Bouncing Marty

We had the pleasure of being in NC to see my sister’s wedding, and took a bit of vacation to make the most of the long cross country flight.  We spent the four day weekend with our East Coast family and friends, and endured some of the hot humid weather that comes with North Carolina in July.  Laine and Geraud were married very close to Chapel Hill, where we got hitched last year, and Mollie and I took a couple hours touring around the campus, and remembering the great time we had there on our wedding weekend.

We even tried to re-create some of Derek’s photos…this is about as much success as I could muster…

I headed home early Monday morning, while Mollie stayed in Greensboro for the ENTIRE week.  Its hard to believe I survived.  How does the saying go…man cannot live off pizza rolls and China-a-Gogo alone?  Something like that.  Needless to say, was glad to have my wife back after the week of solitude.

My big sister Laine married Geraud Staton a few weekends back and we had the pleasure of watching them tie the knot.  It was a beautiful ceremony full of family and friends, and it was wonderful to see both of them so happy.  Congratulations Laine and and welcome to the family Geraud!

When Mollie and I brought home our first dog Nyah from Spokane just a week after getting married, my Dad mentioned to us that having two pups running around the house really wasn’t any more work than having the one. And the companionship for Nyah would be priceless. Since then we both kicked around the idea of getting another dog over and over, and its finally come to be. Introducing Ko, 8 weeks of vizsla puppy cuteness.

Don’t let the doe eyes fool you. Notice above the brownish stuff on his nose? Thats the residue of destruction. You are looking at 10lbs of foliage attacking fury! He’s a rust velvet wrecking ball.

Mollie and I rendezvoused last Saturday morning in Chicago, where we picked up our rental chariot (a Jeep Liberty of all things), and made the hour long drive out to the Busch Farm. They are the breeder that my Mom had gotten her super stud dog Caper, who also happens to be the father of Nyah. They have beautiful grounds and an awesome habitat for creating wonderfully birdy, and pleasantly social vizslas. We had the pick of 3 boys, and after several hours of chatting and playing, we chose Ko to be the next addition to the Hindley Household. (He’s the right-most pup below.)

We stayed the night in Chicago, then had the next day to do a little exploring. A tough task with a young pup we soon found out. Still we had a great time in the city. I was seriously impressed by Chicago. We were in the touristy areas of course, but it was awesome to see another part of the Nation that I didn’t know existed. Oh, we also got kicked out of Millenium Park by an irate sounding security guard. Apparently vicious animals and puppies alike are not allowed within.

The flight home was…memorable. He’s small enough to carry on the plane, so we had a small carrier and got him all ready to be stowed under the seat. Somehow we managed to book a flight that took us through Houston, TX on route to Vegas…not the smartest move. Thats stacking two nearly three hour flights, including a two hour layover. I won’t get into the greasy details, but believe me. This dog has some pipes on him. Opera singers would be jealous. I have a newfound respect for parents who have to deal with the embarrassment of a fussy child on planes. It took a lot of soothing, and some treats, but eventually we got home without two plane loads of travelers mauling us.

Since then, he’s adapting nicely. Nyah is turning out to be a wonderful foster Mom. She is incredibly tolerant of his antics, and they are both having a blast attacking and chasing around the house. They are absolutely a whirlwind. I don’t have any photos of him since he’s been home besides sleeping photos…that’s not a coincidence. He doesn’t slow down much.

Thankfully Mollie’s been home for most of the time, being summer vacation and all, and she can keep an eye on him. The housebreaking process is in full swing…its a good thing we have Nyah around to show him the ropes. She keeps him in line for the most part and is teaching him how things roll around here. I have a feeling they are going to be best buds for a long time. We couldn’t be happier with him!

Lots more videos and photos at my Flickr site.

Did I mention that we are getting one of these?

We’ll be taking home a male vizsla puppy on July 19th.  We have wanted a companion for Nyah for a while now, and this summer seems the perfect time to make it happen.  The pup is bred in Illinois from Busch Vizslas, the same amazing place that Nyah’s father came from.  Can’t wait!  More on the breeder can be found here.

