North Carolina

Well, I've been in North Carolina for almost two weeks now. I had no idea what to expect coming here, but I've come to really enjoy it here. I've been working hard at mapping noxious and invasive species of weeds here on the refuge, and have been enjoying myself whenever I haven't been working. I've discovered that the beach is the best place to be when its 90+ degrees and humid and that it makes for a very good break after wading through thick vegetation all day. Luckily quite a bit of what we've worked on mapping here has been in the farm fields and along canals and ditch lines, as well as on river banks. After finishing most all of the farm fields here we took canoes and canoed the creek here to map alligatorweed, so it was a nice break from hiking through the fields.

The beach has been fun after work, I've enjoyed wading out and playing in the waves, and tried body boarding, although it is rather challenging. I bought a kite and have enjoyed flying it on the beach. We went to a kite festival that was here as well, there was a kite the size and shape of a blue whale! it was pretty amazing to look at. We also drove down the outer banks and took a ferry out to an island called Ocracoke Island. It had the best beach I've been to so far.

This weekend after working our 40 hours, we drove up to Washington DC to check out our nations capitol. I saw the constitution and the declaration of independence, and toured around several museums and art galleries as well as seeing capitol hill. I also made a trip to the DC temple, it looks like a fortress and is really beautiful inside.

Its been pretty fun being out here in North Carolina staying in a beach house, and I would definitely come back to the East Coast again.

Moab and Such

Southern Utah

During the two weeks I had training in Logan, there was also Memorial Day weekend. Aaron Harker and I had planned on going to southern Utah for the weekend. We met up with Aaron in Brigham City and then drove the rest of the way to Moab that night. We slept on a tarp and our pads just on the side of a gravel road that led to the Mountain Biking trail we did the next morning. It was a really fun trail, which was about 4.5 miles one way over quite a bit of slickrock to Arches National Park boundary where we went on a short hike back to see a place called Klondike Bluffs. After that we went and found what looked like a nice place to go on a short hike to a swimming hole, unfortunately a few hundred other people had the same idea, so it was pretty crowded, but it still felt great to cool off by jumping off the top of a waterfall to a small pool at the bottom.

One of the things we wanted to do while we were down there was hike through a slot canyon. We found one that sounded pretty fun called Horse Play Canyon, it didn’t require any ropes and said that water was avoidable. It was over by Hanksville, Utah. We spent the night in my tent there, getting blasted by sand because of how windy it was. We also found a scorpion under my tent when we packed it up. We went to church there that morning, and then found the canyon we were going to hike. It was about 30 miles out in the middle of the desert. The canyon was pretty darn narrow in places, and quite a tight fit even for me. We made it through just fine though, although we were really sand blasted by the end since the wind was gusting up to 50 mph. We decided to avoid the sand that night to sleep in the car in the church parking lot. We then woke up the next morning and drove back home. It was a great adventure!

Weed Mapper

I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing this summer and my friend Dillon Harker told me about a job that he had applied for. This job was with USU and we would go all over the US mapping noxious and invasive species of weeds. I applied for the job and interviewed for it over the phone while I was in Colorado. I heard back a week after I got back from Colorado that I got the job. I was pretty excited about it. I had training for a week in Great Falls Montana. It was really pretty up there. Then I had two more weeks of training in Logan. I found that I really liked Logan, it’s a really beautiful area, and so is Cache Valley.

Colorado and the Train ride home!

Well, after spending a little over a week in Iowa, Edwin and Jennifer and the kids took me to the train station and I left Iowa. The train ride went fairly well, although the train was over an hour late getting into the station, and an hour late getting to Denver. Ben picked me up at the train station and took me the rest of the way home. It was nice spending almost a week with Ben and Shanna. I helped Shanna rearrange the basement, and also helped move the toys down into the basement. I went on a nice hike with Benjamin on Saturday. It was pretty, although it was snowing that morning. Then Monday morning, Shanna took me to the train station and I rode the train through the rockies, and through grand junction up to provo. It was a gorgeous ride. Thank you Leonora and Kevin for picking me up and letting me stay there.

Going to Iowa

Well, I figure its high time I update my blog! I have been a little slow at updating it lately.

At the end of the semester I decided I'd take a couple weeks vacation to go and visit Edwin, Jen, and the kids in Iowa, and to visit Ben and Shanna and their kids in Colorado.

I rode to Iowa with my friend Jessica Bahr that lived in Des Moines. We left friday afternoon, and spent the night at Ben and Shanna's in Colorado, then woke up and drove the rest of the way on Saturday. It was a pretty interesting drive, although I found Nebraska to be quite boring to drive through. Iowa was really pretty though, nice rolling hills and it was good to see green after being in Rexburg for the winter for so long. Edwin and Jennifer came and picked me up saturday night and took me back to their place. I helped Edwin teach his primary class, which was enjoyable going to primary again.

