Independance Day weekend we camped in the mountains and went fishing; last weekend we took Woody hiking at Mt. Evans. Here are the photos.

The lake at our July 4th campsite. This is not a ‘campground’, it is just a spot in the National Forest where other people have camped and built a fire pit and some trees are split for benches. There are no bathrooms, it’s primitive camping, but the reward is: we had the place entirely to ourselves.

Molly and Woody sniffing around the lake.

Our buddies Mikey and Amanda fishing at a different nearby lake.

Dave’s catch!

Dave, Woody, and I on the summit of Evans.

The real stars of Mt. Evans, the mountain goats. They are shedding their coat so they don’t look as pretty as they usually do. They actually bear an uncanny resemblance to Woody…

Dave looking out over the ’saw tooth ridge’ to Mt. Bierdstadt

Woody hiking on Mt. Evans

A marmot on Mt. Evans. At such a high elevation there is an amazing amount of wildlife on this mountain. The mountain goats, marmots, birds, wildflowers, and bristlecone pines. This really is a cool place.

The views were great, there were a few times I could have used a few more gears on the hills, though. My favorite quote was from an older lady I talked to on the first day. She said ‘I don’t like to think of this as a 150 mile ride. I like to think of it as a series of 10 to 15 mile rides with cookie breaks in between’.

Here we are, Team ION, at the finish line. 

Only one week to go! Are we ready? Well, I’m getting a little nervous. I know the first day will be OK but getting back in the saddle on the second day….oh how that will hurt. I’ve been riding to work a few times a week which is about 18 miles each way (sometimes I wuss out and take the train home) but on the weekends we’ve done a few fairly substantial training rides so I think we will survive. But we will be sore. Also, Dave still hasn’t raised enough $$ so you have a last chance to donate if you click here:

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/COCBikeEvents?pg=personal&fr_id=9111&JServSessionIdr009=1ow8ro3bp1.app328a&fr_id=9111&px=4829500

Thanks for your support and you’ll see photos from the ride soon!  

I also took a few photos over Memorial Day weekend, we went for a camping trip in the mountains (Woody’s first camping trip). We have had an extremely rough winter here, a lot of our favorite dirt roads were still closed from excessive snow and avalanches over the winter. Even Independance Pass is still closed, which is a paved road that is normally open by now.

Dave, Heather, and Kenny beside the Pike’s Peak train.

The tracks leading up to the peak.

Kenny and Heather with ’ship rock’ at Garden of the Gods.

A view of Pike’s from a distance.

Clear Creek Reservior…we really like this area. When you turn off the highway on to the dirt road there is the beautiful lake, then a free campground right by it. Down the dirt road a few miles is the trailhead to hike 3 14ers, Oxford, Belford, and Missouri. A few more miles down is a cool deserted mining town, a few more miles past that a deserted mine with a great slag pile I like to hunt minerals in. At the very end of the road is the trailhead to climb another 14er, Mt. Huron. Can’t pack much more fun in 10 miles of dirt road than that! Unfortunately there were two avalanches across the road this winter and one of them wiped out a building from the old mining town. What a bummer!

These pictures are from our last two days, we stayed around Tokyo and tried to catch up on things we hadn’t yet had a chance to do although all the museums are closed on Mondays so that turned out to be a bummer.

I tried to upload a video I took at the sumo match and was unable to. This blog is supposed to support video uploads but so far I have been thwarted in my attempts to use the function.

Me in front of the Imperial Palace. They make you keep a fair distance away, the grounds are huge, but at a few locations you could get a peek inside.

Statue of a famous samurai and his faithful dog in the park where the zoo and a few museums (all closed Mondays) are located.

I called this area ‘cat corner’. Just a corner in the park where like 10 fat cats were hanging out. I guess the lady on the bicycle feeds them. There sure were a lot!

Tokyo tower.

View of the city from the observation deck of the tower.

So looking out of the tower I saw these kids, apparently in PE class. I got to thinking, it’s no wonder a lot of Japanese kids take to dressing up in strange outfits on the weekends. They spend their entire life in uniform. All schools wear uniforms and if you graduate and get a good job what you wear to work is about like a uniform as well. Maybe not so much for the women, but for the Japanese businessman a dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie is pretty much about your only clothing choice. I can see why you would want to dress up as a goth or cartoon character on the weekend.

And just to leave you on the right note here is the control panel for one of the more high-tech toilets.

All the top-level contestants in their ‘dress outfit’ before the match. On match day events start early in morning with the lower level wrestlers and throughout the day the contestants are higher and higher ranked. All the contestants come out in their traditional apron-style garment before the match, and these are the top tier.

This is a traditional demonstration before the matches begin.

