Del Tanner

The broken snowman

2009-02-27T06:07:00.004-07:00

So for Christmas Carli made me a little snowman. She was so proud of it and told me over and over again that I needed to take it to work to put on my desk. Unfortunately it sat on the kitchen shelf for weeks after Christmas. She kept nagging me to make sure to remember to take it to work. So one day I finally took it. When I got it to work, I realized that the scarf around its neck had broken. A few weeks later, she asked me how the snowman was, and was it on my desk. I took the opportunity to tell her that it was, but that the scarf had broken on the trip into the office. (Maybe it's becuase I drive a redneck truck that rides rough and all the bouncing was too much for it). She was pretty upset that the scarf had broken, but I told her that I'm sure it could be glued back together.

For the next couple weeks, she would tell me EVERY day at night when I got home that I needed to take some glue to work and glue the scarf back together. So one day, she got a stick of superglue out of a drawer, wrote a note, and taped it to the kitchen cupboards so I would see it on my way out to work in the morning. I just thought it was cute that she was so concerned about this snowman that she has literally thought about it every day since.

Unfortunately, when I got to work and opened the superglue it was all dried up. I was unable to glue the scarf. So the saga continues.

Rock Band

2008-12-15T19:37:00.003-07:00

I know it's been forever since I've updated my post. Mainly because I've been doing the facebook thing. But tonight was hilarious. So tonight we had a rock band party with the Jensen family in our neighborhood. It was a lot of fun. Carli put on the mullet wig and rocked out. She's a natural. We took some video too so I'll post that as soon as I can.

License Plates

2008-09-15T15:36:00.003-07:00

So today was the day my truck lost it's identity. I finally got Ohio plates. It was very weird to switch out these plates. I think driving around with Arizona plates made me feel like I was still partly in Arizona. Or at least I still had some connection to it. But once I put those Ohio plates on, it was all gone.

I do have to say one nice thing about the whole plate thing though is how cheap it is. For those of you in Arizona, you know how expensive it can be to buy the tags for your car. In Ohio it's a flat fee. I paid about $45 for my plates. On the flip side of that however, the state of Ohio charges sales tax on private party vehicle transactions. In Arizona, they don't. So I guess maybe in the end it's all a wash. I don't know.

Other than that, things are good. The weather is starting to change and I'm excited to try to get out and take some pictures once the leaves change a bit more. We did get a few remnants of Ike last night in the form of a massive windstorm that blew down trees, ripped out windows and left a ton of people without power. Carli's school got canceled today because of roof damage to her school. Many people at my office are being told they will be without power for days. We lost power for a little while but not too long. Kinda crazy! In the middle of it all, I was out front flying a kite. The neighbors came outside and told me I was crazy. So now I'm sure we're the talk of the neighborhood. I think Jen took some pictures of it so look for it on her blog soon.

The Tribe

2008-08-30T18:29:00.004-07:00

Ohioans love their teams here. Everyone is an Ohio State Buckeye's fan, and most people are also very loyal to the Browns, Cavaliers, and the Indians. Today we got invited to go to an Indians game. The weather was great. It was clear and sunny and about 80 degrees. We were in a suite and the chairs were very comfortable. I'm starting to think Cleveland gets a bad rap. It's actually pretty cool. Here are some pictures from our afternoon. The funny part (pictured below) is Jen sitting in the suite watching U.S. Open tennis as we're attending a baseball game. Kinda funny.

They're here

2008-07-06T08:54:00.003-07:00

Well the day is finally here. The movers showed up this morning at 8:00. Crazy. They'll be here for at least 4 days getting things packed and loaded up. These are the same movers that have moved my family 5 times now to and from different parts of the country. They're great. They first moved my parents in 1989 and nobody in our family has used any other movers besides these guys since. They really make the whole experience SO much easier.

Old people

2008-06-30T05:12:00.001-07:00

I've never seen more old people in wheelchairs than at the Cleveland airport.

Buick

2008-06-29T11:01:00.002-07:00

Can I just say how much Buicks drive me crazy? Every time someone on the road bugs me it seems they're driving a Buick. I'd worry about offending someone but if you're a friend of mine on the West coast, I'm pretty sure you're not driving one. And if you're a friend of mine in the Buckeye state, well sorry. I'm starting to think that Buick must put in a speed governor that tops out at around 35 mph. It's a real tragedy.

backyard friends

2008-06-29T10:53:00.002-07:00

I know this isn't a big deal for my Atlanta family members, nor for my Utah friends, but I thought it was kind of cool to come home from church today to find these guys in the back yard.

The "Beeline"

2008-06-14T23:12:00.002-07:00

So whoever posted recently that I'm getting sappy in my old age is right. I really think this upcoming move has me starting to get all sentimental and stuff. For starters, on Thursday of last week, I was sitting in my office meeting with someone. As she was talking, I looked over at my monitor as I had noticed a new email came in. It was a notification email that Mike Zaharis had posted a comment (on the Historic Day) post. The email contained the comment. I quickly read it as this girl was still sitting in my office. I started to get teary eyed. As I read his top 5 Powell moments I started to get really emotional.

That gets me to the "Beeline". I'm guessing most people reading this blog know what the Beeline Highway is. This morning we woke up to go to Roosevelt Lake with some friends. Pictures of that trip by the way can be seen here. As I was driving on the Beeline highway, listening to "I Like You" by Morrissey, I saw Four Peaks off in the distance, (see picture above) I once again started to get emotional. For starters, "I Like You" is a great song. And anything Morrissey is pretty much a spiritual experience for me. (yeah yeah, I know...I don't want to hear it) But I started thinking about the significance of the Beeline highway. It's pretty much the gateway to all things recreational in Arizona. With the exception of I-17 going north to Flagstaff and Lake Powell, it seems like I've driven up the Beeline thousands of times whether I'm going up on the Rim, Pinetop, Roosevelt Lake, Saquaro Lake, Pine, Strawberry, Sycamore Creek, Happy Jack, Forest Lakes, Heber, Snowflake...the list goes on and on. As I looked ahead, earphones snugly fit in my ears and seeing Four Peaks ahead, I got very emotional. I pulled over to take a picture. It seems like I'm doing everything I can to savor all things Arizona these days. I was recounting the experience (although not in this much detail) to Cody Hatch once we got to the lake. He made an interesting comment. He said, "It's almost as if these things (Four Peaks, Beeline etc) feel as if they are yours alone". That's exactly how I feel.

Anyway, I know this all really gay and I can't even believe I'm blogging about this. But the reality of me not being in Arizona is starting to really hit me. There is lots here that will be terribly missed.

Historic Day

2008-06-07T07:44:00.004-07:00

Yesterday was a historic and monumental day for me. I sold my boat. That may sound silly, but that boat was part of me. It may sound silly, vain or worldly. Our boat represented great family time spent together, and even more, it was part of one of my favorite pasttimes---Lake Powell.

Most of you probably know that Lake Powell is my favorite place in the whole world. I've been going there since 1979. Most of the people I care about have accompanied me at some point or another on a trip to Powell. With us moving to Ohio, it just didn't make sense to keep it. We sold our houseboat last year, and now I've sold the Tige as well.

