), but we ended cutting over a 1/2 mile off the return trip.  After many breaks we ended up getting back to the car at about 1 pm.  Both kids promptly fell asleep as soon as the van was moving.  It was a great backpacking trip.  Dylan is a little power hiker, he didn't want to stop at all on the way in, while Simon needed a break every 10 minutes.  On the way out they switched roles, with Simon charging down the trail and Dylan needing a break every 10 minutes.  It was a lot of fun though, and while Simon is voting for car camping on the next trip, Dylan wants to go backpacking again next weekend.  I may have created a monster, but that's OK, monsters are cool.

Edit:  The boys named the hike the Pain Gain, after Dylan fell down a couple times on the way in and skinned his knee, I gashed my foot, and Simon convinced himself he had gotten poison ivy while standing the midst of a thimbleberry patch.

If you want to see one of the coolest things that has ever been done, you should google "Chris Hadfield Space Oddity" and watch the awesomeness that the you tube video brings you.  Chris Hadfield was the commander of the International Space Station for the past 5 months, and he did all sorts of great web demonstrations of different experiments on the space station, capping it all off with what you should be watching right now instead of reading this. 

 

Simon and I spent the day hiking and geocaching a couple weeks ago, all these pictures are from that day.  We're still waiting for winter to be over up here, there's still a couple feet of snow once you get up out of the valleys.  Not much else has been going on.  At least there's picutres this time though.  Oh, and if any of you were wondering, yes, I can in fact break into a house with a swiss army knife and a fencing stake thingy.
One of the girls that works on the district lives in the bunkhouse, and there were a bunch of students from WSU staying there this weekend, so Tena (the girl that works here) was given the option of staying in one of the rental houses that is currently empty until the WSU students left.  On Friday, my allergies were really bad and it kind of made me feel like crap, so I went to bed at around 9.  Faith was already asleep, and the boys were watching a movie downstairs.  I heard Oona start barking around 10, but I figured she was hearing the boys movie come up through the heat vents and I ignored here.  Then I heard her charge to front door barking like there was a crazed murderer hacking down the door with an axe, so I figured I better go investigate.  I crept down the hallway thinking about what I can grab as a weapon (the keys to the gun safe weren't in my room at the time, which is probably a good thing).  I peer around the corner into the living room, and I can see out the front window someone is walking away from the house.  It's dark outside and I can't tell who it is, but I see them turn the corner and start walking down the hill.  I run over to the back door and look out the window there, and see the mysterious figure continue down the road towards the bunkhouse.  I figured it was a college student wandering around.  So, my adrenaline was up and I knew I wasn't going back to bed soon, and I thought I would watch TV for a bit.  I turned on the TV and went into the kitchen to look for some allergy medicine and fill my water bottle.  One of the cats was following me around trying to trip me, so I walked over to the front door to let him out.  I opened the door while I was looking back towards the cat, and when I looked back toward the door there was the mysterious figure standing on my doorstep, with a clenched fist menacingly descending toward me!  I had a full stainless steel water bottle in my hand and my initial thought was to smash in my opponents face before they punched me.  My second thought (as the water bottle was starting to rush forward) was "Hey, that's Tena".  So I stopped the water bottle from smashing her nose, and she stopped trying to knock on my door, as it was already open before she could knock.  (As a side note, I'm always curious about fight or flight responses in those kind of situations, apparently mine was fight that time.)  Anyway, I asked her what the hell she was doing wandering around my house in the dark, and she informed me she had locked herself out of the house she was staying in.  I told her we'd go find some keys in the office, but the lady that keeps all the keys in her desk also keeps the codes to nuclear missiles in there, judging by the complex iron bars, loops, and padlocks securely keeping the world safe from spare bunkhouse keys and errant nuclear weapons.  So we left the office and started walking down the hill to the houses.  Tena asked what we were going to do, and I informed her we were going to go break into a house.  I inspected the door, asking Tena if she had opened any windows, searched usual places for a spare key, and how hard it was turn the deadbolt mechanism.  No windows had been opened, there was no spare key, and the deadbolt was easy to turn.  Now this door appears to have been built sometime in the late 1800s, with an old style keyhole you could see through, and a deadbolt kind of thing, that you have to turn up to get out of the house, and flips back down on its own unless you hit a little button to keep it up, which Tena had not.  So, after my inspection of the home's defenses were complete, we walked over to the fire cache and searched through the fencing supplies until I found a stake that could be bent with a little effort, and generally hold its shape after that.  We walked back to the house and I tried to insert the stake into the key hole and reach the deadbolt, but the doorknob was in the way.  So using my swiss army knife (that I got as an award at work about 2 weeks ago) I took the outer doorknob plate off, and was able to take the doorknob apart and poke the other half of the doorknob through into the house.  Then I used the bent stake shoved in through the door knob hole to push the deadbolt up and get the door open.  Tena was suitably impressed with my breaking and entering skills, then noted "Ben I watched you look at this door, come up with a plan, and break into a house in less than 15 minutes.  Have you done this before?"  I assured her I had not, then put the door back together with only part left over.  It all seemed to close, open, and lock just fine, and since the left over part looked like a 22 bullet I figured it wasn't necessary.  That's my Friday night adventure.  We're going over to our friend David and Arwen's house in a little bit to burn down a green house and cook dinner in dutch ovens.  The green house was demolished by a tree during the windstorm last summer.  That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