When we moved into our house the back yard didn’t have a whole lot going on besides an impressive crop of crabgrass, a whole lot of sunshine, and a ceramic chicken.  We have a fairly large area out back (by Vegas standards) and wanted to create some more livable and usable space.  We spent most of the Fall planting greenery and working on the crabgrass, and as Spring rolled around and things started growing, we realized we would never be able to enjoy our hard work without some shade from the desert heat.  We needed a patio cover.  We considered getting one of the pre-made aluminum covers, but I realized that if I built it from wood I’d have an excuse to buy all kinds of cool tools, so the decision was made.  Initial sketches look like this:

Attached to the house at the roof rafters, with two posts out front.  I had initially planned on using redwood for the entire project, but realized fairly quickly that my budget was not nearly large enough to cover that kind of cost.  Redwood is about four times the cost of fir around here so the main structural pieces ended up redwood, and the crossing rafters and lattice as fir.

First step was laying out everything on our slab, then the footings.  I dug holes about 24″ square, made some forms, and dumped in almost 20 sacks of concrete.  I used the biggest post holders I could find, and set them in the concrete.

I used 4×4 posts, and capped them with 2×6’s to conceal the metal post holders.  The hardware for the project is all 5/8″ zinc, and I used some regular steel load bearing plates painted black to dress it up a little.

Its so dry and hot here that wood tends to self destruct in record time.  Because of this, I wanted to build the patio cover with very little dependence on fasteners.  I didn’t want to be able to see any screws or clips from below, and I didn’t want any weight hanging off of flimsy screw threads.  (More like I didn’t want to have sleepless nights a few years down the road every time the wind blows, thinking my patio cover’s going to tear the house apart.)   I figured a way to notch out the 2×6’s on the posts so they would bear the weight of the main cross beams, then carved and notched the beams themselves to hold all of the rafters.  I used a template and my handy new router to make some foo-foo ends as well.

The main cross beams are 14′ long 2×10’s.  Each one weighed a bit more than 100lbs.  You can imagine that it was an adventure to get them up 10′ onto the posts….

Next up I made a matching ledger board for the house side, and reinforced the house with hurricane ties off the roof rafters on to the 2×8 fascia board.  Then I ran the main 2×8 rafters out to sandwich the posts in place.

Up next came the most time consuming part.  Cutting all of the decorative ends on the 2×6 rafters.  Took forever.  I think it was worth it though, the swoopy ends make it look nice and finished.

The final step was to create the shade layer on top.  I did this by ripping 2×4’s down the middle, basically making my own 2×2’s to put on top.  I cut all of them, then put them all up on top of the rafters.  Sandwiched them all together, and screwed down every other 2×2.  The you pick out the ones you didn’t screw down and re-stack them.  Repeat again and again, and it evenly spaces them across the cover.

I put in two more posts near the house to help bear some of the weight of the cover, and some 45 degree braces at the big posts to stiffen it up a bit.  I don’t have a final picture of how it looks nowadays but the one below is pretty close.  I’ve cut off the post ends, and put the first of many coats of a waterproofing wood stain on it.  The closely spaced 2×2’s block the sun for the majority of the day, and the cover has really opened up the backyard for us.  Unfortunately the neighbors are still RIGHT next-door, so next up is to get some outdoor curtains to enclose it a little bit.  Then some patio furniture and lighting and we’ll have a quiet place to eat some meals outside in privacy.

Living at the North end of the Vegas Valley has its advantages. The Spring Mountains and Mount Charleston are a quick 30 minute drive away, dropping us at around 8,000ft and surrounded by pine forest and limestone canyons. Just in the last week or so we realized how accessible and awesome these canyons are!

They are close enough that I can shoot home from work on a weekday, grab Mollie and Nyah, a stove and a backcountry meal, hike uphill a few miles and be cooking in the solitude of a high altitude pine forest before 7pm at night. And that is exactly what we did last week. Thanks again to Mollie for the inspiration and motivation!

Of course, Nyah had a great time scouring the hillsides for chipmunks, birds, and whatever tasty smells she finds out there.

I’m ‘almost’ looking forward to the summer heat, knowing that we have this high altitude escape so close by. Oh yeah, and there are real trees up there….

About 20 minutes of freeway driving from the house brings us to the entrance to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, a giant parcel of land that the government decided needed some protection and conservation from the ever growing Vegas Valley. The DNWR was designated way back in 1936…and I’m sure glad they did. The area encompasses six major mountain ranges, peaks that reach close to 10,000ft, and hidden forests that protect mountain and desert wildlife. And its only a short drive away. We’ve just begun to explore it, and our first stop was some hiking in Deadman Canyon this weekend.