If there's any comfort to be had in this whole ordeal, it's that the boat is now in caring, capable hands. I sold it to my friend David Darling. He took the Tige to Lake Powell last week. These pictures are from his trip. I can't decide if I'm more sad about the boat, or the fact that the Lake Powell chapter in my life is definitely closed for now. I think it's both. At the end of the day, a boat is a boat, and we can buy another one. I think the hard part now that I'm pondering it, really is the Lake Powell thing. I think about all the good times we've had their with family and friends. Hopefully we'll do it again. Or maybe we'll just do new things. It's hard to beat family time at the lake though. We'll see how it goes this summer in Ohio and how bad we miss it. In the meantime, please pardon the melancholy mood for the next few days/weeks.

My public apology

2008-06-03T04:39:00.004-07:00

On our way home from Idaho, we decide to extend our trip an extra day and spend some time with our good friends the Zaharis'. They moved up to Utah last year from Gilbert. Amy is from Utah and has been wanting to move back ever since her and Mike got married. Mike finally gave in and found a business up there that was for sale and they moved. It was very sad to have them leave. But it was so sweet to be able to see them again. Let me say right here and now, that for the past 10 or 15 years or how ever long it has been that they have lived in Arizona, I have always sparred with Amy over Arizona versus Utah. I want to publicly apologize to Amy and Nichole Barney and any others that I used to rip on Utah to. It really is beautiful. I think all my time in Ohio has made me appreciate the seasons and the green much much more than I ever did. I told Amy I was going to offer a public apology and here it is. Utah is very very pretty. Our drive through Logan canyon coming home from Jackson Hole was one of the prettiest drives I've been on in a long time. So Amy, Nichole, and any others (but mainly Amy) I'M SORRY-----YOU WERE RIGHT!!!

Soon after they got to Utah, Mike broke his ankle really bad (I think in like 14 places) but I won't go into the details because I'll probably get them wrong and then Mike will have to correct me. Maybe if he would regularly keep their blog up I could just point a link over to it so you could read all about it yourself.... but we're not that fortunate to have Mike updating his blog that often. Anyway, sorry for digressing. Mike is still dealing with his ankle and in fact just a couple days before we showed up, he had been back in the hospital because some of his screws had broken. They did a bone graft at the same time. Needless to say he wasn't in the best of shape and we felt bad barging into their home so soon after. But it was great to see them. The kids all had fun signing his cast and playing in the basement. Oh and did I mention Amy is about to give birth any day? They really were sports to let us come hang with them. They really are good friends. Having friends like them really makes us sad to leave Arizona. We have so many good friends like the Z's. We're going to miss them all.

More Idaho Pics

2008-05-28T18:49:00.006-07:00

A few more pics from Teton Valley

2008-05-25T08:28:00.006-07:00

Do we ever really "grow up"?

2008-05-23T08:21:00.012-07:00

So I've been wanting to do this blog post for a long time now. I had all these grand plans and ambitions on it, but they aren't panning out. Let me explain.

I recently have gone through some old photo albums and seen some pictures of my childhood. Something interesting occured to me. We dont' really ever grow up. As I was looking at all the pictures, I realized that almost all of the things that I love today I enjoyed as a kid too. Let me illustrate.....

So for those of you who know me well (and even some of you who don't) you know that I love the lake and more specifically I love Lake Powell. This picture above is of me driving the boat at Lake Powell. You can even see castle rock in the background. It's just interesting how something I loved as a kid I still love as an adult.

There are a couple things interesting about this picture besides the fact that we had rust colored carpet growing up. Most obviously is the fact that I was into guns as a kid. But beyond that is that I would actually take the time to take a picture of those guns. I took this picture when I was a kid as I was very excited about my gun collection. Granted, not all these guns are mine, but some of them are. Part of my original plans for this post was to take current day pictures to compare the difference between now and then. So for the Lake Powell picture, I would have posted a picture from one of my recent trips. For the gun picture, I would have posted a picture of my "current" gun collection. (which is a LOT bigger by the way) Anyway, I think the point is still well made that I am still very much now into the same things I was into when I was young.

Okay this one is hilarious. Besides my butt part feathered haircut, check out that computer! It's an Apple IIe. How do you like those two big floppy disk drives sitting next to the computer! Good stuff eh! Not only do I have comparative modern day pics to compare to, but I've got one on this blog. Please see "Two Nerds In Ohio" post for comparison. There is almost NO explanation necessary for this current day comparison.

This one is pretty self explanatory as well. In the top picture, I can be seen riding my Honda 200s 3 wheeler in the empty lot next door to our house after a rain storm. In the next picture you see my sister Andrea and I (probably in Pinetop) riding her four wheeler. Once again it would be cool to post pictures of me these days riding my motorcycle, rhino, etc. etc.

This may be my favorite picture in this whole grouping. As I'm sure you can tell, this is my Dad and I. I'm sure pretty much everyone that knows me knows I love tennis.

This picture is from an air show I went to as a kid at Williams Gateway airport. I loved planes and I love planes now. So much so that I learned how to fly them. I really wanted to post a picture from my first solo flight but I don't have it with me right now.

The above two pictures are going to need some explanation. When I was younger (I'm not sure what age, maybe my Mom can tell me) I took a photography class in summer school through the Tempe Parks and Rec. at the Tempe Public Library. The guy in the blue shirt is our instructor, and he's talking to another one of the students. The bench in the picture above that is of course of a park bench. I took this as part of our assignment we were given to go outside and take some pictures. Clearly I was working on geometry and lines in my pictures.
The sad thing is, I would have expected my photography to have advanced slightly over the last 25 years.....doesn't look like it has though!

So the net net of all this is......my parents rock. They gave me a great life growing up. They helped expose me to a lot of things that are still a part of my life today. Many of my friends (some who may end up reading this) like to joke me about all the hobbies and in my life. I think we know now where they come from. Maybe next I'll do a post on how I've begun transferring these same interests to my kids!!!!

The Simple Life

2008-05-23T08:09:00.002-07:00

So Jen and the girls have been up at her familys ranch in Victor, ID all week. I flew in yesterday to meet them and spend the rest of the weekend with them. I plan on taking a ton of pictures while I'm here. I took a few yesterday while it was overcast and cloudy. Today it's sunny so I'll take some more pictures. It really is beautiful up here. I came through here last year on my harley ride through yellowstone with my Dad and Brother.

This picture is a view out the front of the ranch house looking to the West. Hopefully I can get some good shots of the tetons today.

Picture time

2008-05-19T20:35:00.003-07:00

So the weather has been getting better in Ohio. I went out tonight and just started driving around looking for cool places to take pictures. I mainly wanted to show Steve Wilson how to take HDR images. I couldn't get my software to work, but I think I may have finally figured it out. I'm going to work on some more of the images, but in the meantime, I thought I would post this image. I know it's very surreal looking, but I was just messing around with some settings. Once I get the rest of my images tweaked, I'll post them.

