We had a very busy weekend, as we had T-ball, a Reds Game, shopping for our backpacking trip and getting more situated with our gear.
Saturday began with a trip to Dicks Sporting Goods to re-think my backpack and sleeping bag purchases this week. After getting my purchases home, I realized that the sleeping bag was too heavy and the pack was too small. Also, we were shopping for a hydration pack / backpack combination for Archie. We found the perfect one for him there. A 1.5 liter hydration bladder with some small pockets for snacks and other must-haves for hiking. He was thrilled. The hydration pack rarely left his back all weekend. We didn’t see anything interesting for me, so we left for T-ball.
Phillip is doing a great coaching job and the kids seem to enjoy themselves. He even pitched some to some of the more practiced kids instead of them hitting from the T.
After T-ball, it was home again to eat a quick sandwich, then off to the Reds game. Of course, they were all out of the Bobblehead giveaways by the time we got parked. But the game was quite fun anyway. Since the baby has gotten bigger, I can’t fit into my ‘game day’ Cincy Reds shirt anymore, so all I have is the hat to show my team spirit.
It was forecasted to rain at about the time the game was to start. And sure enough, the moment we sat down in our seats, it started to rain. For about thirty seconds. Then it quit and we had gorgeous weather for the rest of the game! What luck! Archie’s request for cotton candy was granted shortly after we were seated. Here is Archie and Phillip:
His face got nastier as the game progressed. Here is a picture of him after the cotton candy and after the ice cream:
While we were sitting in our seats between innings, Phillip and Archie were featured for a few seconds on the Jumbo-Tron! Neither one saw themselves, but Morgan and I saw them. That was pretty cool! The Reds pulled it out in the last half of the ninth, with a homerun resulting in the points needed to win. We were sitting at field level. When the cheerleaders threw the soft baseballs that say, “Reds Win!” Morgan caught one! She gave it to Archie. So we ended up with a free souvenir!
After the game, we headed over to the Bass Pro Shops to check out camping gear. I found a great pack and a better sleeping bag. It was a very full Saturday!
On Sunday, we got our gear together for a test run with our packs full in Mount Airy Forest. We had a great day! The weather was perfect…a little cool but not cold. Perfect hiking weather. I was a little concerned that Archie’s pack was too heavy for him (about 4 pounds with water), but he skipped along lightly like it was nothing the whole time we hiked. We put some snacks in there, but not enough. It didn’t take long before he was complaining that we didn’t pack enough snacks. So now we know…plenty of snacks! He’s very much like his Bumpa in that regard! Here he is taking a break:
Here is a picture of Phillip and I fully loaded after we took a break at the Stone Steps along one of the trails in the Forest:
There was a really weird phenomenon occurring in the Forest…I’ve never had this experience before. Ever. As soon as we got down the trail just a bit, I kept hearing drops hitting the ground. But it was a gorgeous day! We dismissed it, thinking perhaps the trees were dripping from a previous rain or something. Then we started noticing lots of caterpillars on the trail. Lots of them. Archie was fussing at us to watch our feet so we wouldn’t accidentally squash any! We paused for a minute in the trail, because I saw something out of the corner of my eye and I wasn’t sure what it was…I looked again and it happened again…A caterpillar fell. And another. And another. One fell between my feet. So it wasn’t raining rain…it was raining CATERPILLARS!!!!! It was so weird because you could hear the pitter-patter of them falling constantly. Then we started noticing that the trail was covered with tiny bits of green leaves. So the kajillion caterpillars were eating and eating at the top of the tree. Apparently they position themselves on the wrong end of the cut leaf and fall to the ground! And then try to get up another tree. We were having problems with continuously needing to brush them out of our hair and off of our packs, shoulders, clothes, whatever. Along with the caterpillar poo. It was falling just as rapidly as the caterpillars themselves! They covered everything in the forest! Here is an example:
This was how all the trees, stumps and bridges looked. You couldn’t even sit down without squashing a few! I normally enjoy caterpillars, but seeing THIS many was a bit creepy. We currently have two or three in our bug habitat to find out what kind of change they will make…butterfly or moth! There should be some fat birds around here with all these tasty morsels to grab whenever they please!