The first picture is a chess board that our friend David made for me for my birthday, using a marble chessboard Faith got for me in Mexico.  The chess pieces Faith got for me for my birthday, they're really nice chess pieces from Italy.  The next picture is from the end of our coast trip, playing disc golf in Yakima.  Not much is going on, but I wanted to share that on Monday I was offered a 120 day detail to a Fire Management Officer position in Kettle Falls, which is about an hour east of Republic. I told the district ranger there that I wanted to apply for the detail, but I didn't want to move over there for 4 months, he said I could drive over every day and he'd give me a government rig to drive over in.  So, April 21 I'll start driving over to do that job for 4 months.  It should be pretty interesting, my friend Shane works over there, and I worked for Shane back when I worked in Sisters.   That's about it, the boys have spring break next week, I'm taking most of the week off and hopefully we'll have some good adventures to write about that don't involve Simon falling in a creek, which is what happened last weekend.

We've been cooking a big Sunday dinner, ususally ham lately.  Last night while we were eating I suggested we could maybe get a turkey one time.  Dylan said "Like Thanksgiving!"  Simon said "Actually they ate ham at Thanksgiving."  I said "You mean at the very first Thanksgiving?"  and Simon said "Yeah.  Really."  I said "Hmmm, what makes you say that?"  and Simon replied "Because I don't like turkey but I like ham." 

Best (sort of) Family Trip Ever!

Well, for some reason, my computer, freezes every time I try to load a picture from my phone.  My comma button on the keyboard is broken as well...so excuse the elipse use in lieu of commas.  Anyway...on with the best (sort of) family trip ever!  It's (sort of) becuae Faith went to Portland this weekend for work...to buy the years line of clothes for the store she works at.  Me and the boys went to the coast in Long Beach...in south western Washington to meet my friends Mark and Christina and their two kids...William and Weatherly.  We left Republic after school last Thursday and drove to Yakima and stayed in a hotel there...then got up the next morning and drove the rest of the way to Long Beach.  Mark and family were still about an hour out when we got there...so me and the boys found a beach so they could experience the ocean for the first time.  The wind was blowing like crazy and there were huge waves...Dylan kept facing the wind and yelling "I'm the king of the world!" and "Freedom!"  I have no idea when he saw Titanic or Braveheart.  We wandered along the beach looking for sea shells and sand dollars...I found a live sand dollar...but we left it there.  The kids filled their pockets with every seashell fragment they found...as well as picking up every piece of drift wood asking if they could keep it.  After and hour we headed to the hotel to meet Mark and family.  They've got a friend that owns a condo at this hotel...so we got to stay there free.  We hung out for a bit and caught up...then headed to dinner at a place that a huge seafood menu...but informed us that no place in town serves fresh seafood...it's all shipped in. For a town on the coast that seemed pretty stupid to me...but who can turn down all you can eat fish and chips for $11?  We left and went back to the condo and let the kids run around for awhile while we planned Saturdays activities.  We woke up and had breakfast...then rode bikes into town and wandered around for a bit before going to race go karts! (picture Simon and Dylan sitting in go karts now..because I can't upload the picture or video.)  My go kart broke down...started up again at full throttle with no brakes...broke down...started at full throttle again...then broke down...so I quit.  The boys had so much fun...despite the fact that it started pouring down rain right when we started racing.  We finished up and started walking to our picnic spot...but decided it was raining so hard we would put the kids in the truck and Mark and I would ride bikes back to the hotel (he had drove into town earlier to stage food then jogged back to the hotel).  After lunch we went to a Lewis and Clark interpretive center and wandered around it was also an old army fort.  Long Beach is where Clark first saw the pacific ocean and the interpretive center catalogued their whole trip with exhibits about their journal entries...it was really cool.  Simon decided he would rather be at the hotel watching TV...so he pouted with his arms folded most of the time...but I got him out of it at the end and we did some of the fun activities they had there...like seeing how many wooden blocks we could load in a miniature canoe before it tipped over...sighting an old musket at pictures of animals 100 yards away...and getting imprints of animal tracks on the map they gave us.  It was super fun.  After that we went out to the old army fort... where you could run around inside the old bunkers and we all played army for awhile with the kids.  After that it was dinner time and we went to the resteraunt on the resort we were staying at.  I had "Devils on Horseback" which is scallops wrapped in bacon..and is freaking awesome!  We went back to the room and had cake (it was Marks birthday...which is why we went down there).  The next day we went and bought some stuff from a little museum for the boys...Dylan got a drum and two wooden knives...Simon got 3 geodes to break open and two wooden knives.  Then we played mini golf..then went to Fort Columbia...another old army fort where we again played army in the old concrete bunkers...which was also tons of fun.  We parted ways with the Ballaris' after that and headed to Yakima again...went swimming for a while in the pool..then ordered pizza and watched Tangled then went to bed.  Woke up this morning and got some breakfast then went swimming again then went and played frisbee golf.  We were going to go out to lunch at Red Robin but I realized I needed to pick the dogs up by 5 from the boarder...so we had to skedaddle and drive exactly the speed limit very quickly to get back to Republic in time.  It was a great weekend...Dylans favorite things were frisbee golf and go karts...and Simons favorite thing was the whole weekend.  We were going to go Mt. St. Helens on the way there and on the way back...but the the mountain was all socked in with clouds both ways so we didn't want to go up there and not be able to see anything.  Sorry for no pictures...I'll get it figured out and try to add them soon.  Hope everybody's doing well!

