...Sledding Continued

As I pack my bags for the trip home, I thought I'd post a few more pictures from sledding 2 weeks ago. Enjoy and I'll see many of you soon!
Before sledding, there were waterfalls to hide behind.
Allen makes the trail.
...before I remembered the trash bags in my pack.
Nicole tries out the garbage bag.
Ryan folds it like a diaper and goes!
The Maid of the Mist Unabomber goes sledding...

...followed by the unintentional but ever fitting headstand! (I think that's a grimace.)

Holiness and Hiking in High Country

Sound like a book title? Well, this week combined a Bible Missionary Holiness Camp with some hiking near McCall, Idaho. McCall is on the western side of Idaho, so I decided to take the scenic route up around the mountains. According to the directions, it was even 50 miles shorter. As usual, I never really know what I'm getting into, so we'll let the pictures do the talking.
My first stop was at the world's first nuclear power plant, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, which is now a landmark.
For those nerds who are interested, here's a blurry description. It was unique because it used sodium potassium, a liquid metal, as the primary coolant.
The reactor control room.
The top of the containment.
Looking through the containment into the core... you could almost feel the "zoomies". They claimed the twitching and slight glow would wear off after a couple of hours.
Mock-ups of the fuel rods.
Imitations of the 4 famous light bulbs that were first lit by nuclear power. They located three of the original bulbs, but an engineer allegedly still has one on his desk at the site somewhere.

Continuing on my way, I stopped here for a picture of the Sawtooth Mountains. I took a similar picture here a couple of months ago, except I was upside down and everything was covered in snow.
Thinking I was taking a short cut (and blindly following my GPS), I turned off onto a road, that quickly turned into a 1 lane dirt road. As you can see here, some portions were smooth, but others...

...weren't so smooth. So as I dodged creeks, trees and grand prix eating potholes, this little short cut turned into 45 miles of blind curves, mountain passes and car rattling hours of back country driving. Now I know why they all drive trucks in Idaho!
You know it's bad when the DOT calls you slow.

At least there were some nice waterfalls along the way.
The forest recently burned, but now the wildflowers are blooming!
Hallelujah - pavement at last! Eight hours later, I finally arrived at the church camp and got to enjoy some great services and meet new people. As always, nothing beats a keen sense of the Holy Spirit in a service.
Saturday afternoon, I headed out for a hike near the camp. The first couple miles included some beautiful lakes and waterfalls cascading down the rocks.

A couple guys had ridden these beautiful horses up the trail.
Some great views of the lake.
A lone tree stands strong in the middle.

After leaving the first two lakes (and all the other people), it got interesting. Somewhere between the hail, pouring rain, thunder and canvassing the hillsides in search of the snow covered trail, I found the adventure once again. Here you can see the sun in the distance. Unfortunately, that's as close as the sun would get as a I muddled through the rain.
A great view of the mountain behind Louie Lake.

After a long hot shower and some more great services at camp, another weekend came to a close. But, it also brings me that much closer to my much anticipated trip home with family, friends, camp, hiking and who knows what else! After 167 days away, I can't wait to see everyone! For those I won't see, I'll be sure to get some pictures up as soon as I return.

Sledding. SLEDDING?!?

Sledding you ask? Well, I'll get to that. Huck Finn would agree with me when I say that a planned adventure is no adventure at all. The adventure is what you didn't plan! And that's where we found ourselves this weekend!

Last weekend, Allen (a co-worker) and I attempted to hike to the Darby Wind Caves. Although the description talked about frequent afternoon thunderstorms and "competing for space with lightening and waterfalls", it didn't seem like a likely problem from sunny Idaho Falls. However, no sooner had we turned onto the dirt road leading to the trailhead, it started pouring. While we were prepared with appropriate rain gear, and thinking it wouldn't much matter once we got to the caves, it was the lightening striking the mountainside we intended to climb that made us nervous. Allen assured me he was quick, but sidestepping a bolt of lightening at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s was outside his capabilities. After a short nap in the car waiting for the storm to pass (it didn't), and after assuring Allen that bears couldn't open car doors (apparently the thought was interrupting his sleep), we decided to call it off and head back to sunny Idaho Falls.