I then spent a day shadowing Edwin at the hospital. It was really interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the hours I spent there, although it did make me a bit drowsy. While I was there Edwin also took me fishing for a day. I caught my first Bass that day. Edwin filleted it and cooked it that night. It was pretty tasty. I did get sick while I was in Iowa, but got feeling well enough that Edwin and I drove down to Nauvoo to go to the temple. I helped Edwin teach his primary class again and enjoyed that. Jennifer made me a purple tie that I wore to church as well.

I also spent half of a day shadowing a pathologist that lives in Edwin and Jennifer's ward. I really enjoyed that and it made me want to go to med school. The night before I left we also made tie dye shirts, which was pretty fun. I really enjoyed my stay in Iowa playing with Grace, Anne, and James and visiting with Edwin and Jennifer.

Shooting, Xc skiing, Snowshoeing, and a half submersed jeep.

Well, it has been a little while since I've posted on here and I've had quite a few adventures since then, so I thought its due time that I write about some of them, and put some photos up on here.

This year for valentines day, I bought myself a Shotgun because I once again found myself without a valentines. I find its a good way to treat myself, and get something that I've wanted for a while to ease t

he pain of singles awareness day. Its been fun to go shooting with people from school and has been rather adventurous.

I've also gone snowshoeing a couple of times, thanks to Linden for letting me borrow his

snow shoes. It has been a lot of fun hiking around in the mountains in the winter time with them, and I will definitely go more often than I have.

I have also gone cross country skiing a couple of times this winter, and will definitely be doing more of that this next winter. Its been fun.

Another interesting thing that has happened is that Rexburg housing decided that since our roof has been leaking the entire two semesters that I've lived here, that they should finally do something about fixing it now that its almost finals week, and is the perfect time to have a torn up apartment. They decided to rip out our skylight and re-roof the house, and while doing that I came home to a giant hole in the roof. They didn't even let us know

they were going to be doing it.

The most interesting thing that has happened recently though, is that I went off-roading with my roommate and some friends last night by the Menan Buttes. Dillon was up visiting from BYU and I Kayla Pascoe was with us. My roommate Marshall was going through a puddle when his Truck just died. It wouldn't start, wouldn't do anything. so I pulled him out of the puddle and was towing him back, when I realized we were going the wrong way, so we left his truck there, and all got in my jeep to head out. I was heading out, and being careful through the puddles, when we came to what would more accurately be called a pond-puddle. It was deceivingly shallow looking, but I still wanted to take it safe, so I thought I'd stick to the left side of it, which looked fine from the outside, but there was a hole right in the line I chose to go through the miniature lake. The engine died, and I could see water out of the drivers side window, that was slowly seeping in through the door. It was a pretty interesting thing to see happen. The water came all the way up to the driver side seat cushions, and the jeep was at about a 30 degree angle. We called some friends who came with their trucks and pulled me out, and towed my jeep back to my apartment. If all goes well, the engine is just hydrolocked and should be fine if I can get the water out of it. So hopefully all goes well. No one was hurt in the process, and I only had to wade through about 3-4 feet of water, and fumble numbly as I hooked the tow strap up to my jeep to get it pulled out. Luckily as we were headed out the door that night, I thought it would be a good idea to grab my coveralls, just in case anything happened I would be warm as I laid in mud to get my jeep out. I also always have my boots in the back of my jeep, for just such an emergency.

Ice Climbing!

I have wanted to go ice climbing eversince I started coming to BYU-I and saw that the school took trips ice climbing. I always tried to get someone to come with me butno one ever would, so I decided that if I was ever going to go ice climbing I should just take the plunge and sign up and go without knowing anyone else that was going with me.

I had to wake up at 3:30 and get

all of my stuff together and make it to the ORC to catch the van to go at 4 am. We then drove to Hyalite Canyon near Bozeman Montana and parked at a trailhead and took a short 15

minute hike to get to the ice. The leaders of the trip went and set up four ropes fo

r us to climb on and then came and gave us some instruction of how to ice climb and what to do. It was pretty cool being able to just hack into the ice with the ice tools and kick into it with the crampons and then just climb up it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and found that I like ice climbing just like I like rock climbing. I did have to be a little careful of where I stepped though, crampons can rip your pants pretty fast, luckily I only had one mishap where I kicked a hole in my pants while climbing.

I also decided to take my hammock with me, which was nice so I could have a place to sit down and relax that wasn't in the snow. It was a long tiring day, but also very fun. After we spent most of the day on the mountain, we stopped for pizza at a place called

MacKenzie River Pizza Co. It was some pretty good pizza. We then left to head back to Rexburg and made it back at 9:30 pm. I highly recommend going ice climbing. It is very fun.