15 of the best years

2008-04-29T04:50:00.003-07:00

So I know Jen said on her blog that there would likely be nothing on my bog about our weekend and that it would all be focused on Colin Meloy. Even though it was AWESOME to see Colin, that paled in comparison to how great it was to spend the whole weekend with Jen. It was truly like a second honeymoon for us. She already mentioned on her blog a lot of the things we did. We shopped, got pedicures, massages, slept, jacuzzi'd, ate and just generally enjoyed each others company. It was so great to have nothing but time together with no agenda and no pre-set plans. On Saturday afternoon we literally came back to the hotel and laid in bed watching TV and took naps. Boulder is really a cool place. As many of you know I love the mountains anyway and Boulder is really a cool mountain town with lots to do. If you ever go, try to stay at the St. Julien. It's a great hotel/spa. They had a whole fleet of beach cruisers available to guests just outside the valet. We didn't avail ourselves of them but it would have definitely been fun.

I've told Jen this privately, but I want everyone to know that she is my best friend and for sure the best thing that's happened to me. One thing that has happened as a result of me traveling over the last several months is that I have really grown to appreciate her more and more. Not that I didn't appreciate her in the first place but distance really does make the heart grow fonder. Being away as much as I have really makes you appreciate all that you have in terms of relationships with people. Today is Jen and I's 15th anniversary and I'm still asking myself how I got so lucky to snag her as my partner in life.

The one and only Colin

2008-04-27T07:38:00.009-07:00

So last night was the night. All roads have led to the events that transpired at the Fox theater in Boulder, CO. For those of you that don't know me that well or don't talk to me that often, I'm a HUGE fan of the band The Decemberists. Colin Meloy is the lead singer. He is doing a summer solo tour singing Decemberists songs as well as some covers of other artists. That's pretty much the reason Jen and I are in Boulder this weekend. I mean let's face it, Boulder is cool and all, but I'm not sure that I would normally pick Boulder Colorado as the place to spend the weekend with my wife on this our 15th anniversary. She's a super sport for going along with me on this one. As we were walking out of the show last night she said, "That was 10 times better than I thought it was going to be". So apparently she really was just going along with me to be nice. I'm glad she had a good time though.
The Fox theater is on 13th street in Boulder and is a cool small little club as can be seen by the aerial photo. You can click the image to see a larger view.
It was very hard for me to get this shot as I had to climb a nearby skyscraper and use a long lens, so please do me the courtesy of enlarging the image. No actually it's a screen capture from www.live.com and the "Bird's Eye View". I simply post this picture so you can get a picture of what a small quaint venue this was to see a concert in. I'd be shocked if there were more than 300 people tops in that place.

A lady name Laura Gibson (although Colin called her Lori) opened for Colin. She had a very interesting style. I really liked her voice actually. She also joined Colin on stage to sing a Sam Cook cover of "Cupid". Colin was very funny and very interactive with the crowd often times asking them to join in. Sometimes he would even stop his song to correct the audience if they didn't sing it right. At the end of one of his songs he started to blend in lyrics from Cemetry Gates from the Smiths. I thought for a second he was going to do a full cover of it but he was just teasing us. I had Jen's camera with me and was able to get a few short video clips of the concert. If any of you haven't heard Colin before, I would highly recommend checking him out, and I would for sure recommend catching one of his concerts. The video captures aren't very high quality, but at least I was able to preserve for my posterity this monumental event in my life. I'm not going to post them ALL here, just a couple to tease you.

If you're interested in hearing some Decemberists\Colin Meloy songs, visit his myspace page and several good songs can be heard in the player on that page.

Weekend in Boulder

2008-04-26T08:26:00.002-07:00

Jen and I are in Boulder, CO for the weekend. I'm hoping that we run in to Mork and Mindy while we're here. I haven't seen them in a long time. I think they still live here, but I'm not sure.

No but seriously, we are going to see Colin Meloy tonight at the Fox Theater here. Also since it's our 15th anniversary we thought we'd spend a weekend away. I hope the kids don't get in too much trouble while we're gone. This is the first time we've let them stay at home by themselves. Even though Sydnee can't drive yet, we figured with the Rhino she could probably get the kids around wherever they need to get to.

We're staying at the St. Julien hotel and spa. Nice place. You'd think we'd do some spa treatments here, but instead I think we're going to a ching chong shop to get pedicures. The picture above is looking out our room window.

I love Colorado and I love the mountains. I've always said if I could live anywhere, it would be in Colorado.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

PandoraJam

2008-04-23T18:43:00.006-07:00

I always love it when someone introduces me to something that changes my life. I know that sounds like I'm about to talk about something profound, but I'm not. So if you have high expectations, maybe you should hit your back button right now. By "changing my life" I simply mean something that I really enjoy and that is really really cool. For me PandoraJam is one of those things. You may heard of Pandora before. My friend Mike Zaharis told me about it years ago. I used it on and off once I heard about it. Basically it's a website that allows you to create custom "stations" or channels based upon music that you like. So you tell the website what artists you want the channel to emulate and it will find artists/songs that sound similar and then stream them. It's a great way to find and listen to music that is along your lines of taste. As the songs are playing you can rate them with a thumbs up or thumbs down. As you do, it learns your taste in music. So then a friend at work told me about PandoraJam. PandoraJam makes Pandora exponentially cooler. It is an application that you install on your machine (Mac only, but I think there's a similar version for the PC called Pandora Jar) that brings in the pandora interface and settings. but the beauty of it is that it allows you to capture the songs Pandora streams to you. It captures them in mp3 format and automatically adds it to your itunes library. It's so great. So sometimes I'll just let my computer sit there cranking out tunes through PandoraJam and when I'm done, I go to my iTunes library and BAM! theres tons of new songs all organized in playlists according to the channel on Pandora. As I type this I'm listening to "waking up" by Elastica on my Sleater Kinney Channel.

Blog about blogs

2008-04-23T17:47:00.004-07:00

My brother recently asked me to make a list of all the photography related blogs that I frequently visit. I figured since I recently did a post about google reader and iGoogle, I'd not only make a list of the photography blogs I visit, but I'd list ALL the blogs that I have plugged into my Google Reader. I think it's fun and interesting to see what other people are reading. Often times, that's how I find stuff on the 'net. For many of you, this isn't going to be interesting at all because quite frankly, most of the blogs I visit are either photography related, or friends and family. So because all these blogs are in my reader, I see every post from every one of them. So here's what I would like----->After you read this post, leave a comment and add any other blogs that you think I should check out. So without further ado.......