Rattling through the desert on roads like the one above for about a half hour dropped us on the North side of the Sheep Mountains, and the trailhead at the end of Hidden Forest Road. The Joshua Tree forest on the desert plains was blooming which was very cool, but I didn’t manage to snap a photo of much of it. The sun was shining but the desert wind was blowing, so we bundled up and headed up towards the limestone canyon.

The terrain quickly turned from desert flatlands into juniper pines and scrub brush; the trail in the center of the canyon gradually rising up into the mountains. The canyon walls continued to get tighter and tighter the higher we hiked, and after several miles we were almost surrounded by trees.

The elevations for the hike started around 5,500ft, and after three hours of hiking we were close to 7,500ft. There was even some snow remaining in the shaded areas. About four miles into the canyon is a nice hanging valley that would be an awesome place to camp out for the night. We were just spending the day, but we’ll be back in the summer when the temperatures start getting unbearable to enjoy the trees and shade again.

Well…its been a while. I don’t even know where to start. We had a great and low key holiday season at home, and it has rolled right into a nice Vegas spring. Adventures have been fairly limited and photo taking even more so. Combine that with fun and busy days and nights, and reporting gets pushed to the wayside.

We managed to spend the majority of our winter and spring weekends puttering around the house. The domestication levels have reached a new high at the Hindley Household. I’ll try to detail a couple projects that have been demanding attention as of late.

Last fall we tackled putting in some laminate flooring, which dramatically changed a lot of things about the house. Like a lot of projects we seem to get into, the majority of the work goes very quickly, but tying up the last loose ends takes an incredible amount of time and energy. To put the flooring in, we had to remove all the baseboards from the surrounding walls. They were typical track home style, very cheap painted fake-wood-stuff about 2″ tall. We replaced it with some fancy-shmancy 6″ boards that look a lot better. Below is a before/after in the kitchen. (Just after the boards were nailed up, not finished/painted yet.)

I was lucky enough to have a good friend who found a used compressor for me to have (Thanks Willie!!), and picked up a cheap finish nail gun to attach the boards with. Getting the baseboards up was fun and went fairly fast. I’m by no means a finish carpenter. I’m much more of a hack rip and tear kind of carpenter. Thank goodness for caulking and paint. I did a lot of fighting with our poor concrete, and wavy walls trying to keep the boards square and looking decent. It took two lazy Saturdays to get them up through the house, and we’re slowly working on finishing them. We pre-painted them in the garage with a sprayer (see below), and have been trying different various methods of finishing to see what works best. Its slow work…but we’ll get it done someday. Eventually we’ll repaint the caulking at the joints and nail holes, and do some touchup on the walls surrounding to finish up.

If you asked me what I thought of gardening two years ago, you would have gotten a response something like…”Gardening is for people who have nothing else to do.” Funny how things change. I spent a lot of time last winter doing this:

Just looking at that photo makes my back ache. When we bought our house, the backyard was basically a little patch of mostly dead grass surrounded by a concrete curb, with some dirt surrounding it covered in 3″ of pea gravel, and a plaster chicken in a birdbath.

And NOW…we have a kind of growing patch of grass surrounded by a bunch of bushes and trees and sprinklers and stuff and a plaster chicken in a birdbath.

Mollie has taken it upon herself to rid our backyard of all crabgrass, which is an incredible task. She’s weeded and feeded, she’s seeded, she’s ripped and pulled and watered. She’s removed large patches and replaced with sod. Quite the project. I think its going to pay off bigtime, our grass is starting to come in this spring nice and green.

Don’t let anyone fool you. Digging in the desert is awful. I can not believe the size and consistency of rocks in the soil here. We literally had to remove a truckload of white desert sandstone from our backyard that I pulled up to plant our trees and bushes.

We dug in a Modesto Ash, a Raywood Ash, and a Pink Dawn Chitalpa Multi-trunk in the backyard. We had to wait a good three months to see if our trees and plants were going to grow, and it looks like things are going to take. The above shot is the Modesto, and is turning more and more green each day. The other trees are not far behind, and its been surprisingly satisfying watching plants grow in our soil. Hard work paying off. Pretty fun.

We even have some flowers! We put in two large Chaste bushes, and Mollie put in a nice little Butterfly bush which is flowering nicely. Above is a Pineapple Guava. These hearty little guys grow well in the desert, and we planted ten of them around the yard to add some greenery to the block walls. Even they are growing in our spring sunshine. The red arrow above is pointing to a drip sprinkler head, which brings us to the final project we’ve been working on.

