Category Archives: Hiking/Camping

What’s Happening In My Life

We are here on the plane, heading to Minnesota. So not use to getting up at 5 am, but then we didn’t crash until midnight. Too busy trying to get things done, watch the games and catch up on shows.

It has been another very busy and stressful week trying to keep up with payroll. I’m hoping the next round is nowhere near as big as this one. But we are going to be making some changes, so it should be slowing down….at least by Nov 1st round.

We still went to the gym 5 days this week, even though Thursday wasn’t very good. I got the treadmill in and my floor abs, but not my sit up bench and weights. I’m always challenging myself on the treadmill, that is easy….just watch the distance and time…I log it. But it harder to challenge myself in the other areas…that is where I need a trainer. I’m getting a work out in, but we just need to stay at the gym longer then 60-80 min, but by then we are thinking about all that we want to get done and want to get home.

My weight is finally got below 154. It moves between 152-154. I’m aiming for 150, realistically don’t see hitting the 140/145 from HS….too old for that…lol This week is probably not going to be a good one for me without the gym. But I do have a neat application on my iphone that lets me log my eating that helps. It is easier then carrying my small notebook writing everything down.

I’m hoping to be able to fly out and visit my family this spring. I was thinking of April due to the weather, but my sister reminded me that there are 3 birthdays in March. My mom, a niece and nephew….from the 23-31. If I do that I’ll probably end up missing one of them, but that would be cool to be there for 2 of them.

And then somehow I would need to work it that I head up to Michigan to visit my best friend…..it is going to take some thinking and planning if I’m able to head out in the spring.

If you saw my tweets, one of my toenails was very sore from the hike. It was from the too long nail continuously hitting my boot and being pulled up. I found out later that hikers are known for losing toenails…yuck. So far mine isn’t hurting anymore. But later that evening after my pedicure I stubbed my toe….ouch. Well, I can’t see my toe nail since it is covered in nail polish. But when I look in front under the nail….it is black….icks. A few of hubby’s toe nails are black, but I don’t think that the are as black as that one….lol So I’m been trying to be careful as heck with it

I am hoping that we find time to get one more hike in. Since we finally hiked on Mt. Hood I would love it if we can do one at Crater Lake. The pictures of it are stunning and the lake is the deepest blue. I have to look up what elevation it is at. Because Oct is cutting it close snow wise. Not even a week after our hike is 70degree weather that area of Mt Hood received 2in of snow. So hopefully we won’t have that issue there at Crater.

But then we do have other options for hikes, such as the coast. We’ve visited the coast but haven’t hiked anywhere on it. So that would be really neat to do. So we’ll have to go over our options.

We have been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the National Parks…very neat info and stunning footage. Damn, I just wish we can take off and spend a year visiting them all.

I’m going to close this session for now…I can no longer think of what else to share. I’ll post this when I get the chance. =)

Mt Hood Hike

Watching the Purdue/Norte Dame game and it is totally stressing me out.  We are always getting hit with penalties……gggrrr  I love my Purdue football, but they stress me out big time……

As you saw from my tweets, we went for a hike Wed.  Two different maps list it hike we took from 9.3 mile – 9.7 mile…..according to my pedometer we did 12miles….which is what it felt like.  It ended up taking us 8hrs & 10min….our 12mile hike last year took us 8hr & 20min.   So I was totally not happy with our time considering it was 2+miles shorter.

But as we look back on it, we didn’t take into the fact that we were starting at 4400ft so the air was thinner. Our total elevation increase was only 1400ft, compared to the 2900ft last time….but unlike last time, this wasn’t just straight up and straight down.  We went up and up…..but then went back down a couple hundred feet so we can cross a muddy glacier river and then back up and up….lol  So looking back, that did slow us down.

The most frustrating part hike was the when the trail went through the ski slopes.  The trail was barely wide enough for single file and it was so deep, like it was cut out that you keep tripping on it and had to keep yourself from falling on your face.  That really slowed us down.

So that was the logistics of the hike.  =)

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Taken from the parking lot of a different trail head.  We were looking for ours.

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But it really was a beautiful hike, it felt like more adventure then a hike.  We hiked through the forest, on the side of ravines, down “gravel” pit (for lack of a better word), had to cross the 1st glacier river we ever crossed and lost count of how many streams and falls we had to figure out how to cross.

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Words and pictures doesn’t do this justice.  This ravine was stunning.

