Lots of Photos

So a lot of pictures, first ones from the camera then from my phone.

For this years Intel GPTW event at Cliff's amusement park, Linda again got extra tickets so that "uncle Chris" and family could join us. Trinity driving Dylan, 

 Dylan flying a plane,

 Dylan and I on the little "teacups",

 For the 4th of July we headed to Austin to visit Linda's family, also Brian, Dylan's cousin had his birthday the weekend after so we were there for that as well. We met up with Thu, Nat and Noah to climb at THEIR crag. Dylan had a blast playing around with Noah and for much of the day they did not require any supervision,

 Thus pulling some hard moves on a 5.13

 We've been climbing at the Dungeon, outside of Los Alamos, a lot lately since it has a really nice setting for kids. Here Dylan relaxes in the Daddy chair,

 and putting his Monster Trucks through their paces,

 I took Dylan for a hike on the Crest Trail in the Sandias this past week. Here he is, about to disturb the wilderness,

 Having a snack at a nice overlook 5,000 feet above the city, (don't worry he is not as close to the edge as he looks)

 Ok, now to phone photos.

A day at the Dungeon with Matty Moore who is holding another friends young son,

 Los Alamos was burned pretty bad in the Las Conchas fire last year leaving the approach trail to the Dungeon looking like this,

 And naturally we had a fire break out in the Bosque, the heavily treed area along the Rio Grande river, last month sometime. This is a shot from the aquarium parking lot about an hour after it started. Luckily no homes were lost and it was controlled pretty quickly. We got lucky with the wind direction.

 Seeing the thermostat reading in the mid to high eighties even with the windows open and fans on finally got me to hook up our swamp cooler.

 Dylan swimmimg in his cousins new pool,

 How much stuff can you fit in a Prius, two bike boxes and a bike on top, yes the hatch closed, though the back seats were folded down.

 Hard to argue with the gas milage,

 This past weekend we headed to Upper East Fork in the Jemez Mountains and naturally, hiked out in the rain at the end of the day.

A video of Dylan playing with a blow up hammer that "uncle" Chris? won at Cliff's when we were over there for dinner and watching the final Time Trial of Le Tour De France.

More cell phone photos

Here is an old shot of Dylan on his last day of school. You know, when the kids get sent home at noon. They had a nice pizza party and after lunch the teachers gave them ice cream...right before sending them home. Something tells me that the kids don't usually get the full sugar infusion right after lunch, unless the one giving it does not have to deal with the consequences. Here is Dylan "finishing" his ice cream.
We had a good weekend.

On Saturday Dylan and Linda went to the children's music class while Chris broke my legs on a bike ride up south 14 and the crest.

On Sunday we headed out climbing with John and Carolyn. We started out at Las Conchas in the Jemez Mountains with the hopes of getting on a couple of routes that overhang the creek which is a pretty cool setting. When we arrived it was 74 degrees and just before 11am. We managed to get 1 or 2 warm ups in, depending on the person, before it started to rain, then freezing rain and finally hail. Anyway that got us to run for the car at which point the temperature had dropped to 46 degrees and this at noon when it is supposed to be getting warmer. We headed down the hill to the Crystal Cave since it is completely sheltered, but it was not raining there anyway. This was both Linda and Carolyn's first times to the cave. I think that they enjoyed the climbing well enough. John worked on and came close to doing Minutia which is surprisingly long for how close to the ground you are the whole time. I did Minutia and the short (5.13-) version of the Leper. All in all we had a good day climbing.

The cactus on the approach to the Crystal Cave are in bloom. They are quite pretty.Dylan liked both areas. There is a great creek and meadow area for him to play in at Conchas. He enjoyed "feeding the snakes" (throwing small rocks) in the river. He had to run back and forth through the meadow to get pebbles from the trail and take them back to the river. The Crystal Cave is so steep that we could set up a rope for him to swing on just about anywhere. Eventually John just hoisted him up and tied him off to a bolt so he could swing and swing and nobody had to hold him.

Here is a dragonfly by one of the creeks we hung out near during the day.

What Else

We went to a new area in the Jemez after I got back from the OR Trade Show while Linda's mom was still here. The area was really pretty, you hike from the road up over a low ridge and drop down into a little river valley on the other side. The area is called the Upper East Fork, of some river presumably and is just up from Las Conchas. The routes are nice, mostly slightly overhanging and the 2 main walls are pretty tall. The Monster Wall which has mostly 5.11 and 5.12 routes is about 60-70 feet tall and the Spegetti Westtern Wall, mostly 5.10 and 5.11 is maybe 90 feet or so, pretty tall for the Jemez. We headed out with Marc Ripper.. and had a good time climbing on new stuff, it is getting hard to find new routes to get on that are not pretty terrible or extreamly hard, so it was nice to climb some new, good 5.11's and 5.12's.

When we first got to the wall Marc and I headed to the base to figure out which routes were which and check the hang for Dylan. As we wandered along the base of the wall there was a bunch of chirping and we almost stepped on some very small birds. They did not take off and fly away but at times they tried. I'm guessing that they had been booted from or something happened to the nest. Marc and I each scooped a bird up to show Dylan, the one I was carrying finally took flight, sort of falling toward the ground in a controled glide then all of a sudden really took off. The bird Marc was carrying just stayed put and Dylan got to check it out up close.

After Dylan had some time with the bird we returned it to where we found them and an hour or so later they were gone. Later in the afternoon we got rained on pretty hard for a bit, pretty typical when your in the mountains at about 10k feet. Here is a shot of Dylan goofing with Popo under the shelter of the wall.

I did not hear him say it but apparently Dylan was saying "Thunder, dangerous, go home" in Cantonees, which was way beyond me, although now I might be able to follow. Needless to say we all did another route to the sound of distant thunder after the rain let up. We hiked out in a light rain and Dylan fell asleep in the Sherpini. All in all a fun day out.