Priest Picts

If you are ever wondering just why Linda and I go out every weekend and explore the area around us, this will answer some of your questions. Today we saw a tree that was covered with shoes. Have you ever visited a tree that is covered with hundreds of old worn out shoes? Then if you never have, you should, and if you have visited this Cedar tree covered in history, you understand the fruits of weekend exploration.

Staying at home and relaxing on weekends is fine, but if we had been ones to take that path we would have never visited the Freemont Street Bridge Troll, in Freemont, WA, and in that same regard, the Priest Lake Shoe Tree .
Exploring and visiting oddities of the region sometimes comes with another past time, Geocaching. We visited the Shoe Tree because there is a cache hidden near within fifty yards of the shoe depository. This humorous site is one of the byproducts of getting out and looking for caches. On the way to find the tree we also found a cache called, Bigs Flat Tire Blues Cache (song not included). Both caches were easy to find, and the area’s leading to them were as beautiful as they come.

Driving back from the big tree we passed a couple road signs and I had to take a couple pictures for this blog. Our Saturday drive ended at the little store at Nordman where we bought a couple ice cream cookies. I looked back in the blog and noticed that about every time we go out Geocaching, riding bikes or exploring we usually end up having ice cream somewhere. Just another wonderful byproduct of weekend exploration I guess.

Prior to the morning excursion, we had driven over to Jim and Pam Headley’s trailer and found them both down at the docks. Jim had gone fishing early that morning and caught six real nice lake trout. When we arrived he had them all cleaned and was getting them packed up for freezing. We sat and talked a little while, Jim and Pam were up at Priest to wash down the trailer, we left after a few minutes so that they could get started.

When we returned from caching and ice cream I drove over to the Headley’s and watched them clean their trailer. When we returned from caching and ice cream I drove over to the Headley’s and watched them clean their trailer. It was a bit more work then I really wanted to watch so I drove back to the camper and the three of us watched the moon come up. It took about forty shots of the sunset and moon rise. There was a solo sail boat out on the water, but I couldn’t get a clean shot of it.
We went to bed and read for a while, but sleep always comes fast up where it so still, cool and quiet.

We got up and went to the Chimney Rock Café with Jim and Pam. It was a real nice breakfast! After the food, we went to the Headley’s and took a boat ride to the upper lake. There was a lot of boat traffic on the thoroughfare and when we were on Upper Priest, two sea planes landed on the water. The ride was very beautiful and we really enjoyed it. Kobi stayed in the front of the boat and kept his head down, I think he could have done without the boat ride, be we sure liked it. We returned to the dock, jumped into the Jeep and drove back to camp. We packed up quickly and drove home.

Reeder Bay, Priest Lake

better together

there’s no combination of words I can put on the back of a post card
no song that I can sing but I can try for your heart
our dreams and they are made of real things like a
shoe box of photographs of sepia tone lovin

love is the answer for least for most of the questions to my heart like
why are we here, where we go, how come we’re so hard
it’s not always easy some times life can be deceiving
i’ll tell you one thing it’s always better when we’re together
it’s always better when we’re together
we’ll look at the stars when we’re together
it’s always better when we’re together

i’ll tell you one thing, we’er better together

jack johnson

(This song reminds me of bug and myself every time I here it.)

I listened to good old (yeah old, right) Jack this morning. So many of his songs have words that touch parts of me, our life together, and our travels that it makes me smile and starts my day in a perfect fashion. Between my mornings with Jack and the ones with JT (James Taylor) I always get a great start to my day. So now you know my routine. Linda gets up and starts the hot water, then she either goes for a run or builds a morning fire and reads. I roll out of bed, make coffee, play cards and listen to the ipod. I have several friends that speak to me in the morning; Jack, JT, sometimes Gordon, Izz, the list goes on.

Friday night we drove up to Reeder Bay on Priest Lake and found a site. The good lake front sites were taken so we settled for one back away from most sites, but in an area where we had good privacy. This turned out to be good because some of the lake view folks were real noisy on Saturday night. We set up our camp and started a fire. I set out our new solar lamps on the stairs. I bought them on sale as step lights, at least that what I told Linda. The truth is I like the looks of them and I thought they would make our camper look real cozy when the sun set and darkness covers everything.

We ate cold pizza and sat by the fire till we could stay awake any longer, that would be about 7:30 pm. We climbed into the camper and went to bed. When we arrived this evening Linda noticed that the refrigerator was on and was running on DC current. Our batteries had been cooling things as we drove and when we went to bed they were down quite a bit more then normal. We took precautions and used the small Coleman lamp we always carry. I charged the solar lamps as we got ready and by bed time we had little lamps lighting the stairs, now that made things so cozy, I slept like a log.

Saturday was spent on the beach reading and getting sun. The temperature was just right while sitting on the sandy beach. When you moved up into camp, you had to put on a jacket. We relocated up to camp at about 2:30 pm and I built our fire a 3:00 pm. The Beckwith’s joined us about 5 pm; they had driven up to their cabin to move some thing up there. Their lives are changing and at this point everything revolves around the move from Idaho to Oregon. I would be freaking out if it were me, so you can’t blame them for being a bit antsy. We ate a meal from the Dutch oven and drank some spirits. We talked to about 9 pm and had a great time around the fire. The drove back to their cabin and we went to bed and read. Sleep once again came easy.

So here we are, Linda reading outside by the fire, Dean listening to Jack and typing. I think I could do this every day. I might add some fishing, but Jack and JT could come with me when I do that also.