Fast forward to this weekend, we tried again, but this time included Ryan (another co-worker), Tyler (his brother) and Nicole (a relative to somebody I'm sure), statistically reducing our odds of getting hit. Right by the trailhead we disturbed a large moose, but continued on a relatively easy hike, well... until we hit snow. I'll let the pictures tell the rest:
A scenic mini-waterfall along the trail, and our first signs of snow.
Joe in the weightlifting competition.
Tyler and Ryan in the not-so-synchronized jumping competition.
Ryan in the "I tried to do a 360 and got stuck at 60" aerial competition.
After hiking a little further, I couldn't resist "skiing" down this little hill...
...and neither could Nicole. But after a few treacherous climbs up snow covered hillsides (and by snow, I'm referring to three feet of it), we got a glimpse of the cave entrance.
The cave entrance... with a waterfall at the mouth of it. Hmmmm. Not wanting to go home disappointed, we slugged our way over to the entrance (where the snow was well over our heads) to look for a way in.
Looking back, there was a great view...
...but as you can see here, the water was too fast, too deep and too wide, and the rocks too slippery at the cave entrance.
Here's a picture showing the mouth of the cave, with water running out and the larger waterfall just downstream. So, we turned back. Going down proved much colder and wet... but fun. As we slipped and slid down the mountain, we got to an open hill and decided it would just be easier to slide down on our bottoms. Well, about the time I got to the bottom (soaking wet from the snow), I remembered the spare trash bags and rain poncho I had in my pack, which would make for great sleds.
So, while Allen assumed the "I'm tired and don't want to compete for space with lightening" fetal position......we slid down the hill. In this video I'm making good use of a free Niagara Falls poncho. (The videographer extends his apologies for the unsteadiness at the end, but remaining upright proved too challenging.)

So, despite not getting to explore the caves, we all had fun and made the most of yet another adventure. Enjoy and I can't wait to be home in a few weeks!

National Parks Tour

3200 miles. 1500 to 9700 feet in elevation. 9 days. 8 nights. 8 National Parks. 4 engineers and happy campers. 3 picture-takers (I promise to have deleted more then 4000 pictures). 1 car (with lots of stuff and 3 back-seat drivers). Are you ready for the tour?

We'll take the tour chronologically. I started out early Friday morning for Hoover Dam, making it down there in time to take the powerplant tour and walk across the top from Nevada to Arizona. Here's a few pictures from the tour:

Looking at the Dam from the Nevada side.
Looking at the Colorado River below the dam. You can see the new bypass bridge being built across the canyon.
There's not much for perspective in this picture, unless you find the stairs at the very bottom. There's enough concrete here to build a 4-foot sidewalk from Los Angeles to New York City!

Here are eight of the Dam's 17 generators.
Two of the four intakes with the man-made Lake Mead in the background.
The facts...
...and figures.
Now that's a risky job! If you look close, you'll see the guys being shuttled over in a little cage along with a section or rebar for the new bypass bridge.
Forget the tent! THIS is camping in style!
This is one of those billboards you won't find in NY.

This pictures is just prepping you for the many landscape pictures to come...

From Hoover Dam, I headed back to the Las Vegas airport to pick up the rest of the crew (Mike, Jenn and (John) Fritz, who you will get to meet via pictures). In Las Vegas, we walked "The Strip", taking in the lights, glitz and glamor of Vegas. While there were some interesting things to see, I was disturbed seeing an entire city devoted to destroying the precious God-given resources of time, money, minds, pure lives and souls for temporal entertainment that only serves selfish desires without a thought for the eternal consequences. Fortunately, the rest of the vacation was saturated by the natural beauty God provided us to enjoy. Quoting Colossians 1:16: "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:" and Revelations 4:11: "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."

With the rest of this blog, I will continue through our trip chronologically. However, the first group of pictures at each place will be an attempt to present God's beautiful creation, and then I'll provide evidence that we really were there, plus a handstand or two. For as the angels said in Isaiah 6:3, "the whole earth is full of His glory", and I hope these pictures help you realize that. I'll also post the words to my favorite song, "How Great Thou Art" by Carl Boberg, as he describes it pretty well:

"O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. When through the woods, and forest glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur, And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze."

Those first two verses, as evidenced by the following pictures, provide me the assurance and hope of the third and fourth verses: "And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing; Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in; That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin. When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall bow, in humble adoration, And then proclaim: "My God, how great Thou art!"

Our first stop.

