The End of Summer

School is back in and it's the very end of August. Summer is about over around here! Not that you can tell, as it is still getting into the 90's most days... I thought I'd post some pictures of a few things we've done this summer...

We went for a couple of hikes up Green Canyon this summer. On our first hike, in June, I saw my first Sego Lily, Utah's state flower. Sego Lilly

A couple of weeks later, the boys and I climbed a rock slide, where we found fossils. We brought home a big pile of rocks with horn corral fossils in them to add to our collection. The pile by the carport is getting pretty substantial LOLhorn coral fossil

We also found this great plant, which is called Spider Milkweed. It took me a while to figure out what it was; it wasn't in any of my wildflower guides. And did you know that there are over 100 species of milkweed in North America?Spider Milkweed

No trip to Green Canyon is complete without a stop at the Boy Scout Cave.S, A and E at the Boy Scout Cave, Green Canyon

Joe and I went on a little picnic up South Canyon.South Canyon road, looking north towards Paradise

While taking pics of the wildflowers, I noticed this little beastie crawling up my leg... I have to admit I shrieked LOL Then I took a deep breath and a picture.Giant Ichneumon wasp, female

E received his Arrow of Light award (the highest award you can earn in cub scouts). I would show you pics of this proud moment, but I had S, my 12 yr old, taking them, and the only pics he got were of the back of E's head LOL He also earned his Webelos and graduated into 11 yr old scouts (we do cub scouts a little differently in the LDS church). Good job E!

We spent several days camping up Logan Canyon at Preston Valley campground. We used our new tent for the first time! Valori, my sil, stayed with us for a couple of days too. Grandma and Grandpa Ames joined us for a few meals. Joe is a FANTASTIC cook... so I let him do most of it. Aren't I nice? LOL We had a little excitement when I sent Aisy (my 6 yr old daughter) to the restroom to wash her hands, and she found this friendly little fellow...Racer snake

He's a Racer snake, completely harmless. They're long and skinny, move very fast, and climb trees when they're disturbed. This one was almost a yard long!

While we were there we saw plenty of wildlife. Lots of caterpillars and other bugs (Tiger Swallowtail butterly, Cabbage White butterfly, plenty of different beetles, cicadas, caddisfly larva), some small fish, an American Beaver (this is A, me and C waiting by the river, hoping to see the beaver again)...

A, me and C, Logan River, Preston Valley campground

a Red-naped Sapsucker...Red-naped Sapsucker on river birch, Logan Canyon

an American Dipper (he's perched on the end of the stick, kind of blends into the river)...American Dipper, Logan River

and lots of other birds (American Robin, Pine Siskin, lots of Yellow Warblers feeding their babies, Lazuli Bunting, Western Wood-peewee, Song Sparrow, Black-headed Grosbeak, Black-chinned and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, Hermit Thrush, MacGillivray's Warber, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Barn Swallow, Violet-green Swallow, Chipping Sparrow, Red-tailed Hawk, Dusky Flycatcher and a Black-throated Gray Warbler).

We went on a hike with Grandpa...Me, C and Grandpa Ames, Preston Valley, Logan Canyon

And saw some beautiful wildflowers (although I'm going to spare you in this post, and only show you one). This is pink alumroot, or coral bells. It was growing all over the cliff on the other side of the river.Pink Alumroot, Logan Canyon

We went to our first Buzz baseball game. I'm pretty sure that out of my little family, I was the ONLY one watching the game LOL S was reading his book, the other kids were playing with their cousins or bugging Grandma and Grandpa Yeates. Not sure what Joe was doing LOL

Jeanette's family, my family and Grandma and Grandpa Yeates

After the game there was a wonderful fireworks show to celebrate Utah's statehood!