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Hiking on down, so we can get to the slope on the other side.

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You can barely see the trail we took down the side of the slope to get the glacier river.

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The muddy glacier river we had to wade in.  Luckily hubby thought ahead and we brought our beach shoes that we got in FL.  That came in handy, the water was very, very cold and went just below my knees.  This pic is about 10ft about the river.

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One of the many mountain waterfalls.

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The ski lift looks so high, but imagine about 15-20ft of snow underneath those chairs come winter.

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I didn’t think my camera got this!  This is from one of the ski slopes we crossed.

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Umbrella Falls, about 2-3 miles before the end of the trail.

I will say, no more 10+mile hikes.  We are thinking of more like 5-8miles.  Because by the end our feet/toes and other parts are hurting from the extreme up and downs.  Of course, it doesn’t help that we were carrying over 20# pack wise.  90% of the stuff we had in our packs we didn’t need, it was all emergency stuff…like extra clothes and food, in case we were stuck on the mountain over night and first aid stuff.  But it is much better to be safe then sorry. =)

We did skip the gym the day after the hike, but only that day.  We did end up going Friday and even with our aches and pains, we did really well, surprisingly.  So we are pretty proud of that.  Last year we couldn’t move for like 3 days….lol  We still have some aches, 2 of my toes are feeling weird, but not too bad otherwise.

I spent Thursday trying to catch up on my work from Wednesday, but mentally it was a bitch…..lol  My brain had a hard time focusing.  But I got it pretty much caught up on Friday with a few lose ends to do, nothing unusual.

Today, I have just been doing a combination of personal and work projects, more personal…..like catching up on a bunch of mags that have piled up on me.  So I’m pretty content that way.  Now if Purdue would win this game, it would be a perfect day……gggggrrr

What’s Happening In My World

Been a while since I posted and time for another one.  Now where to begin….

We’ve been needing new laptops, ours are like 4-5yrs old and obviously outdated.  I personally was trying to hold on until the new windows operating system came out because I HATE vista.  But I was getting really worried about my pc, locking, shutting down……fans going all the time….not a good sign.

Well, hubby has had enough…we are tried of the antivirus programs that hog your resources, the continuous updates that windows has you do and frankly, vista was unforgivable.  So he decided on a macbook pro, screw pc with windows.  He got one last month and really likes it.  There are things that are weird on it but he is much happier with it.  He has been trying to convince me to get a macbook pro, but there would be no way unless I can use quickbooks and convert my files.  I can not do my job without it.

I found that QB does have a mac version and that there is even a mac version of office, which I needed for word & excel.  So after watching hubby with his new macbook and finding those programs, I too finally got a macbook pro.  A basic one that with only $100 extra let me go from 2gb ramm to 4gb ramm!  And after using my laptop with 1.5gb ramm….wow, big differences.

I got it on Friday the 8th, so I spent the weekend transferring files over and setting it up and learning it. We ordered my programs that I needed and of course it was a holiday weekend, so we didn’t the stuff until Tues….doh.  So I spent Tues trying to get those set up, had to get a new keyboard/mouse combo since my other one was for windows and get work done AND get ready for my friend Jessie that was coming out on the 11th for the Oregon/Purdue game in Eugene.

During all this stress and work, Sakura lost a claw while freaking out when she got caught in a plastic bag.  Now we didn’t know she lost a claw from this…they were playing with the bag, like all of previous cats have, so we didn’t think nothing of it.  Then we hear this huge commotion, see Drew fluffed up to 2-3times his size, heck we thought it was Sakura because we almost never see him do that.  He is all freaked out and when we finally find Sakura, she is behind the couch stuck in the handle of the plastic bag.  The water was a mess and the food was tipped over from Sakura running with it.  That was on Fri the 8th.

So late Sat we noticed that something was wrong with her walking, there was blood marks here and there.  We had just trimmed their claws like Wed/Thurs, so we are freaking out thinking we cut too far and she got an infection.  Of course the next day was Sunday, the vet was closed and then Monday was a fracking holiday…closed also.  We read online about soaking it in epsom salt, so we did that to her annoyance.  When we got her in Tues they made room for her because a claw infection is a serious thing.  We found that the salt helped, they gave her antibotics and saw that she lost her claw.  And when talking to the vet, it dawned on hubby that it wasn’t from the trim. She didn’t jerk when he did that claw and we only do the tips.  It was from the bag incident.

