Fall Is Near

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t quite know how it always manages to surprise me but it appears fall is here.

I know, it’s marked on the calendar, but I never pay attention to those dates, and they are generally wrong anyhow!

I headed out to Boone for another shooting competition (my 3rd ever) bright and early Saturday morning only to discover that my morning would be filled with numb fingers and some shivering between stages. Had I not forgotten about aiming on the last stage I would have been really happy with the trip, but the “missed target” time penalties really hurt.

Later in the day I got to listen to the Huskers on the radio and work in the garage on another project. I won’t be posting pictures of that one until I know it’s not going to be a total disaster… but it was something do to anyway 🙂

Sunday Heather and I headed to the International Food Festival. We did that event two years ago and, despite what that post said, we both remembered the food as being weird and not very good.

This year it was even more crowded, to the point where we often couldn’t continue down the street without waiting for the mob to unbind itself. The food was good this year, perhaps because we were less adventurous, but that does make for a better experience if somewhat less culturally exciting.

The previous week we attended the Latin American Festival, an event with slightly less food, and considerably more dancing. I didn’t take any pictures, but it was a fun event. We have some friends who are from Puerto Rico, and were excited to show us some of the items in the Puerto Rican area of the event.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, fall is unmistakeably here, so it’s probably good that we enjoyed being outside over the past few weekends. Between the encroaching cold, and Heather’s gradually reducing mobility our opportunities to enjoy being out and about are probably diminished for the near future.

-Jordan

The Big Day

Posted on by Jordan

So it isn’t actually my birthday yet, but due to a busy calendar Heather and I chose to take a day and celebrate my birthday a little early.

We both took last Friday off of work, with plans to be out and about all day.

Our intent was to start the day off by sleeping in. What actually happened was that we started the day by discovering what the building fire alarms sound like. As luck would have it, we found ourselves standing in the parking lot at 6:30 in the morning meeting some neighbors we hadn’t bumped into yet.

As you may recall from my last post, Heather had to contend with a smoke alarm last weekend. She is starting to think she will never again get the opportunity to sleep past 6AM.

On the bright side, this got us off to an early start.

We started with some amazing french toast Heather made. She has sometimes led people to believe that she cannot cook; it’s not true.

Our first stop after breakfast was Ledges State Park. The park is a beautiful little piece of geology that unfortunately had a lot of flooding last year. Thanks to the current economic realities facing everyone, including the Iowa Department Of   Natural Resources, they haven’t been able to repair the stream crossings, nor clear the silt that now covers parts of the developed area.

Given that we were just there to hike, it didn’t really matter. We only hiked for about an hour, but there was enough vertical change to make our legs star to burn from all the climbing. It’s possible we are just out of shape, but I was surprised how much climbing there was to be had!

After our hike, we headed straight to the train station in Boone. The rides there don’t take you to a new destination per say, but we had heard good things about the Boone Scenic Valley Railroad. We picked up our tickets and ate a sack lunch while waiting for our departure time.

I didn’t remember to take a picture of our car, but it was the perfect way to ride on a warm(ish) fall day. It was a flat-car with railing around it, with two benches running the long way down the center facing out. We had a great view of everything!

The main attraction of the ride is the Des Monies River valley, that we crossed via the Kate Shelley Bridge. It’s a great view, well worth the ride out. We probably missed the peak fall colors by about a week, but I am in no way complaining, it was still a breathtaking view!

Once across the bridge we had a brief stop for reasons that were not completely clear, but it made a nice spot to lean out and snap this:

The train was by no means full up there, but there was a good turn out for a Friday afternoon.

From here the rest of the day was less notable, although no less enjoyable. That being said I don’t want to stretch this post out any more than I already have.

-Jordan

Somehow Fall Snuck Up On Us

Posted on by Jordan

It has been another full weekend, for Heather and I.

I started off camping with the scouts, on a trip that included a bike ride

As you can see we brought a lot of bikes along.