Anyway…we made our hike with no lasting bo-bos and a few caterpillars still attached to our clothes! We were beat when we got home, so we had a nice dinner together at La Rosas.
Speaking of wildlife, just as I was writing this today, our crabby cat came meowing up the stairs to my room. I looked down and saw this:
She caught a chipmunk outside and brought it to my bedroom! I’ve been leaving the doors open and the garage open (which leads directly into the basement and therefore, the whole house!) because of the nice temperatures we’ve been having. The chipmunk didn’t look very healthy at this point; very listless and allowing itself to be swatted in every direction, so the first thing I did was to grab my camera to get a picture! Just after I took the above picture, the chipmunk sprang to life all of a sudden and ran to hide in Phillip’s magazine pile. It scared me to death! I thought the thing was dead already! So I yelled for Archie to get a dustpan, the hand broom and my work gloves. There was no way I was going to sleep in here with a chipmunk scurrying around all night! After a while of chasing the chipmunk behind the bedside table, then under the bed, then back to O’Malley, I finally got it cornered before it tried to scramble under the Armoire. While I was more than a bit worried of catching some weird rodent disease from a chipmunk bite, it didn’t struggle at all when I grabbed it. I think it was trying to play dead, like it did with O’Malley, hoping I would get bored with it. I got Morgan to get a couple of pictures before I released it back into the wild of the backyard:
Cute little fella!
He was still very spry when I let him go outside…he ran away pretty quickly! I didn’t see any puncture wounds or any injury other than it was probably terrified!
As I was relaying this story to Phillip on the phone tonight, Morgan and Archie yelled up from the basement that they found another chipmunk down there! Resting in a pile of clothes! Morgan was very startled, needless to say, when she attempted to move the pile! We couldn’t find this little guy, so I re-opened the garage door hoping that perhaps he will just go away on his own. Or maybe O’Malley will earn her keep for a change and nab him. I tried to explain the situation to her, but sometimes she just doesn’t listen!
Saturday began with a trip to Dicks Sporting Goods to re-think my backpack and sleeping bag purchases this week. After getting my purchases home, I realized that the sleeping bag was too heavy and the pack was too small. Also, we were shopping for a hydration pack / backpack combination for Archie. We found the perfect one for him there. A 1.5 liter hydration bladder with some small pockets for snacks and other must-haves for hiking. He was thrilled. The hydration pack rarely left his back all weekend. We didn’t see anything interesting for me, so we left for T-ball.
Phillip is doing a great coaching job and the kids seem to enjoy themselves. He even pitched some to some of the more practiced kids instead of them hitting from the T.
After T-ball, it was home again to eat a quick sandwich, then off to the Reds game. Of course, they were all out of the Bobblehead giveaways by the time we got parked. But the game was quite fun anyway. Since the baby has gotten bigger, I can’t fit into my ‘game day’ Cincy Reds shirt anymore, so all I have is the hat to show my team spirit.
It was forecasted to rain at about the time the game was to start. And sure enough, the moment we sat down in our seats, it started to rain. For about thirty seconds. Then it quit and we had gorgeous weather for the rest of the game! What luck! Archie’s request for cotton candy was granted shortly after we were seated. Here is Archie and Phillip:
His face got nastier as the game progressed. Here is a picture of him after the cotton candy and after the ice cream:
While we were sitting in our seats between innings, Phillip and Archie were featured for a few seconds on the Jumbo-Tron! Neither one saw themselves, but Morgan and I saw them. That was pretty cool! The Reds pulled it out in the last half of the ninth, with a homerun resulting in the points needed to win. We were sitting at field level. When the cheerleaders threw the soft baseballs that say, “Reds Win!” Morgan caught one! She gave it to Archie. So we ended up with a free souvenir!
After the game, we headed over to the Bass Pro Shops to check out camping gear. I found a great pack and a better sleeping bag. It was a very full Saturday!