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips
http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/

Jared and Tiffany Jambor (family)
http://www.blog.thejambors.com/The_Jambors/Blog/Blog.html

Chad Holder (friend AND photographer)
http://www.chadholder.com/news/

Dick Morris (Political)
http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/

Dallas and Krista Tanner (family)
http://kristatanner.blogspot.com/

The Farnsworths (friends)
http://thetomfarnsworthfamily.blogspot.com/

Lee Richan (friend)
http://leerichan.blogspot.com/

The Simas' (friends)
http://14babyblues.blogspot.com/

Joe McNally (photography)
http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/

The Pothiers (friends)
http://71toes.blogspot.com/

The Marsh Family (friends)
http://marsh1994.blogspot.com/

Moose Peterson (photography)
http://www.moosenewsblog.com/

Glenn Ostlund (friend)
http://eh-musing.blogspot.com/

Scott Kelby-Photoshop Insider (photography)
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

Photoshop Disasters (sort of photography)
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

PhotoWalk Pro (photography)
http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/

Pixelated Image (photography)
http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/

The Barneys (friends)
http://itsthe6ofus.blogspot.com/

Strobist (photography)
http://strobist.blogspot.com/

Rocky & Krystal Tanner (family)
http://sugarandspiceplease.blogspot.com/

Sydnee Tanner (family)
http://stannerroxy.blogspot.com/

Terry White's Tech Blog (technology)
http://terrywhite.com/techblog/

The Breinholts (friends)
http://theamazingsix.blogspot.com/

The Brenchleys (friends)
http://paulcarolinebrenchley.blogspot.com/

The Ostlunds (friends)
http://ostlundfamily.blogspot.com/

Jon & Courtney Tanner (family)
http://www.blog.aztanners.com/The_Tanners/Blog/Blog.html

The Warners (friends)
http://warnerfabfam.blogspot.com/

The Zaharis' (friends)
http://zaharisfamily.blogspot.com/

My Dad
http://www.delberttanner.com/Site/Blog/Blog.html

two nerds in ohio

2008-04-20T18:38:00.002-07:00

Okay so how big of nerds are we? I got a new laptop and gave Jen my old one. She didn't really think she needed/wanted one. However, since she's started using it, this is the position she assumes most of the time. So she is with me in Ohio right now and we've been looking at houses all day. We're back at my aparment now and this is what's going on. Seriously....how gay are we?!?!?!!?

It's all about the shoes

2008-04-20T18:15:00.002-07:00

Someone VERY close to me recently informed me that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at his/her shoes. I thought this was pretty funny (and quite petty) but then I realized something--also with the help of this certain someone.

When I was in my first semester in college, I was sitting in church one day. Sitting next to me was a guy (I won't name him yet) who was wearing what I deemed to be pretty cool shoes. I won't mention the brand name or what they were. I'll just leave it at "they were cool shoes". They also looked identical to a pair that I myself owned. As an icebreaker, I leaned over to him and asked him about his shoes. A conversation ensued and as a result, he and I became very good friends. In fact, I credit this person with pretty much changing my life at that point. He and I had so much in common. We liked the same music, the same clothes, the same cars, the same magazines and just pretty much everything. We still continue to be good friends today with a lot of the same interests. And it all started with his shoes. Some reading this blog already know this story, and know that this person I'm speaking of is Mike Z.

So now whenever I see someone I don't know, I just look at their shoes to see if I want to get to know them. Just kidding, I don't really do that. But it all is kinda funny how the whole shoe thing brought Mike and I together.

Colin Meloy, Google Reader, & Rice Pudding

2008-04-13T11:41:00.006-07:00

So I have three things to blog about today.

Colin Meloy Sings Live
For those of you who don't know, I'm a very big fan of a band called The Decemberists
The lead singer is a guy named Colin Meloy. This summer he is embarking on a solo tour. I bought tickets to see him in Boulder, CO on April 26th. Since April 29th is Jen and I's 15th wedding anniversary, I decided I would fly her to Boulder (I'll be coming in from Ohio) and meet up for a weekend of fun including stopping by the Colin Meloy concert. When I bought the tickets, Colin had just announced a new Solo album called Colin Meloy Sings Live. I preordered it and the first 300 people who did so received an autographed copy. I flew in from Ohio Friday night and went to bed. When I woke up on yesterday morning to take Sydnee to her Volleyball tournament, Jen mumbled to me as she was still half asleep "oh yeah, your Colin Meloy CD and T-shirt came". Needless to say I was pretty excited. Especially since on this CD Colin covers a song called "Ask" by the Smiths. Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have the CD and I'm super stoked to be going to spend a weekend away with Jen (and Colin).

Google Reader
I'm really liking the blogging thing. I'm able to keep up on all kinds of people that I wouldn't normally be able to, and learn all kinds of things that I may not otherwise be able to learn about. I have to credit my friend Chad Holder with really helping me make blogs work for me. He's the one that introduced Google Reader to me. I know I've mentioned it to some of you but I feel compelled to mention it again. Because it really is cool.

Google Reader is just an RSS reader. For those of you that don't know what a RSS reader is, let me explain it to you like this.... Imagine that each "post" on each "blog" you "subscribe" to is like an email. And each time the owner of a blog you "subscribe" to post a new entry, that post is emailed to you. Only instead of showing up in an email box, it shows up in your Google Reader box. That's pretty much what an RSS reader is Here is a picture of my Google Reader page.

You can see along the left side, a list of all the blogs or "feeds" that I subscribe to. The ones that are bold with a number to the right means that there are new items in that feed. In this case, DickMorris.com has 1 unread item and PhotoshopDisasters has 2 unread items. As I click on them I'm able to read the blog in the window to the right. It's a great way to stay up on all the blogs that I'm curious about and want to make sure I keep up on. It sure beats the heck out of proactively going to each blog once in a while to see if there is anything new on them.

Then what I do is I have set iGoogle as my homepage in my browser. iGoogle is like a virutal and customizeable desktop. It allows you to take various components and add them to your iGoogle desktop. See below for a view of my desktop.

You can see I have several sections of this page, all of which are customizeable. I have a weather section, a news section, calendar, sticky notes, wikipedia look up, shared documents, and of course my "Google Reader" section. Of course in addition to all this, you still have the Google web search at the top of the page. So each time I open my browser, this is the page I see. If you notice inside my Google Reader section, there are 3 listings. These are the 3 unread blogs that I have right now. As I click them, a balloon pops up within this page allowing me to read the text of the post from within this page without even having to navigate to another page (unless I want to which of course is an option). Once I've clicked on it and read the text of the blog, that entry disappears from my list of unread blogs. It's a great way to stay up on things and I really felt the need to blog about it. You can "add stuff" to this page and subsequent tabs and there really is lots of cool stuff. If you haven't checked out iGoogle you definitely should.

Rice Pudding Last but not least is my near tradition of making rice pudding on Sundays. We have a great family recipe for rice pudding that is delicious. My kids all love it when their aunt Anna makes it for them (she tends to do it anytime we're around her). I've made it occasionally on Sundays and am doing it more and more. My batches haven't been turning out too well lately, but I have to say that I today I made the absolutely PERFECT batch. When Carli came walking into the kitchen and found out I was making it, she gave me a big hug on my leg and squeezed so hard she wouldn't let go. I'm glad we can make this little tradition in our family and I'm glad the kids all like it. I just wish it would always turn out like it did today. I even used fresh eggs from our chickens in the recipe. One of the eggs I used was really big and when I cracked it open, there were two yokes in it! Weird.

Donuts and Dads

2008-04-04T08:23:00.008-07:00

A week or two ago, Carli came to me and asked me if I was going to be in town on "The first Friday in April". As it turns out, my travel plans did in fact have in me Phoenix that day (today). Apparently the kindergarten at her school was doing a thing before school called Donuts and Dads. All the Kindergarten kids bring their dads and we eat donuts in the cafeteria. She has been so excited about it and has not stopped talking about it ever since she brought it up. She even put an invitation on my bed one day so when I got home I would see it. (see below)

Every Friday morning at 11:00 EST (7:00 in Arizona) I have a meeting with the other executives at work. I asked everyone if we could push the meeting back because of my date with my daughter. We did. So I'm on my way to the school this morning with Carli and my sister Tiffany sends me a text and tells me how bad I suck at blogging and that Jen is kicking my but lately with updates. I agreed that I needed to get better at it. The experience that followed during the next 30 minutes was so awesome, that I figured I just had to blog about it. Especially while it was fresh in my mind.