We went to the Cache County Fair. This year all the kids entered something in the Home Arts contest. E, A, Az and C entered lego creations...lego entries by A, C and Az

S entered a wood carving. Unfortunately, it was displayed upside down! The carving is on the other side of the stick (it's a carving of a man). He was pretty upset about that.We also wandered around, ate lots of fair food (my cousins have a Frozen Lemonade stand every year, mmmm...) and checked out all of the 4H animals. We love petting the sheepies.Az and E

S played his first game of golf with Joe (dad) and Grandpa Yeates. He also got stung on the cheek by a yellow jacket this summer, but I don't think he'd appreciate me showing pics of his face all swollen up :)

Joe and I celebrated our 14th year anniversary by leaving the kids at grandma's house (thanks grandma!) and heading up to Tony Grove for some camping. There were wildflowers all around our camp!fireweed, aster spp and Indian paintbrush, Tony Grove campground, Logan Canyon

We borrowed some kayaks and spent most of Friday on Tony Grove lake. No pics, since I didn't want to take my camera out on the water. Here's a pic of the kayaks on the van though...It was SO MUCH FUN! We have a canoe, but these are way more fun. While we were on the lake, we kept noticing helicopters flying over. Since the lake is WAY up the canyon, this was pretty unusual. Apparently the thunderstorm the night before started a fire a couple of ridges over. We got out of the water just as the helicopters started using a big bucket to dip water out of the lake. That evening we headed down to Garden City, by Bear Lake, for dinner and a fresh raspberry cheesecake shake. Bear Lake raspberries are famous (at least around here LOL).It POURED most of the night, so we decided to pack up and head for home on Saturday. Tony Grove road, Logan Canyon

So we enjoyed a movie (the Proposal, love Sandra Bullock) and dinner at the Olive Garden. And when I got home, guess what was waiting for me on my doorstep?By some miracle, I won this amazing little house on the Oh Merci blog! It is truly divine :)

We still had all day Sunday before we had to pick up the kids, so we decided on a road trip. We went north to Idaho to see the Niter Ice Cave. It was really neat. We forgot a flashlight though, so we didn't go in very far. It's really too bad that some people think graffiti is a good way to express themselves :(

This is the lava vent that made the lava tube that became the ice cave. The vent and the cave are literally in the middle of wheat fields.We continued further north to the Black Canyon of the Bear River, where we had a really yummy picnic lunch (cooked by dh, of course, on his backpack stove).The river was beautiful.There was this wonderful old homestead nearby. I am fascinated by homesteaders. Don't you just wonder about the lives that were lived here?view of the homestead from the old apple orchard

view out the window of the old homestead

We finished off Sunday at grandma's house, having dinner with her, Valori and the kiddos. And picking more of these...I spent several days this summer bottling beans. Linda, my mil, plants a couple of rows of beans for me every year. The kids and I pick them, Linda helps me snap them, I bottle them, and Joe mans the pressure cooker for me. It makes me nervous LOL Yet another kindness by my sweet dh :)

Joe and I spent a Saturday hiking with the 11 yr old scouts on the Temple Fork sawmill trail. We cooled off in the REALLY COLD water of the spring...E and J, building a rock dam in the Temple Fork stream at the spring

and found a baby water snake (yes, this is me holding it. Snakes are awesome!)...
I did get some sewing done this summer, but this is the only thing I have a picture of right now... a new pillow for my living room.Linda taught S and E to sew while they were staying with her. They made pillows too. Linda has a LOT more patience than I do :)

We made a last minute trip to Salt Lake to buy a cello for E. He has outgrown the one we were renting. This one is a 3/4 size, so it should last him for a least 2 to 3 years. While we were there we enjoyed homemade chicken noodles at my mom's house. These are not like chicken noodle soup. They are thick flour/egg noodles in a chicken broth gravy that you eat over potatoes. I've never met anyone else who knows what they are, so they must be a family specialty. Only A and I appreciate them out of my little family LOL On the way home we ran into a cloudburst, which left us with this beautiful rainbow, captured by my son, S. If you look really closely, you'll notice it's a double rainbow.We finish off the summer every year with a trip to our secret monarch caterpillar hunting spot, a.k.a. Airport Road. This year we found 5 large caterpillars and 1 very small caterpillar. We also picked up a Virginian Tiger Moth caterpillar, which C (who is almost 4) calls the "feather bug". It looks like a yellow woolly bear caterpillar. This is one of our favorite end of summer traditions.Az, S, C and A caterpillar hunting, Airport Road

C and I found a little piece of heaven the other day...