On Sunday, we got our gear together for a test run with our packs full in Mount Airy Forest. We had a great day! The weather was perfect…a little cool but not cold. Perfect hiking weather. I was a little concerned that Archie’s pack was too heavy for him (about 4 pounds with water), but he skipped along lightly like it was nothing the whole time we hiked. We put some snacks in there, but not enough. It didn’t take long before he was complaining that we didn’t pack enough snacks. So now we know…plenty of snacks! He’s very much like his Bumpa in that regard! Here he is taking a break:
Here is a picture of Phillip and I fully loaded after we took a break at the Stone Steps along one of the trails in the Forest:
There was a really weird phenomenon occurring in the Forest…I’ve never had this experience before. Ever. As soon as we got down the trail just a bit, I kept hearing drops hitting the ground. But it was a gorgeous day! We dismissed it, thinking perhaps the trees were dripping from a previous rain or something. Then we started noticing lots of caterpillars on the trail. Lots of them. Archie was fussing at us to watch our feet so we wouldn’t accidentally squash any! We paused for a minute in the trail, because I saw something out of the corner of my eye and I wasn’t sure what it was…I looked again and it happened again…A caterpillar fell. And another. And another. One fell between my feet. So it wasn’t raining rain…it was raining CATERPILLARS!!!!! It was so weird because you could hear the pitter-patter of them falling constantly. Then we started noticing that the trail was covered with tiny bits of green leaves. So the kajillion caterpillars were eating and eating at the top of the tree. Apparently they position themselves on the wrong end of the cut leaf and fall to the ground! And then try to get up another tree. We were having problems with continuously needing to brush them out of our hair and off of our packs, shoulders, clothes, whatever. Along with the caterpillar poo. It was falling just as rapidly as the caterpillars themselves! They covered everything in the forest! Here is an example:
This was how all the trees, stumps and bridges looked. You couldn’t even sit down without squashing a few! I normally enjoy caterpillars, but seeing THIS many was a bit creepy. We currently have two or three in our bug habitat to find out what kind of change they will make…butterfly or moth! There should be some fat birds around here with all these tasty morsels to grab whenever they please!
Anyway…we made our hike with no lasting bo-bos and a few caterpillars still attached to our clothes! We were beat when we got home, so we had a nice dinner together at La Rosas.
Speaking of wildlife, just as I was writing this today, our crabby cat came meowing up the stairs to my room. I looked down and saw this:
She caught a chipmunk outside and brought it to my bedroom! I’ve been leaving the doors open and the garage open (which leads directly into the basement and therefore, the whole house!) because of the nice temperatures we’ve been having. The chipmunk didn’t look very healthy at this point; very listless and allowing itself to be swatted in every direction, so the first thing I did was to grab my camera to get a picture! Just after I took the above picture, the chipmunk sprang to life all of a sudden and ran to hide in Phillip’s magazine pile. It scared me to death! I thought the thing was dead already! So I yelled for Archie to get a dustpan, the hand broom and my work gloves. There was no way I was going to sleep in here with a chipmunk scurrying around all night! After a while of chasing the chipmunk behind the bedside table, then under the bed, then back to O’Malley, I finally got it cornered before it tried to scramble under the Armoire. While I was more than a bit worried of catching some weird rodent disease from a chipmunk bite, it didn’t struggle at all when I grabbed it. I think it was trying to play dead, like it did with O’Malley, hoping I would get bored with it. I got Morgan to get a couple of pictures before I released it back into the wild of the backyard:
Cute little fella!
He was still very spry when I let him go outside…he ran away pretty quickly! I didn’t see any puncture wounds or any injury other than it was probably terrified!
As I was relaying this story to Phillip on the phone tonight, Morgan and Archie yelled up from the basement that they found another chipmunk down there! Resting in a pile of clothes! Morgan was very startled, needless to say, when she attempted to move the pile! We couldn’t find this little guy, so I re-opened the garage door hoping that perhaps he will just go away on his own. Or maybe O’Malley will earn her keep for a change and nab him. I tried to explain the situation to her, but sometimes she just doesn’t listen!
2 comments:
You should keep one of those chipmunks as a pet. You have been looking for a "fuss free" pet afterall! :-)
Wow...how neat about the caterpillars....I love to see all the outdoor activities you all do...hiking looks like such fun and something we have to try really soon. And, those chipmunks are really too cute ;)
Post a Comment