First of all, as I pulled in the parking lot, 80% of the vehicles in the lot were big trucks. There were tons of men walking hand in hand with their kids through the parking lot up to the school. I kind of had to laugh as I saw all these trucks in the parking lot. One thing I've noticed in Ohio as I look around is that people don't drive trucks as much as we do out here. Kind of funny.

As we were walking into the school it was so fun for me to see the excitement in Carli to have her Dad at her arm parading him through the school. As Dads, we don't get the opportunity to be involved as much in the parenting process at this level. Let's face it, the Moms get all the glory when it comes to this kind of thing. As I was walking down the hallway with all the other little kids holding their Dads hand, I couldn't help but think how sad it would have been for Carli to have gone to this event without her Dad. Tears of happiness started welling in my eyes as I was so happy to be able to do this with her. I started thinking of how sad it is that our kids are all growing up so fast and these innocent times are quickly fading. I don't know why but I got really emotional during this event this morning. I'm even getting emotional now as I type this.

Anyway, it was really cute to have a place all set at the table with the paper "tie" that she had made and colored for me. This tie gives new meaning to the term "clip-on tie". It was fastened with a paper clip. We sat and ate our donuts and drank our juice box while the kids sang to us and Carli gave me big hugs.

Even though Carli can be tough at times, I have to say I am very proud to be her Dad and I love her (as well as my other kids) more than I ever though it possible to love another human being. I really would like to spend more simple time with each of my kids so they can feel the love I have for them. Time is slipping away and I don't want to miss it.

Road trip with the Boss

2008-02-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

So I stayed over in Ohio this weekend since my boss was going to be in town. We both needed some time away so I suggested we go on a road trip. We decided to drive to Niagara Falls. I had never been there, and he hadn't been there in decades. We also both love to drive. We left on Saturday and drove along Lake Erie. I had made reservations at the Embassy Suites on the Canadian side of the river. When we got to the border, Bruce couldn't find his wallet. Also, starting this month the new law that requires you have proof of citizenship went into effect. So a drivers license isn't even enough. We got corralled into a Canadian immigration office and had to answer a ton of questions and then wait while they did a bunch of background checking, but they finally let us through. It was a trip trying to get back in the states too. Good thing Bruce had at least his PADI card with his birthdate on it. It was really cool place. I definitely want to go back. However, it was super cold. This morning when we woke up it was about 5 degrees with a ton of wind. We had planned on taking a bunch of pictures but it was just too cold. However, I was able to enjoy one other treat on the trip.

For those of you in Arizona, you may be familiar with Ted's Hot Dogs in Tempe. It's a landmark and I have been eating there with family and friends since the 80's. The story with Ted's is that the owner came out to Arizona and decided he wanted to live here. They have 8 locations in Buffalo, NY which is where it started a long time ago. So anyway, long story short, Bruce and I stopped at one of the locations and ate. I consider Ted's the "In-n-Out" of hot dogs. Bruce liked it. And we're lucky to have one in Arizona.

On our way home through Pennsylvania, we encountered complete white out driving conditions and I was scared to death. Luckily we made it home safely to our bachelor pad in Ohio.

Video Killed the Blogging Star

2008-01-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

Okay so I might start turning this more into a video blog than a text and picture based blog. I just discovered this weekend after Jen left (I'll get more into that in a minute) that iMovie HD 08 imports video directly from my hard drive based JVC camcorder. This is huge. I used to have to copy it to the hard drive, then convert it into a format that iMovie recognized, then edit it, then render it and then email it, post it, burn it or whatever I wanted to do with it. Now I can just plug it in, edit the clips, and I can upload it right to Youtube directly from within iMovie. So I have this little JVC camcorer that seriously is as small as my hand. I'm going to start carrying it around with me and then posting the video on my blog.

So about this weekend. Jen came out to Ohio on Wednesday night and stayed at the bachelor pad with me. Wednesday night when she got here it was pretty funny because Bruce (my boss) and Steve were both in town and staying there too. I felt like I was back in college living with my roommates and had my girlfriend sleep over. They both left Thursday though. Jen and I spent the rest of the weekend driving around and looking at different areas. Jen drove around with a realtor and looked at a ton of houses. I joined them Saturday and drove around as well. Wouldn't you know that today (Monday) now that she's gone it's sunny and supposed to be like 48 degrees (it was in the teens and twenties the whole time she was here).

It was really wierd dropping her off at the airport last night and me staying here in Ohio. I'm flying back to Phoenix on Thursday night though, so I doubt it will be too bad.

Well, I'm putting together a short video of my pad in Ohio and my office and where I'm spending most of my time.

Mojo with a hen

2008-01-20T16:28:00.001-07:00

So we let one of our chickens out today and let Mojo our dog play with it for a little bit. Here is some low rez video from a portion of it.

End of our trip

2007-11-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I had all good intentions of keeping the blog updated day by day as the trip went on. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) the trip was jam packed with stuff from early in the morning, until late at night. With the exception of yesterday (Friday) I was up at 5:30 every morning to either go on a scuba trip, or a snorkeling trip or something like that. So as I sit here on Saturday morning packing my stuff up to go home, looking out the window (at this picture I just took 5 minutes ago to remind me of what I woke up to every morning)...

I'm wishing I would have posted more pictures along the way. I'm so glad we got to come on this trip. It was so fun to be with all my extended family for a trip like this. It was also fun for my kids (the 4th generation represented on this trip) to be able to interact with their 2nd cousins. We did some fun things. We went to Warren and Annabelle's in Lahaina. A funny "Myth and Magic" show that all the adults went to.

Dallas had been to the show before, and I had heard how good it was. It was definitely as good as people had made it out to be.

We went to a Hawaiian Luau down the beach at the Marriott. Our group occupied 5 tables. Towards the end a minor food fight erupted and lasted until the lady behind Dallas at another table got hit with a cantaloupe.

This is Jared getting ready to throw an object of food.

My family also did a lot of scuba diving on this trip. On Monday, my Dad, Jonathan and I dove Lanai. We dove with Lahaina Divers and dove Cathedral 2 and "Wash Rock" On the first dive, Cathedral 2 (for those of you who don't know, the "Cathedrals" locations at Lanai are the most well known and popular dives) I had a low fill tank but didn't check my air before getting in the water. 10 minutes into my dive, I realized I only had about 1200 psi left and would have to cut my dive short. I was pretty frustrated with myself for not checking my air, and for missing the best dive of the day. There is a group of 3 brothers that do underwater photography. They call themselves "C3 Submerged". They are well known for their underwater photography. One of them dove with us. We talked a lot about cameras and had a great dive. Check out their website at www.c3submerged.com.

I had borrowed a camera from Brian Beecroft and took it along on most of my dives. It's a lot harder taking pictures underwater with a point and shoot, than it is on land with a D-SLR. Needless to say, I'm not super stoked with most of my pictures. The picture above I was able to take before I ran out of air on my first dive.