Well, my photo uploader seems to be broken, so I guess no pictures.  Not much has been happening here, Simon turned 9 on Wednesday.  He got up at 4 am and asked if he could wake up Dylan and Faith so he could open presents.  Melanie asked for a better explanation of the snowmobile roll over so here it is:  We went to a sledding party a couple days before Christmas at our friend Billy and Emily's house.  We had a bonfire and a bunch of kids there sledding down the the driveway, which is about a 1/4-1/2 mile sled run down to where the kids would get picked up by Gwen or TJ on the snowmobiles and carted back to the top of the driveway.  Gwen came up and said she was cold and wanted to sit by the fire for awhile, and asked if I would take her new snowmobile to haul the kids up.  I said I didn't think that was a good idea, as last time I drove a snowmobile I ran a little kid over.  Everybody laughed and Gwen said I wouldn't run a kid over, just go get them.  Again I protested.  Again everybody laughed at me.  Gwen said you're not going to hurt it, and we've got insurance on them, just go get the kids.  I said OK, but it's on your head.  So I drove down to where 4 kids were waiting, my 2 and Gwen and TJ's 2.  Billy was down there as well, he'd been skiing down the road.  I asked Lucas how many Gwen usually could take, and he said that everybody could fit.  So, there were 3 kids behind me and Dylan in front of me, holding a runner sled.  Billy grabbed on to the back and said to haul him up.  I went to take off and we weren't really moving, Billy said I had to punch it to take off.  So I punched it, we went about 10 feet, then the skiis came off the ground, the whole thing spun to the right and we tumbled over, breaking the runner sled in the process.  So Billy and me checked on the kids, flipped the snow machine back over, then TJ pulled up, and I said sorry, I just flipped your new snowmobile.  He said no big deal, helped me get it started again, and I drove back up to the bon fire and parked it.  Gwen said I needed to turn it around and where are the kids.  I said I'm not driving that thing anymore, and the kids refused to ride with me after I flipped it.  Then Emily yelled at me for breaking her sled.  Every time I go to their house I break something.  Well, that's not entirely true, I've been there 2 times where nothing got broke.  It's mostly been kitchen chairs and lawn furniture.  I had been sitting in a chair in their kitchen the first time I went over there for about 30 minutes and the stupid thing shattered underneath me.  Like all 4 legs just exploded.  They never let me replace anything either, saying it was old and they were getting new stuff anyway.  This time I bought a new runner sled and just had it shipped to her without saying anything, that way she couldn't refuse it. 
That's about it, we're going to go to Omak today to see The Hobbit, then tomorrow I'm going to Spokane with a bunch of people to see the Randy Rogers Band.  That's about it.  Picture uploader still isn't working.  Sorry.