Garff Wayside Gardens park, Logan

I drive past this park all the time and have never stopped here! I'll have lots of rose pictures to show you soon...

I hope your summer was a wonderful as mine!

Updates

It's been a while since I've been here, which leaves me feeling horribly guilty :) I thought I'd update you all...

I spent every Friday in May at Hogle Zoo, in Salt Lake City, Utah, taking a Utah Master Naturalist class. It was a really wonderful experience! I was able to learn more about aquatic systems/wetlands in Utah, and visit some fun places. We went on field trips to the G. K. Gilbert Geologic View Park at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon (it's a very tiny park, but the info signs are fantastic!), a short hike up Little Cottonwood Canyon, Farmington Bay, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, USU Botanical Garden at Kaysville Ponds, and around Hogle Zoo itself, of course. My absolute favorite field trip was our last class, where we did a Boreal Toad survey at Strawberry Reservoir. Sadly, I forgot my camera, and have yet to see pics from anyone else's camera LOL We were able to find approximately 50 Boreal Toads, as well as several Chorus Frogs (we also heard some Northern Leopard Frogs, but didn't actually catch any). I would LOVE to participate in the survey again next spring! I am also hoping that I will be able to take the mountain module for UMN next spring as well. If any of you have a chance to take a Master Naturalist class (they are taught in most states), I highly recommend it. No experience is necessary :)

June was supposed to be very busy, but it ended up being busy in a different way than I expected. We always do our cub scout day camp in June, and that went as planned, with only a little bit of rain. It was still a lot of fun! Our theme this year was space camp, and they had an inflatable planetarium in the main cabin, which was awesome! The next week of June was supposed to be the annual Quilt Shop Hop with my mom and sister, but sadly Boy Scout camp and 11-year old camp were the same weekend. I decided it was more important to me to have dh go to camp, first a night with S at Camp Hunt at Bear Lake, then a day with E at Hull Valley, than it was for me to spend way too much money buying more fabric LOL I did get to spend one afternoon visiting Village Dry Goods in Brigham City and Red Rooster in Logan with my mom, sister, Peggy and Amy. We had lunch at Maddox first; that chicken salad was HUGE! While in Brigham we paid a little side visit to the thrift store there, where I got a couple of goodies to add to the towering pile of things I need to do something with LOL
July started off with a bang with a camping trip to Preston Valley, up Logan Canyon. We had a fantastic camping site, with flush toilets right across the street, yet totally screened by a layer of trees. It was a large site with plenty of room for our tent, a tent for S and A, and Valori's tent (we even had room for MORE tents, if anyone else had decided to stay). We were there from Wednesday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, plenty of time for some serious nature observing. Joe was very patient with my constant taking off :) Nature list (since I can't just post bird lists anymore LOL): pink alumroot, lance-leaved stonecrop, Rocky Mountain maple, river birch, box elder, western meadowrue, yellow columbine, red osier dogwood, alfalfa, yellow sweet clover, wild roses, star-flowered false solomon's seal, sagebrush, tarragon, tiger swallowtail, cabbage white butterfly, several different unknown caterpillars, caddisfly larva, American beaver, song sparrow, yellow warblers (lots of them, feeding their babies), lazuli bunting, American robin, yellow-rumped warbler, black-throated gray warbler (a life bird for me!), barn swallow, violet-green swallow, black-chinned hummingbird (the camp hosts, right next to us, had several feeders that were always covered in hummers), MacGillivray's warbler, American dipper, chipping sparrow, red-tailed hawk, black-headed grosbeak female, red-naped sapsucker, pine siskin, dusky flycatcher, western wood-peewee, hermit thrush, racer snake (you should have heard the piercing screams from Az when she discovered this snake in the restroom! LOL), and some little fish in a pool of water that connected to the river (I think they are immature trout, since I can't find any pics of minnows that look like them). I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that's quite the list isn't it? It was a really fun trip, and most of those things were found right around our campsite! Friday night we came down from the canyon and watched the fireworks from Valori's yard. Can't miss the 4th of July fireworks, even if you're camping!