A little lizard.
Here's the crew, except we switched Mike for Dave (anxiously awaiting his first kid) and tacked on 7 years. (But our trebuchet will never be forgotten!)
The 2009 version: L to R: Joe, Fritz, Jenn and Mike, 4 UB Engineering graduates.
Now for the people pictures...
...so Mom knows I'm not the only one that likes to live life on "the edge".
The first of many!
Followed by some break dancing!?!
Mike agrees - smiling is overrated.
Fritz takes a break from snapping pictures and saying "I'm not in, Joe" as we'd drive away from scenic overlooks.

Not the last sign we would violate on the trip ("Your speed is... SLOW DOWN").
Joe waits to scare Jenn as she walks by (some things never change)...
...after which Jenn breaks out her high-kick martial arts.
Trying to fit it all in.
To make the most of our stay in Zion NP, we decided to hike "Angel's Landing", which is on top of this...
...requiring a hike up this...
...and a few warnings...
...for the traverse across this.
Heading out of Zion towards Bryce NP!

Bryce Canyon National Park can not be adequately described by words or pictures. These pictures do not begin to do due justice to the thousands of "hoo-doo's" covering the landscape as the sun shone upone them. Taking the words from Ezekiel 43:2, "...and the earth shined with his glory."
Beautiful Bryce in no particular order...

Of course.
This is the start of the "Wall Street" hike. For perspective, take a look at the size of the people.
Jenn looking for the trail...
...found Mike instead.
Meanwhile, Fritz...
...and I try to move a rock...

...and attempt handstands (one of which left a reminder for the rest of the trip).
A striking resemblance, no?

Between Bryce and Arches, we passed through Capitol Reef National Park. Here's a few pictures:
You might also notice that we were successfully dodging thunderstorms along the way.
Our next stop was Arches National Park.
The rock on the left looks like an elephant.

Now for some people so you can see just how big these arches are. After hearing "Who is that, and where is his mother?" as I jogged over to the arch, I opted for the inverted handstand.

Then on to Timpanogos Caves!

The view climbing up to the caves.

These next few are all rock formations inside the caves.

Now those are some teeth!

The hike was almost straight up... and yes, we all had breathing difficulties by the time we got to this sign.
After Timpanogos, we made a stop at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. This is the Mormon temple.
Inside the visitors center.
The church.
Proof that Jenn didn't spontaneously combust.

Not the White House, but the state capitol building...
...followed by a pit stop at the all-you-can-eat-meat Rodizio's grill.

This next set is from our two days at Yellowstone National Park (and in no particular order).

I love the variety of colors and features at Yellowstone.
A "scared" tree.

A buffalo rolling around in the dirt. We also got to see antelope, deer, coyotes, buffalo and their babies, and some crazy tourists ("You do know this is a road, right? Well maybe you shouldn't park in it!" she mumbled, as she stumbled back to set up her tripod and 2 foot long camera in the other lane).
Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.
Looking out over Yellowstone Lake.

A grizzly bear with her cub. Some of us saw lots of other bears too (or were those stumps, shadows and rocks?)

And yes, this lake was still frozen!
A bald eagle in her nest.

Now these are cool... it's basically boiling mud that spits, sputters and splatters!

Moose!

The paparazzi catches up with us.

Only dangerous for the one with his head down.

Mike models appropriate sleepwear when it's in the 30's at night.
Grand Teton National Park. These pictures are all in the evening with the sun setting behind the mountains. I hope to get some views of the Teton's in the morning when the sun shines on them and shows their true majestic beauty.

I thought we were safe behind the fence...

Joe makes smart comment... Jenn prepares her right uppercut.
On our way back from Yellowstone, we stopped at Mesa Falls.

Hmmm....
Then we stopped by Craters of the Moon National Park.

Don't let this "little" hill fool you, unless you enjoy that burning sensation in your throat as you gasp for more oxygen while jogging up.
The top of the "little" hill.

Off to explore some caves in the middle of a desolate land.

Inverted hand stand (because we were standing on ice).
Looking for bears (and people).

After dropping the crew off at the airport, I stopped at Hills Aerospace Museum thinking planes would cover the sadness of friends leaving and vacation coming to an end.
And hoping they replaced their engine!

I got the rare opportunity to talk to a former SR-71 pilot about flying this amazing engineering machine! One random fact - the skin of the airplane heats up to 600F due to the friction with air.
I'd like one of these in my backyard, just as a deterrent.

And there you have it. I hope you enjoy the pictures and remember, pictures don't do justice so you'll just have to come out and see the Parks for yourself! And even while we enjoy this earth, I'm even more excited for the new heavens and new earth promised in Isaiah 65:17, mentioned in 2 Peter 3:13 and described by John in Revelation 21!