She is doing much better, lets us look at her claws (well, within reason) and looks to have another one growing.  But the messed up thing, is that Drew got into another plastic bag in the spare room a week later the morning that we were leaving for Eugene and the same damn thing happened!!!  It freaked him out so bad that he wet himself.  We don’t think he did it has bad as Sakura’s but he lost 3 of them.  WTF?!?  We’ve never had cats do that before.  His claws are already back to normal after a few times in epsom salt.  But no more plastic bags are allowed to be accessible to the wonder twins.

It was great to see Jessie! I haven’t seen her since her wedding. She use to work for me at Fannie May in Lafayette.  She use to be one of the ones the helped me run it.

She finally got here Thurs after her flight was late and we went to a pub that we liked to go to and just relaxed.  She was so thoughtful and brought us this Purdue football season t-shirts!  Friday we took her to the local sights, Larch Mountain & Multnomah Falls.  Then her and I visited the outlet mall nearby.

Saturday we drove down to Eugene, took us less time to get there then we thought it would. Saw a ton of Oregon Duck fans on the way. =)  Got a lot of stares for our Purdue flag and clothes…..grin

When we stopped for lunch and walked in….the host was wearing a duck jersey and just stared.  Hubby was like, yup all 3 of us….lol  Everyone was nice and good natured.  We found the stadium much easier then we thought we would and need kill time before they’d let us in, so we chilled out at the park surfing on our phones.  Now we were hot as heck and hid in the shade.  It hit 90degrees…icks So totally above our average at this time of year.

When we finally got in, the entrance we took was right next to the enclosed practice field.  And the Ducks do a really cool thing with it before the game.  They put a plastic/rubber cover on the field set up a bunch of tables/chairs, tvs, a bandstand and concessions.  It was really nice and great place to hang out and stay cool.

Then the oddest thing keep happening.  Oregon fans keep stopping to make sure that we were treated right and welcoming us to Eugene.  That was weird, but very cool.  When we got to our sets, we were surrounded by Ducks…the Purdue Alumni was about 2 sections over, but we did get a Purdue family in front of us….lol  Overall, the Oregon Duck fans were really cool.  We were so hoping that they wouldn’t be like Wash Husky fans who are the rudest and have the worst sportmanship we have ever encountered.  The OR fans were the standard fun trash talk & good natured ribbing that we were used to in the Big Ten.  The way it should be.

Autzen Stadium is a really nice.  It has really nice setup for the concessions and bathrooms.  And it is LOUD.  It is the loudest one I’ve ever been in.  My ears rang forever afterwards.

It was extremely slow going on the I-5 going home.  It didn’t actually clear up until we got on the 205, which was like 20min away from home.  But we still made better time then we thought we would with all that traffic.

Sunday, my friend was happy to just stay at home and chill out while watching some football.  I was actually able to get some of my regular work done, while she surfed and work on my other laptop.

I got up about 05:30 to get her to the airport Monday and actually skipped the gym due to all the payroll I hadn’t been able to get to.  Go thing that I did, learning the different version of the programs I use slowed me down and I had a ton of new people to add to it.  Payroll on the 15th is usually my easiest……not this time.  I can normally get it all ordered before bed on the 14th (since I’m on the west coast, cut off is midnight eastern)…..nope, not until Tues was I able to order it.  Then we have this fraud scrubbing we had to do, that I still have 6 people waiting on that before I can pay them.  I ended up 2 days behind on the catching up the books and spread sheets.

And if you saw my tweets, having major issues with the reconciliation in the mac version of QB.  I finally got it to work, but they really need to get it up to speed.  I expect differences between Mac QB and Win QB, but some of those differences are horrible.  Using Mac QB is like using Win QB from 6 yrs ago.  I know that this is like only the second year of them making a version for Mac again (didn’t have one for 7yrs) and that was due to apple’s decline.  So they have to rebuild it, but come on……I should be able to change my fracking fonts and the reports not look like something out of high school….ggeezz.

I usually wait 3-4yr in between my QB upgrade, but if they can get some of these basic changes in the next version I’ll get it.  Of course, I have to see it in action 1st to make sure that it is there. But for now, I’ll just work with it and hope for the changes.