Last night we took a short drive up Green Canyon. The boys and I hiked up a rock slide, where we found some horn corral fossils and a BIG yellow crab spider (I grabbed a stalk of tarragon to take a pic, and almost grabbed the spider instead!). Valori came with us, and had to be back to do a massage (how lucky am I to have a sister-in-law who is a massage therapist? LOL), so Joe left me at the rock slide and took Valori back to the mouth of the canyon. I walked half-way down, taking wildflower pics along the way, to the "boy scout cave", where I caught up with my family. Nature list: tarragon, rabbitbrush, sagebrush, Rocky Mountain maple, juniper, spider milkweed (this is a really cool looking milkweed), Virgin's Bower clematis, aster spp., red clover, yellow sweet clover, alfalfa, common mullein, thistle, sego lily (Utah's state flower), wild roses, some yellow flowers that I haven't identified yet, spotted towhee, chipping sparrow, broad-tailed hummers, and assorted dragonflies. The canyon was pretty dry, and a lot of things were done blooming, so this trip wasn't as great as last months, but still a nice evening in the canyon.

I am hoping to post a BUNCH of pictures later today or tomorrow, so be on the lookout!

Back Again!

Clodius butterfly on fox mint

Wow, I can't believe it's been basically a MONTH since I've posted! August has just flown by. But the kids are back in school again, so hopefully I will have more time! My oldest, S, just started 6th grade at the middle school. When did I get old enough to have a 6th grader?! E is back in school this year, in 5th grade, after learning at home for a couple of years, and seems to be doing really well. A is in 3rd grade and Az is in afternoon kindergarten. That means I will only have C in the afternoons. It's going to be SOOOO quiet! I might actually start scrapbooking again! I have been trying to clean up my craft area in anticipation of being able to use it. So far I think I have just created a bigger mess, sigh.
Some of the fun things I did this month include: going sailing for the first time (there is NOTHING like sailing under the stars. It was AMAZING), camping in the Uintah Mountains with dh for our 13 year anniversary, and an Audubon fieldtrip to Tony Grove up Logan Canyon (where I got 3 new birds for my list, including a life bird Rock Wren, and saw an amazing variety of wildflowers). Oh, and how could I forget the FROG!!! The kids have been begging me to take them to a local park with a stream so they could catch a frog. Never thought we'd actually catch one! He's a Northern Leopard Frog and we have named him Clyde (after my grandfather who passed away in Feb. Somehow I can't see him being overjoyed to have a frog named after him. He was an accountant, not an outdoor type of guy LOL). Anyway, we have really enjoyed the antics of the frog, who has already escaped once. I also picked up a couple more pieces of milk glass for my small collection. I have it all lined up on top of the piano for now, but I am out of space, so I'd better stay away from the thrift store for a while :)
So that's my month in a nutshell, and I leave you with some pictures...

Clyde, the Northern Leopard Frog

fireweed

buckwheat
near Smooth Rock Falls on the Provo River, Uintah Mountains, Utah
Indian Paintbrush, Uintah Mountains, Utah
Elephant's Head Lousewort, Uintah Mountains, Utah
water hitting a rock, Smooth Rock Falls, Uintah Mountains, Utah
Provo River Falls, Uintah Mountains, Utah

Whooooo

Dock on the pond at the ATK Ranch, Promontory, Utah

I bounced out of bed early Saturday morning to meet the Audubon group and go birding in Box Elder County (the next county over). Okay, maybe I didn't bounce exactly, considering that I was up until 1:30 the night before, but at least I managed to drag myself out through sheer anticipation LOL There are several places in Box Elder County that I have always wanted to go, but have never had a vehicle able to get there. Since we were carpooling, this was my BIG CHANCE. Unfortunately, we didn't end up going anywhere my car couldn't have gone, but we saw some great things anyway!