On Wednesday we went back to Lanai but with the rest of the family (minus Jen). We dove Cathedral 1 and Nobb Hill. Both were cool dives. On Thursday we dove with Ed Robinsons Dive Adventures. Everyone on the internet had said these guys were the best. Their service really was good. We dove Molokini and then Dove 5 Caves. We saw SOOOO many turtles on the second dive. We also swam into a cave that once we were in, we surfaced, and found ourselves in an air cavity within the cave that you could breath in. It was really cool. Unfortunately Jen wasn't able to do dive on the second dive because she was unable to equalize. At Molokini, we were treated to this shark.....

On Friday we went to Lahaina (again....it's about an hour drive) and had surfing lessons. It was so much fun. Maury, Wendi, Alex, Beau, Rocky, Krista, Jen, Sydnee, Lindsey, Carli, Tiffany, Jared and I all went. We seriously had a blast. Everyone did soooo good.

We're all very thankful to Grandma Hazel for bringing us all together and making this trip possible. We will plan on making a book for everyone to remember the trip by. If anyone from the trip has any questions or photo requests, feel free to email me.

Not so sleepy Sunday

2007-11-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

Many of us woke up today with the greatest intentions. Intentions of going to church in Kihei. A lot of people actually woke up and got ready. When we all arrived at the church building we found out that today was stake conference so the time had changed. We decided instead to all go out for breakfast. So those of us who actually got up and went to church ended up enjoying everyone else's company at Stella Blues.

Here we are in front of the LDS church in Kihei once we found out there was no meeting at 9:00 like we all had planned on.

We were quite a sight to behold for the other patrons of Stella Blues. They were real good to get us all seated and taken care of so quickly. Of course by the time they got done cooking all our breakfast meals, it was almost time for lunch!
After we got back to the hotel, everyone started doing their own thing. Including watching football. Others went outside and set up on the lawn near one of the pools. The grass area was so large and comfortable.

Carli was a good sport all day. Despite being limited by her cast, she was able to keep herself entertained all day and have a good attitude about it.

Tanner is such a good baby you hardly ever even know he is around. Here he is trying to get his hands on my wide angle lens.

Andrea and Reed returning from.....well, who knows....the "don't ask don't tell" policy applies here I think.

Alex, Sydnee, Lindsey, and Carli all got henna tatoos.

Cameron really enjoyed playing football with all the big boys. He got trampled on a few times for sure.

Jared, Jen, Tiffany, Krystal, and Courtney playing cards.

What could possibly be said about Tanner?

Some of the girls ended up getting into the game too.

A Molester Among Us

2007-11-17T20:03:00.001-07:00

So we show up at the airport in Phoenix to leave for Maui. My cousin Brian (pictured here) shows up with a comb-over haircut, a cheesy Hawaiian shirt, a molester mustache, pasty white legs, and cheesy white tennis shoes.

I figured he'd shave the 'stache once we got here, but no such luck.

We've been having a great day today so far. I'll include a couple pictures. You can click the pictures to see them larger.

Off to Hawaii

2007-11-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

So we're off to Hawaii in a couple hours. The whole Tanner family including cousins, aunts, uncles, grandma etc are going to Maui for a reunion of sorts. Plan on lots of pictures. I'm hoping to get lots of diving, photography and tennis in. Three of my passions. I'll post them here first

Guilty Pleasure

2007-11-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

I found something in Ohio that beats Arizona. I was out getting some collar stays for my shirts at the mall one night and got lured into a nail shop for a pedicure. When the lady told me it was $35 for pedicure I quickly turned and around to leave and said "No Thanks". But then I asked if they used the potato peeler razors. They do. I love those razor things. They use them in Georgia too. But they aren't allowed to use them in Arizona. I have very bad heels so it was very refresshing to have all the dead skin cut off. Yes, I'll admit it. I enjoy getting pedicures. Especially when my guy friends go with me and sit next to me and we get pedicures together. There's nothing more manly than a boys night out to get pedicures. Too bad I'll have to do them solo in Ohio for now.

A tumbleweed no more

2007-11-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Someone recently described me as a tumbleweek blowing in the wind as I was on my photo tour through Northern Arizona. That tumbleweed just got blown into a corner and isn't going to blowing around much more.

Starting tomorrow I will be flying to Ohio and starting work with a company based in Akron. No more photography, scuba, tennis and yardwork during the day I guess. As Jen mentioned on our family blog, it's been nice to have a break for a couple months, but it will be good to get back into something engaging. I'm going to spending a lot of time in Ohio. The weather there is quite a bit different than here. It's going to take some getting used to.

I'm hoping that maybe at night I'll have a chance to do some photography. Maybe not, but I'll try. Wish me luck!

Trip cut short

2007-10-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well, Morrissey was great. He played at the Barn at Thanksgiving point. I had never been there before, but it's an incredibly small venue. At one point, Mike and I were right up against the stage. It was unreal. He was kind enough to treat us to several Smiths songs from the old school. Songs such as Shoplifters of the World, Stretch out and Wait, How Soon is Now, London, and Stop Me If you Think that You've Heard This One Before. About 10 minutes before he came on stage, I got a call from Jen telling me that Carli had hurt herself on the trampoline and couldn't move her leg. You can see my entry on our family blog (www.thetanners.com) for the rest of the story on that. I ended up having to cut my trip short today and come home early. I'm glad I was able to spend a little bit of time with Mike though. Mike and Amy's place in Utah is beautiful. I even told Amy I wished I could move up there. I think that may have thrown her into shock.

Moz in UT

2007-10-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering, Morrissey is playing tomorrow night in Utah. My good friend Mike Z. invited me to come up and go to the concert with him. So I'm flying out in the morning to go up and see Mike, Amy and their family and their new house. Oh yeah, and to see Morrissey. I was fortunate enough to see him when he was in Phoenix in June. It was amazing. He played several Smiths songs. I was sad that Mike wasn't able to go with me when I went in Phoenix. So I'm super stoked that we get to go tomorrow in Utah. Besides that I really want to get up to Utah to see him.

Northern Arizona Wrap Up

2007-10-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well the good news is I didn't lose any of my pictures. My external hard drive did in fact go out, but the drive itself was not damaged. So I am in the process of consolidating all my pictures. I think I'll have some good ones. When I get done, I'll post a few here, but most likely the entire collection will be on my flickr page.

Stay tuned!

Okay, so I'm slowly starting to add pictures from this trip to my flickr page. You can view them at:

http://flickr.com/photos/deltanner/sets/72157602326267754/

Please leave comments both positive and negative.

Northern Arizona Day 3

2007-10-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Slight problem. My external hard drive that I've been putting all my pictures on isn't working. I'm sorta freaking out a little bit. Until I can figure it out, I'm out of commission. Not just for updating the blog, but for continuing my trip too.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: It's 4:00 am on Thursday morning. After fidgeting with my hard drive for a while, I decided to call it quits and head home. I'm tired. I'll work on the drive tomorrow.

