Stories

  • Geocaching

    In case you weren’t aware, Geocaching is one of my hobbies turned obsession that fills my life with joy. Geocaching is a game in which people hide containers and post the coordinates on the web for others to enter into a GPS and go out and find. The game began in May of 2000. On May 2, the US Government declassified signals from the GPS satellites making them available to the public. This increased the accuracy of commercial GPS receivers from around 100m down to 10m. The next day, Dave Ulmer hid a stash in the woods outside of Portland,…

  • Adventures in Sourdough

    When life prevents you from going out and adventuring, you make your own adventures at home. My latest adventure is making sourdough. Now, I could go out and obtain or buy a starter from a local bakery, but what’s the fun of that? It’s so easy to start my own from scratch, and now I have one that I can truly call my own. My guide for making the starter and baking my first batch of bread comes from King Arthur Flour’s Sourdough Baking Guide. This all started about 3 weeks ago. I had some whole wheat flour sitting around…

  • An update for 2018

    It’s occurred to me that I haven’t been good at writing posts recently. My last update was from May, and that was subsequently my last big hiking trip. Since then, I have been incredibly busy, and that means I haven’t had as much time for fun. I did get out a few times this summer with the family. But there’s a lot to talk about. So here’s what happened in 2017. I successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation. On December 14, I defended my dissertation in front of my committee. This is why I haven’t been very active this year. I…

  • Moscow Mountain Snowshoe

    Saturday, January 14, 2017 It’s not often that I get out to hike these days. But we’ve had a fantastic winter so far, and after a week of insanely cold temperatures and clear weather, I just had to get out and take advantage before the warm weather and rains took over. I’ve always wanted to hike to the lookout on East Moscow Mountain in the winter, but on every attempt, I was thwarted with people who just couldn’t make it all the way up. So on Saturday, I had a nice sunny day and some time to go for a…

  • Jerry Johnson

    We’ve gotten a lot of snow this winter. And then it got cold. Like, really cold. Night time lows below zero, and daytime highs hovering around 20.  So the only thing to do with this kind of weather is go swimming. Last year, we took Clara to a developed hot spring near McCall and she loved it. This year we decided to give the undeveloped hot spring a try. Spoiler: She had a blast. Our biggest concern was keeping her warm during the one-mile hike to and from the springs. She did fine in her little blue down suit, but…

  • December Update

    When I started this site, I never expected to make daily posts. Weekly? Maybe. Monthly? Less desireable. I’m kind of ashamed that it’s been three months with no updates, but there hasn’t been much of excitement to talk about. There haven’t been any big adventures this fall. I’m just plugging away at the Ph.D. thing, which has also made me uninspired to write here. So, here’s my update for now. It’s snowing. We had our first snowfall that actually stuck, and though it’s only a few inches, it’s enough to put on our boots and snow gear and go out…

  • Camping at Hazard Lake

    In May we bought a new tent to accommodate our growing family on camping trips. I guess the two-person backpacking tent just won’t do it anymore for thee people and two large dogs. So after we bought it, we took it out for its maiden test at a nearby campground. This summer was dubbed the summer of no fun. I was busy writing and Erin was working an internship. To make the summer a bit more bearable, we thought we’d go camping for a night or two once a month just to get out of the house and have some…

  • Adventures with Clara: Hobo Cedar Grove

    The Hobo Cedar Grove is a nice easy 1-mile hike through a grove of giant old-growth trees. It is the perfect hike for toddlers to explore nature, which is why we brought Clara up there on Sunday. She enjoyed the large trees, but wasn’t into walking the trail much. Eventually Erin had to carry her for most of the hike. In hindsight, she may not have completely gotten over her illness from Friday and Saturday.

  • Grandmother Mountain

    I finally got some time to get up to Freezeout to hike Grandmother Mountain. The flowers are out and it’s quite pretty, though it’s not the best year for flowers that I’ve seen. It could be that I got up there a little late. Everything seems to be coming out a little earlier this year than normal. But then, all of the flowers that are out still seem to be in peak bloom. I was especially hoping for a great beargrass year like I got to see three years ago. But even with the lower abundance of flowers, the ones…

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    July 4 Update and Clara in Spokane

    It’s been over a month since my last update. There haven’t been any major adventures due to time and financial constraints. As I aim to write and finish my dissertation, the time for such outings decreases and thus this summer will be nicknamed “the summer of no fun.” Fun isn’t completely off the table, but the number and scope of such expeditions will be reduced compared to past years. I did have one bit of adventure in June. I traveled to Austin for the 2016 Evolution meeting where I presented some results from our behavioral simulation experiments. With our latest…