One of our first stops was an empty grain silo with nesting Barn Owls. We were given STRICT instructions to make as little noise as possible, and only stick our heads in the silo one at a time. I was patiently waiting my turn when the owls decided they had had enough. Out they came, right out the bottom of the silo we were sticking our heads in! It was SO AMAZING!!! Juvenile owls were flopping around at our very feet, running into people's legs as we all ducked to get out of their way! They are incredibly beautiful, and I really wish I had brought my camera over to the silo with me. After the owls (at least 4 or more) flew off to quieter perches, we all felt so guilty for disturbing them. I hope they all made it back home safely!

Our next stop was Golden Spike National Historic Site, where the transcontinental railroad met. A couple of birders in the group had found a Burrowing Owl nest site around there a few days previously. I have never seen a Burrowing Owl, so I was really excited about this stop! As we approached the nest site, there he was, sitting calmly on the fence, right next to the road. Unlike the Barn Owls, he was completely unconcerned about us staring at him. Barn Owls are beautiful, but Burrowing Owls are just plain CUTE.

Burrowing Owl

We continued on down Promontory, where we were blessed with a rare glimpse of a Common Nighthawk perched obligingly on a leafless branch in broad daylight. I've never actually seen one perched before, much less in good light where you can see all his lovely camouflaging. Usually I see them as shadows with white wing bars zooming around parking lot lights.

My other great bird for the day was a lifer Say's Phoebe. This bird was hanging out on a farm with the cows LOL

While we didn't see a LOT of birds on this trip, and none of them will count towards my "200 bird" list, as they were not in Cache Valley, really the best part of the trip was getting to know the other birders. I really enjoy riding with Dick and Dorothy, and had wonderful discussions with them about not only birds, but wildflowers, which Dorothy know a lot about! And Dick had some really great field guides, like Butterflies of the West and Dragonflies of the Southwest. They are great people, and I look forward to birding and wildflower watching with them again! They even took the group a little out of our way, just to show me a Blazing Star wildflower. Unfortunately, it wasn't in bloom at the moment, having spent flowers and unopened buds on the stem. But I should be able to locate it again another time. I love how my hobbies have allowed me to meet many wonderful people!

Desert Whitetail Dragonfly on marsh grass

When I got home, I discovered that dh had gone to the thrift store without me! And he got this great desk, to replace the monstrosity that I am currently using. A great deal for $15. Now I just need a LOT of primer and white paint to fix up all the goodies accumulating around my house LOL

A New Love, A New Hobby

Do I need one more hobby? Umm... no. But the long, cool, wet spring has turned into a summer that is overflowing with a riot of wildflowers! And I can't resist them. As may be apparent from earlier posts, I am a birder. I love birds, and this year I am making a serious effort to see as many as possible. In fact, I am at 137 species seen in Cache Valley! Plus a Great-Horned Owl in the 2 adjoining valleys and a life-bird Sage Thrasher in Wyoming. It's been a great year! Anyway, when you are out looking for birds it's hard to not notice all the OTHER wonderful things surrounding you, like millions of wildflowers! I've been checking out every available wildflower book from the library, and I recently bought a nice book called "Plants of the Rocky Mountains". And yet I STILL cannot identify the majority of flowers I have pictures of. It's SO frustrating! Much easier to ID birds LOL
So my new love, my new hobby is photographing and identifying wildflowers. Be prepared... there are probably a lot of flower pics coming :)
Colorado Columbine at Tony Grove, Utah
Small-flowered Woodland Star, one of my most favorite wildflowers. It is so tiny and delicate that it is easy to miss.
Phlox species, Limber Pine Trail, Utah I also saw a lot of these at Fossil Butte, Wyoming

More flower pictures coming soon!