Summer Staycation

This summer we enjoyed a nice "staycation" in Idaho, hopping to various spots in southern Idaho while family was visiting. Michelle's sister, husband, and their two kids from California arrived last Wednesday night (August 11th), and we've had a great time together!

On Thursday we took a day trip up to Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth Mountains (this first pic here). We rented paddleboats and road around on the lake. We played football and frisbee on the lawn in front of the lawn. And of course we got some yummy soft serve ice cream with flavor twists.

Here is a picture of the cousins as they sat on a log in front of the lodge there. We did NOT pose them for this, but they just happened to end up in age order. We couldn't have planned any better how they just lined up naturally.

On the way home we ate at a nice little Italian restaurant in Ketchum, Idaho. What a cute little town! We ate at a really good Italian restaurant there, Rico's Pizza & Pasta. I think I should start keeping a log of great Italian restaurants worldwide. Discovered a great one in Hiroshima, Japan, found and awful one in Seoul, Korea that will not make the list, and now we discovered a jewel in Ketchum. But I digress...

On Friday we went white water rafting on the main part of the Payette River. We even took grandma with us and the sons-in-law tried tipping the raft guide extra to flip her in to the river, but it never happened. :-)  Sorry, but no pics from the rafting. The rafting company seems to have every group's rafting pictures but ours; I don't know what happened to their photographer's shots of us. :-(

After the rafting, though, we went on the old Thunder Mountain Railroad scenic train ride. It was originally an old steam train line serving the mining and timber industries back in 1914. We boarded at Horseshoe Bend and departed on a three-hour-tour (did the "Giligan's Island" theme song just pop in to your head?) to Banks and back. They surely traveled slowly in those days, but we still enjoyed the ride. To the right here is a cute picture that I got of the cousins leaning over the rail of the open car we were in.

Here I must mention the Corner Cafe Bar & Grill in Horseshoe Bend. We only had about 45 minutes in between rafting and the train ride, and they miraculously served our party of 12 and got us in and out of there quickly. The food was actually very good, and we've determined that we must go back there again when we have some more time to enjoy it.

On Saturday morning we all went out shooting. We went out to the same place that we went to last week, and had a lot of fun time blowing large holes in objects in violent fashion. :-)  We even got grandma pulling the trigger on the .22, and I rediscovered that I always want to keep my wife happy, as she knows how to fire a shotgun. :-)  My niece and nephew are also great shots! Here is a "serious" pose of our posse.

After shooting we had a fun BBQ and pool party back at our house, with our California family, plus some of our Boise-area cousins joining us, as well. It's funny how before we moved to Idaho, I never BBQ'd. But now it seems I do it A LOT.

The most fun part of the BBQ/pool party was when us older cousins/siblings/friends, etc. just sat near the side/end of the pool (pic here on right) after dinner and told stories until our SIDES WERE SPLITTING from laughing so hard. It really was crazy. I don't think we've laughed that hard in a long time (if ever)!!! Our good friend Andrew Clark seemed to be the butt of a lot of our jokes, but hey... he practically invited it. What a great sport, though. We love you, Andrew!!! And Sarah... you always crack us up; you're so funny. We love you, too!!! (and hope you're recovering from your Mountain Dew chugging hangover)

I've posted nearly 200 pictures from those three days, including this INCREDIBLY embarrassing/disgusting shot of me posing in a VERY silly manner jumping in to the pool (at left). You can check out all the pics here on Flickr, or here on Facebook.

Nice Shootin' Tex!!!

This morning Christopher, Andrew, Mark, Steven and I went shooting. We just went out to some public lands near Gowen Field just outside the Boise city limits (shooting as such not being legal in city limits). This first picture here is our "serious pose" group shot. The posse is rounded up and ready to go!!! :-)

We took Christopher's shotgun, the boys' .22, and a friend's 30-.06 with us. Christopher just got a new slug barrel for his shotgun, so we took it and only slug rounds for that weapon. We shot at phone books strapped together, empty plastic containers, and some cans. We shot most of them from a range of 50 yards, but some we shot close up just for fun. The .22, of course, is fun to shoot because it has almost no kick and the rounds are really cheap, so we probably fired off 300 rounds. We shot 15 slug rounds from the shotgun, and maybe 20 from the 30-.06.

Christopher fired off the first round of the morning, and hilarity(???) ensued. Christopher has fired shotguns many times, but always with a standard target (BB) load, and without a scope. He's also fired M-16s, M-4s, M-240Bs, M-249s, M-203s, and M-2s in the military. And none of those with a scope! He learned with one pull of the trigger this morning that a shotgun with a slug round with a scope is very different than anything he's ever fired before!!! He didn't bother with earplugs (a single shot from a normal shotgun isn't a big noisy deal, right?), nor did he bother with his BCGs ("Basic Combat Glasses," which are hideous looking and nicknamed "Birth Control Goggles"). The recoil sent the scope right between his eyes and Christopher became "that guy" - the apparent newbee with a powerful gun. Man did he get his bell rung!!! Then to cap off the day he fired his final three shotgun slug rounds all loaded in to the gun's magazine at the same time. With the second relatively rapid fired round, he got "scoped" again. He wasn't even sure it hit him, but it tapped his BCGs, breaking open the cut he got earlier in the morning. The BCGs made for a nice little couple of blood rings around his eyes, but as you can tell from his smile, he was no worse for the wear. :-)

We had a great time.  Enjoy the photos herein and below, and check out all 46 posted pics from this morning, here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.

Some nice muzzle flash. For all you photo geeks out there (you know who you are), I took this with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi SLR camera, at ISO 400, at 1/640th of a second a f13. The camera shoots about 4fps in burst mode and I just happened to catch this at the right time.

Steven in a crouching position with the .22.

Mark with the Tide bottle he proudly killed.

Andrew focusing in on a stack of phone books. Who ever knew he had such a thing against phone books??? :-)