Northern Arizona Day 2

2007-10-09T20:07:00.001-07:00

As I write this, I'm laying in the back seat of my truck in a campground in Monument Valley. I don't have phone service, but the campground has wi-fi! Can you believe it? So I woke up this morning in Flagstaff at about 5:15. I headed East towards the Petrified Forest. I didn't make it in time for the sunrise, but I stopped and snapped a few pictures anyway. (none of my petrified forest pictures are being posted today). I drove up through the Petrified Forest, and then East to Window Rock, AZ, which is the capital of the Navajo Nation. From there, I drove north up to Canyon de Chelly. I had heard a ton about this, but I don't remember ever going there. What a cool place. In fact, the whole drive Window Rock all the way to Mexican Water was an incredible drive. It became clear to me that I'm going to have to come back here when I have more time and really spend some time taking pictures. I spent most of my day actually at Canyon de Chelly. I didn't realize it, but Ansel Adams took some pictures here. At one of the stops where I took pictures, I bought some Navajo art from a guy. I took a picture of he and I, but once again, not posting it. Instead, all I'm posting are these three lousy pictures. I took about 600 pictures today, so you can imagine that there are lots more. I was able to take a shower tonight at the campground, so that was good. I bought a book at the Canyon de Chelly visitors center called "Color Country" by Susan Neider and another one called "NavajoLand-A native son shares his legacy" by LeRoy DeJolie. Both are awesome. Check them out on Amazon. I can tell that I'm going to need to spend some serious time up here. I seriously think the Colorado Plateau is one of the prettiest places on earth. Every time I'm up in this part of the state, I just feel happy. It's an amazing place. I think that's why I like Lake Powell so much. LeRoy DeJolie does photography workshops with Arizona Highways. He's a Navajo. I'd love to go on one of his workshops one day. Well, i'm off to bed. I've got to turn my truck off so everyone else in the campground can sleep. I've got it on right now to give me power to my laptop.

Northern Arizona Day 1

2007-10-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

My first destination today was Jerome, AZ. I had never been there before but had heard some cool things about it. What a cool town. It's up on the side of a hill. It's an old mining town with tons of character. I visited the chamber of commerce visitors center to talk to them, pick up a brochure, and then walked around. The lady at the visitors center recommended the "Haunted Hamburger" as a place to eat lunch. She said I was the only person from Arizona that had visited them so far today. Everyone else was from somewhere else. I didn't stay long in Jerome, but had lunch, took a few pictures, and drove around a bit. This is definitely a place to come back to though.

this is the remains of a building from the mining days. There is a glass blowing shop inside it now. Next door is one of the old brothels. I am purposely not posting all my pictures (or for that matter very manny at all) since I'm connected with my Verizon card and the connection isn't too fast. Besides, I don't want to spend all my time processing pictures. I'd rather spend it taking them.

After Jerome, I drove up to Sedona. I spent most of my time at Red Rock Crossing taking pictures of the Cathedral Rocks.
This was me during a break in taking pictures.
Cathedral is in the background. I had to go change into shorts and sandals so I could walk through the water to get to some good spots.
I don't even know if this is one of the good pictures. I just picked one at random to upload tonight. But clearly this was a beautiful spot.
At about 5 o'clock, all the clouds had blown away from the Cathedral rocks. I was planning on staying there to get some good sunset shots with glowing clouds. However, once I realized the clouds were all gone, I had to boogey somewhere else to find a spot to capture the "magic light". I didn't know any other area in Sedona so I was kind of stressing. I drove through town and once again saw the chamber of commerce visitors building. When I went to it, it was closed. Time was running out. They had a couple of magazine dispensers outside with some free visitors guides in them. I quickly grabbed on and thumbed through it to see if I could figure out a place to go to see the sunset. I saw a reference to Schnebly Hill Vista and how it was a four wheel drive road. I figured no problem since I've got a 4x4 truck. I quickly started racing up the mountain on this trail but quickly realized it was going to take me a long time to go the 5 miles required to get to the vista. I probably averaged 6-8 miles an hour. And I had to abuse myself and my truck to even do that. I kept looking behind me at the light and I realized it was getting time. By the time I finally made it to the vista, the really good light was pretty much already gone. In retrospect, there were some good spots along the way that may have even been better, and I should have stopped there. Oh well. The picture above is one of the shotes I got once I got to the actual vista on top. From there I only had to drive another 6 miles on this road and I hit the I-17. I'm laying in the back of my truck right now in the parking lot of the Little America truck stop. I'm gonna go get some food and go to sleep.

Recluse

2007-10-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

Okay so some of you are going to think I've lost my mind and there's something wrong with me. But I'm embarking right now on a solo trip through Northern Arizona to do some photography. Jen and the girls are in Vegas right now for fall break, and I'm at home with nothing to do. This is something I've wanted to do for some time now, but it's always hard to actually find the time to break away and do it. So I've packed up my truck and I'm heading north. My first stop is probably going to be Red Rock State Park in Sedona. I'm also planning on hitting Jerome, Flagstaff, Monument Valley, Lake Powell and we'll see what else. I'll try to keep the blog updated with details of my trip.

Home Sweet Home

2007-09-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

We made it back from our trip. It seems like it took me a few days to recover and get caught up on sleep. No sooner had I gotten home than I had to spend all day Saturday at Lake Pleasant working on my rescue diver certification. We had to perform many skills including rescuing a non-responsive, unconcious diver at the bottom of the lake, bringing him to the surface, towing him in to shore while giving him rescue breaths and removing his dive gear. All simultaneously. It's a lot to think about. I guess that's why they have us go through this training.

Yellowstone Trip Day 5

2007-09-11T20:58:00.001-07:00

We pretty much rode all day today. I slept great last night thanks not only to my ambien, but to the fact that I didn't share a room with Dad. We rode from Henry's Fork (which looks like a cool place to fish) and rode down the Eastern border of Idaho. The road from Ashon, ID to Driggs, ID was awesome. It was nothing but rolling hills of farmland with the Tetons off in the distance. We rode through Victor, ID which is where Jen's family's ranch is. She grew up most of her life going there and has lots of memories there. So in memory of her and her family, we stopped in Victor and had shakes at the Victor emporium where she's had so many shakes in years past. We rode a total of about 320 miles today and ended up in Evantston, WY. I love Wyoming. The country here is so beautiful. The whole area from here up to Yellowstone in Wyoming and Idaho is cool country. We spent a bit of time Jackon, WY too. After leaving the Emporium in Victor and enjoying a great ride through the mountain pass between Victor and Jackson, we got to the town square in Jackson and Dad realized he had left his phone at the Emporium back in Victor. So Jon and I hung out in Jackson while Dad rode back to Victor to get his phone. It's a beautiful ride and he was lucky enough (depending on how you look at it) to get to make that ride 3 times.

We ended up in Evanston, WY where I'm writing this now. Luckly for those we're coming home to tomorrow they have coin laundry here at the hotel. This is the first chance we've had to do laundry.

Well, I'm off to take my ambien. I hope I have some left. I can't wait to talk to many of you once I get home. I haven't had my cell phone this whole time since I forgot my charger. It's been kind of nice.

The inside of our cabin at the fishing lodge

Yellowstone Trip Day 4

2007-09-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I heard there were some complaints about the blog not being detailed enough. So I'll try to catch up tonight. I'm actually writing this at the end of day 5 not day 4, but I didn't have internet at the end of day 4 so I'm going to do two updates at the same time. So I'm writing this particular update as if I wrote it at the end of the 4th day.