So it has been a stressful week work wise and learning wise.  I’m finally taking time out for my own little work things.  Like getting our photo printer hooked up to my mac and getting the software downloaded for it.  I figured out how to import pictures through photo shop, because there is no way in hell that I’m using iphoto.  That is horrible system for people who want to do their own thing……you can’t even find the pictures on the HD when you import into that, you have to use that damn program….ggrrr.  It is enough that it gets under my skin and I’m so, so happy that I can use my photo shop for it.  =)

Need to learn the FTP program that we have for the mac.  Not sure about it, seen hubby use it and I don’t like the layout and he doesn’t either.  Seems unorganized….which is not us.

Since the kids are finally back in school we have some nice weather left, we are planning a day hike later this week.  We are looking at this trail : http://www.nwhiker.com/MHNFHike27.html

It almost 10miles and only a 1400 ft difference in elevation (after our last one of 12miles & 2900 ft difference, doesn’t seem as bad…lol)  What is going to be kind of strange, is seeing the east side of Mt Hood.  We live west of it and are used to that west outline of it.  I’m getting so psyched for this.  The pictures on that link look beautiful and I love hiking.  And since we did our 1st big one, we are much better on trying to prepare ourselves.

We will have to leave here around 6am, since it is about 90-120min away.  We don’t want to run out of daylight like that last time…..now that was scary because that trail got very rough and dangerous.  I’m HOPING that it will only take about 4-6hrs.  The last one took 8hrs & 20min and as I said longer and bigger elevation difference which slowed us down.

So now I’m trying to decide what I want to do…….thinking of attacking some pictures.  If I get the galleries made it force me to learn that FTP program we have. But today, other then making sure there aren’t any fires at work, I’m just trying to work on my own thing and watch some football.  =)

The Coastal RedWoods

Well, it has taken me a couple of months of getting to it, but I finally got the pictures up from our trip…..better late then never.   =)

They are located on this page of my blog : http://www.paulineantoinette.com/our-travels/

They are sorted by the different types of cameras and in sections so the galleries aren’t so overwhelming.

From the Nikon D70

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part1/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part2/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part3/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part4/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part5/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_0525_Redwood_NP/part6/index.htm

From the Olympus Stylus 740

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part1/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part2/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part3/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part4/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part5/index.htm

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_May_Redwoods/part6/index.htm

From my iPhone

http://www.paulineantoinette.com/PNH/travel/2009_redwoods_iphone/index.htm

I hope that you enjoy!

Hello Everyone!!

Been a bit since I’ve done an entry. If you’ve been following my tweets, it has just been the normal daily routine…..working, getting things done around the house, doing errands and the gym.

We have tried to stick with our routines just to keep our mind busy. Mine keeps drifting to Diesel’s family and I’ve been dropping them emails.

It is HOT…yuck. It is going to get hotter…blah. I know places like FL and IND gets hotter and stickier but for OR, the place where central air is not standard, it is hot. If it wouldn’t go past the mid 80s, it would be perfect. But we are suppose to hit the 100s in the next 3 days…ugh! Which also means the gym is going to be stuffy. Need to make sure we get treadmills near the fans.

I’ve been making progress and I hit the weight goal that I set when I started about 18 months ago. So I’m pretty pleased, just need to get rid of some more jiggly. I’m not sure what I want tightened more, my ass, thighs or abs. Ab wise, I’ve never had a tight one even when I was younger and in shape….so that is actually out realistically and I do like my curves. So I think I really would like to see my legs tighten up because I use to stop traffic with them. =) Either way, I’ll just keep with my exercise program and keep counting my calories. That is the only way.

Hubby and I are trying to decide where are next hike is going to be. We’ve been in OR for about 2 yrs and have yet to visit Mt Hood, then there is the Bend area and Crater Lake….not sure. Trying to decide if we want to camp or get a hotel and how many nights. We are counting down the days when school starts to free up the crowds in the parks and trails.

In fact, Harold mentioned that he is ready for fall. The colors and the comfortable temperatures…..the crisp air….the kids in school. =) I love fall, it is my favorite time of year.

Finally found out from my mom, that my great aunt that passed away last month is going to have a memorial next month in FL. Unfortunately, I’m not able to go. =( But mom is going.

I finally got a few months written on our holiday letter. I still need to do the rest of May, June and July. I really need to write them when they are fresh in my mind, but this year is flying by. I can’t believe that July is almost over…wow

I really need to get to my long term to do list…..picture galleries, clean up my hard drives and organize them, back up my pc……. I just really didn’t have motivation for them this weekend, too hot.

Well, I’m going to read my comics online and get to the bedroom, much cooler in there. =)