Another traditional demostration with a bow. This occurs after the matches are over.

First we went to lunch at one of the cool conveyor-belt sushi places. As the sushi comes around, you just grab what you want. At the end of the meal they add up the plates to see how much your bill is!

The garden at Narita Temple.

The views are so peaceful here.

The temple area at Narita.

A cool fountain area with a large rock in the middle.

Day 7 I only have a couple of pictures from. After all that constant going we slept in, then got on the shinkansen and headed back for Steve’s where we rested for the afternoon before meeting him after work to attend another baseball game (his home team, Chiba Marines playing this time) and after that singing karaoke. Yes, we actually sang karaoke. It’s not so bad Japanese style though, they put you and your friends in a private room with the karaoke machine, so you only have to make an idiot out of yourself in front of your friends. Those of you who know how bad of a singer I am will know that it was still not easy for me; or for Dave either but we actually did it. We enjoyed it, too, since they had to kick us out at 1:30 am when the place closed!!

Giant ferris wheel in Osaka. They claim it’s the larget in the world but I don’t think it is bigger than the London Eye….this one was probably the biggest when it was built, though.

This is him, the star of the Osaka aquarium. I hope to see one of these guys while scuba diving one day but we couldn’t pass up the chance to see one, even if he was in an aquarium. The aquarium was great, but the thousands of red and yellow hatted school kids on field trips was a little crazy. They say Japan has the lowest birth rate of any country but you wouldn’t have guessed it that day at the aquarium!

This is the most famous of Nara’s World Heritage sites. It is a huge wooden building (claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world) housing a huge Buddha statue. The building was originally built in something like 500 AD but has burned down twice and been rebuilt, most recently in the 1700’s if I remember correctly.

This is the Buddha housed in the giant wooden building. The statue was cast all as one piece and was remade around the last time the building was re-built in the 1700’s.

The gate leading into the building area. See those crazy deer? They live all over the park and harass people for food. I’m surprised they live very long, I saw one eating a plastic bag.

Huge wooden statue also in the building with the big Buddha.

The whole town of Nara is just cool. This is still inside Nara Park as it’s getting close to sunset but there is a cool traditional Japanese neighborhood near the park we walked through on our way back to the hotel. There were small traditional homes with beautiful gardens and we saw a geisha and her maiko (understudy) walking home probably after performing somewhere. They looked tired.

Dave sings karaoke!!!

Steve is actually a very good singer, and does karaoke a lot so it was a little tough for Dave and I sing with him. Since we are terrible and had never done karaoke before.

Dave on shinkansen. If he looks tired, it is because he is. We got the 6:00 am shinkansen which meant we had to leave Steve’s at 5:00 to get to Tokyo station.

Front of the train. Everyone asks how fast they go, and I’m not sure how fast the one we were riding actually went. I think they regularly go 300kmh which is like 188mph. Test speeds have been up to about 280mph I think.

The side of the train. Yes, the conductors wear uniforms with hat and gloves.

This is the ‘carp castle’ in Hiroshima. Of course it is a reproduction of the original, but it was still pretty interesting.

Looking out at the city of Hiroshima.

This is a tree that survived the nuclear blast.

This is the A-bomb dome. This building was left standing after the blast as a memorium. It was not flattened because the explosion actually occured almost directly above it rather than to the side so it did not get any of the shear waves. Unfortunately we didn’t get to visit the museum. We planned to take a boat ride to a nearby island called Miajima and visit the museum when we returned. We spent longer on the island than we intended so by the time we got back the museum was closed.

This is what Miajima is famous for, the shrine gate. When the tide is high the bottom of it is under water making it very picturesque. Of course when we visited the tide was low so it was just out on a mud flat but it is still very beautiful and the entire island is a peaceful, natural place. A great getaway when you’ve been in big, hectic cities for a while.

Pagoda on Miajima.

Looking back at the island.

Ok, so this was kinda funny. I saw this guy walking a huge white Great Pyrenees and had to run over and ask if I could take a picture of the dog. I mean, imagine going all the way to Japan to find a Woody look-alike.

These are carp flags hanging above the canal. It was Children’s Day and the tradition is to hang up a flag for each of your kids on this day. We bought a small flag, but it has 3 fish on it. One is quite small, so I told Dave we have to get a cat.

The carp flags are very cool.

The temple where the festival was being held.

Me with some cute kids who’s parents and grandparents we were talking with — well, doing our best to talk with, Steve did most of the talking. They were very nice and insisted on buying us beer.

After the festival we took a boat ride down the river and along the bay. It was getting really cold and windy so we stayed inside the boat.

The cool-looking boat.

The view across the bay at a boat and big ferris wheel.

The view of Tokyo Tower from across the bay.