We woke up to some freaking cold weather in Cooke City, MT. Which if you don't know where it is, it's just outside the Northeast entrance to the park. I'm posting some pictures I took of our bikes as we woke up. I heard it was 24 degrees. Needless to say we got pretty dressed up to ride. Cooke City isn't very big so we just grabbed a quick (pre-prepared) breakfast burrito at a coffee shop. It was actually pretty good. Despite the fact that it was cold, it was crystal clear outside. It was beautiful. Today was pretty much the day where we toured the majority of the park. As we entered the park, we rode through Lamar Valley and saw lots of wildlife. Everytime there's any wildlife ANYWHERE every car on the road pulls over to pull out binoculars, cameras, telescopes or whatever. The first time I saw the congestion of cars, I thought there had been a wreck or something. We saw a bear, coyotes, tons of buffalo, moose, elk, deer...you name it. We did a lot of riding along rivers. One time, as we were riding along a river, we saw a buck in the middle of the river running upstream right through the middle of the river. I'll post a picture of that too.

We almost ran out of gas today. Apparently Jon and I's bikes don't have as big of gas tank as my Dad's. We were heading down to Canyon Village when my gas light went on. I figured I better pull over to make sure that there was going to be gas at the village we were going to. We pulled over to look a the map and it did not show gas there. So we turned around to go back to Roosevelt where the map showed a gas station. (this meant we turned around and returned about 15 miles to a location we had just come from) When we got back there, we found the gas station closed for the season. So we decided to go across the north part of the park and head to Mammoth Hot Springs where we knew for sure there would be gas. I swear Jon and I had to be riding on fumes as we pulled in. We had lunch and continued touring the park. It got pretty warm and we started shedding clothes. We ended up making our way back to Canyon Village and decided to go ahead and check out the cayon. The highlight of our day was probably when we decided to hike down to Uncle Tom's Lookout. As the Park literature states, it's "328 steps down and 2000 up". that's because you have to hike down this huge decline of steel steps (photo included). Becuase of the altitude, it's quite a chore to get back out. But we made it. And it was worth it. the view from the lookout was awesome.

After the falls, we decided to head West and end our day in the city of West Yellowstone (just outside the park) We had ridden quite a bit and were getting into West Yellowstone a bit later than we had in previous days. We figured we would just grab any available hotel since there are like 25 of them. Unfortunatley, every single hotel in West Yellowstone was booked and at about 7:30pm, we found ourselves without a place to stay. Luckily at the advice of someone working at a hotel front desk, we called a fishing lodge in Henry's Fork, ID and they had one room left. We grabbed dinner in West Yellowstone since we figured there probably wouldn't be anywhere to eat in "Henry's Fork" Idaho. We ended up at the fishing lodge around 8:30 or 9. The ride there was our first at night. It was a short ride, but it was fun riding under the clear starry night. Believe or not, the fishing lodge was really really nice. It was right on the banks of a river and we actually had a small cabin with three queen beds. Luckily one of the beds was in it's own room. That was welcome news for me since I literally had only gotten 2 and half hours of sleep the night before on account of the snoring I endured all night. Yeah, that's right.....Last night, I was fortunate enough to sleep on a cot in between the two queen beds Jon and Dad were on. The ONE night I didn't take an ambien, and I ended up being up all night. At one point last night I got about (somewhere around 3 a.m.) and tried carrying my cot into the bathroom to see if I could fit it in there and close the door so I wouldn't hear the snoring. At any rate, it was exciting to see that I would probably get a good night sleep this time.

the park was awesome, the wildlife was awesome, the and riding was awesome. In fact, I've enjoyed the riding much more than I thought I would. Not that I didn't think I'd enjoy the riding. I think I was looking forward to the photography equal to or just slightly more than the riding. But the reality has been that I've been super stoked on the riding.

So enough with the commentary, here's a few pics:

Yellowstone Trip Day 3

2007-09-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

Cold. That's the best way to describe today. We rode through both rain AND snow. We rode from Old Faithful around the East side of Yellowstone and up to Cody, Wyoming. We went to the Cody Firearms museum there. We had to go up over a mountain pass to get there and it started snowing on us towards the top. Once we were done with the museum, we were trying to decide whether we should just get a hotel in Cody or brave the cold and weather and try to make it closer back towards the Park. We decided to go for it. I'm including a picture from the trip we made after leaving Cody. We took a different route than the one we came. We are now in Cooke City, MT. I'm tired, sore, and cold. I'm going to bed. But by the way, you can see that I ended up putting a few pictures on my flickr page. Here's a few more from today.

Our first stop this morning was at this location where there were tons of Elk grazing around the geyser fields.

Inside the Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, WY

At the top of the second mountain pass on our way to Cooke City

Do you see that windy road down in the valley? We had miles and miles of that on our way to Cook City. It was 34 degrees and raining.

Yellowstone Trip Day 2

2007-09-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

UPDATE! - I was able to get my pictures uploaded to Flickr so you can see them there. Go to www.flickr.com/photos/deltanner/sets My internet connection is too slow to upload pictures tonight. And it's too bad because I've got some great ones. I will try to start an upload to flickr before I go to bed and let it run all night. But let me just say today was AWESOME. The weather was great, the scenery was great, and we saw really amazing stuff. We started out of Jackson and drove up through Teton National Park. It was so spectacular. We rode down by a lake called Jenny lake. It seemed like we were stopping every few minutes to take pictures because we kept seeing so many amazing views. We thought we'd never get to Yellowstone. But we finally made it and checked into the Old Faithful Inn right next to Old Faithful. I'm tired and I'm going to get up at 4 am to go take some pictures at Black Basin, so I'm gonna head off to bed. We'll see if these pictures will upload. If not, I'll try to upload them tomorrow night.

Yellowstone Trip Day 1

2007-09-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Today was a perfect day. My brother and I flew into Salt Lake City early this morning, took a cab to Salt Lake Harley Davidson and picked up our bikes. We headed north on I-15 up through Logan and to Bear Lake. From Bear Lake we stopped in Paris, ID to meet up with my Dad who had been visiting his friend for the last few days. We stopped in Alpine, WY and had dinner at this place called Brenthoven at the Nordic Inn. From Alpine we drove along the Snake river up to Jackson, WY which is where we're staying the first night. The scenery and weather was beautiful the whole way. It was a great day to be outdoors. Below are a couple pictures from the day. You can click on a picture to see a larger version.

We stopped in Afton Wyoming to get a drink. This antler arch was huge.

We stopped atop the Salt River Pass and took in the view. It was so amazing. Pictures could never do it justice.

This was the place in Alpine Wyoming we stopped for dinner. We had to wait for about 45 minutes before we could get in the restaurant. While waiting, I decided to open my laptop and download some pictures off the camera. I was shocked to find that I had a wireless signal out in the grassy area in the front.

We rode along the Snake River from Alpine to Jackson. We stopped for a few minutes to snap off a few pictures.

Live to Ride

2007-09-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving in the morning to go ride motorcycles from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone National Park. We'll be riding through Jackson, WY on the way. We'll be taking a bunch of camera gear and hopefully getting lots of good shots while we're there. I'll be posting pictures and commentary here assuming I have internet access. Comments are welcome.