The ride was along the trails north of Des Moines. The same trails that lead up to the bridge we rode over back at the beginning of summer. The only thing was, we rode past red trees, and through piles of leaves blowing along the trail. We were lucky in that the weather was great! It was cold over night, but by the time we had bikes going on the trail it was a wonderful fall day.

I suppose talking about a beautiful ride, and the wonderful colors would be more interesting with a picture or two. The problem is all the bikes you saw in that picture were being operated by scouts… not to say they were getting into trouble, but I wanted to keep an eye on things.

That and the fact that all I had was my phone. It’s a workable camera, but phones aren’t suppose to go on camp outs. Adults get to bend those rules, but the boys complain to no end about their oppression when they see you get your phone out and they realize they can’t.

I left camp early because I was doing sound at church. It was probably a good thing I came home when I did though, because the smoke alarm at the top of our fancy vaulted ceiling had decided it had problems and started beeping earlier that day. Heather was about ready to loose it by the time I got there. It did provide an opportunity to use the big step ladder we bought shortly after taking possession of our new place… although I can think of scenarios were we would have used the ladder for some great purpose that don’t also involve Heather having dangerously high blood pressure… Maybe next time it will just be burned out light bulb.

Sunday we had a few friends over to carve pumpkins!

… yeah pumpkins… I didn’t really think it was time for those ether, but apparently it is.

My artistic vision was somewhat hampered by my absolute lack of manual dexterity or and artistic skill, so imagine the one I am holding looks sleepy. When you consider that the face on mine tilts down and sort of leans… and then add a little imagination it’s a pretty good pumpkin I think.

Oh, on a somewhat related note, I discovered that if you make pumpkin bread, but leave out the pumpkin, the resulting product will be a rather dry spice-bread. Stop by the break room at work tomorrow you might get to try some, its not bad… but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

-Jordan

Nebraska City

Posted on by Jordan

Saturday Heather and I went to Nebraska city.The idea was to see an orchard / pumpkin patch or at least experience some authentic fall atmosphere.

Our first stop was at the Arbor Day Farm, which consists of a place to buy food (“pie garden”) a large apple sorting system, sales area for apples and apple-biased things, Nature  trails, and other Arbor Day related activities.

The apple-sorting and cider press (all somewhat historic I think) they had there were all dormant. I *think* they fire that all up during the “apple – jacks” days or whatever the festival is called. We decided to have lunch before checking out the rest of our options. Standing in line with twenty people in front of you all buying apple pie, with ice cream, or maybe just an apple slushy, made ordering a hamburger seem like a healthy choice. Eating them, they didn’t seem especially healthy, but they were pretty good burgers.

After lunch, we headed out on the nature trail they had, taking our time to enjoy thle amazingly beautiful day. The leaves were just starting to turn, so everything smelled like fall. The temperature was in the high 70s so we didnt really have a crisp day, but it made spending a long time outside really pleasant.

Before leaving we made a stop for some pie, because well, it was apple pie at the Arbor Day Farm. Pretty good pie, not as good as the pie Heather and I made, at least while it was fresh from the oven. Fresh from the oven pie is hard to beat though, so maybe that’s not a fair contest.

We left the “farm” and headed to an orchard. The orchard was running hay rack rides out from the parking lot though their pumpkin patch and actual orchard. We hopped on one of those, and had a nice, if somewhat slow ride out to see actual apples growing on trees. They also had a large vineyard, with grapes still on the vines. We had gone to the orchard with a vague plan to buy apples, but then realized we didn’t really need a huge bag of apples. In hindsight maybe we should have gotten a few just because, but we went home empty handed.

Heather and I really enjoyed the trip, and judging from the weather today, we may have caught one of the best possible days to make the trip!

-Jordan

September

Posted on by Jordan

A few days into Sep and we have skipped our morning workout two of two opportunities to try and get a little more sleep 🙂 I can’t believe how hard it’s been to catch back up these days. 

Also, today was the first day I walked outside in the morning and thought “WOW it feels like fall!”  I know it’s a little dumb to be making a post about the weather, but it seemed like an event worth remembering what day it was this year

-Jordan