I hate our previous home owners. We keep discovering more and more poor workmanship in their home ‘projects’. Irritating. Above is the utility box for our backyard sprinklers. What a mess. I don’t want to get into much detail, but they did a lot of bad wiring and poor waterproofing, making working with our existing sprinklers a total pain. Well, after some frustration, I learned the ins and outs of sprinkler valves, PVC plumbing, digging trenches, and running drip lines. Now most all of our plants and trees have their own drippers to keep them alive when the heat comes on.

Its been a productive spring, and I think its going to pay off with a fun and relaxed summertime. Hopefully soon we’ll have some of our projects completed, and move onto bigger an better things.

It saddens us both to know that this year’s holiday season will be almost completely void of family. The older I get the more that I realize how important it is to spend good quality time with family and friends. The biggest drawback of living so far from both of our home towns is those are the places where most of our loved ones live. Unfortunately, getting to them can be rather difficult - both time and money wise. This year is just not working out to travel cross country, so we are going to make the best of the situation and do some exploring closer to home. Southern Utah calls….

On Thanksgiving day Mollie, Nyah, and I loaded up the car and headed North; destination Moab. We took our time and enjoyed the trip through Southern Utah. On the way Mollie spied the classic restaurant of home cookin’ goodness, Cracker Barrel. I’d never been to one, so it became a mandatory stop in St. George, Utah.

Mollie is obviously excited. After chowing down on some serious chicken, dumplings, ham, turkey, potatoes, gravy, gravy and more gravy, we headed on with fully bellies towards Moab. We cruised into the small town and found our holiday home away from home, La Quinta Inn. Turned out to be a marvelous place to stay, being quite pet friendly and ‘interestingly’ decorated with cheap Indian stuff. Mollie was taking some notes for our house…ceramic moccasins with cheesy flowers are a must.

We had a scrumptious Thanksgiving meal of some cashew chicken from the shezuan food joint down the road (only place open in Moab at 9pm), then rolled to bed. We woke early the next morning to the surprise of 3″ of fresh snow! Nyah was excited about it, obviously. In town it melted quickly, but lingered around at the high elevations for a few days.

First stop, Arches National Park. Arches is very cool. There are hundreds of stone arches formed from weaker stone (mineral and salt deposits) eroding out from underneath the more solid sandstone, leaving behind plenty of weird rock formations.

Landscape Arch:

Tunnel Arches:

Delicate Arch, and adjacent basin:

There’s too many cool photos to post up here. Head into my flickr gallery by clicking on a photo to see lots more, along with some interesting panoramas. The most impressive of the bunch was Landscape Arch, the first photo of this group. The thing is massive, and so thin that its hard to believe that it is still standing.

Cold and hungry, we headed back into town and got some food, then right back out to see some of Canyonlands National Park, which is about 30 miles outside of Moab.

Canyonlands is a massive park encompassing miles very exposed and rugged sandstone cliffs, dropping down from plateau to plateau down into the Colorado and San Juan river systems. We drove up on top of the bluffs to get some shots, and found a lot more snow sticking around. The photos don’t do the views justice, these canyons are HUGE. Felt a lot like the Grand Canyon, but more vertical/compressed/jagged. The sun peeked out for only a few minutes and provided some interesting stormy lighting.

As the sun was setting we rolled back into Moab and spent some time exploring the little town, and had a nice meal at one of the local spots.

Unfortunately for Nyah, National Parks don’t allow dogs anywhere besides parking areas (what’s up with that?!?) so she spent a lot of time on the leash. Too bad, she loved the snow.

Early Saturday morning we rolled out of town, and headed towards the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of our trip. The stretch between Moab directly South to Flagstaff is littered with crazy stuff. Too much to really even post about here. We drove from one “WOW look at that crazy (insert land formation here)” spot to another, about every hour or so. The first stop for the day was Natural Bridges National Monument. My favorite of the trip.

Sipapu Bridge:

Owachomo Bridge:

As we drove, we joked that they called the park Natural Bridges only because Arches was already taken. A quick trip to the visitor center clearly explained the difference. The bridges above (and others in this deep sandstone canyon) are formed at a bend in a twisting river. As the river snakes around, the water slams over and over into the canyon wall, digging deeper and deeper into a bend until eventually it cracks through, leaving a big U-shaped corner dry, and a Natural Bridge where the corner used to be. I’m not sure if this makes sense…. Anyhow. The bridges are noticeably larger than the Arches. For reference, in the second photo above, Mollie is standing below the bridge. She’s the tiny black speck. Click for a larger version.

We packed up and continued the drive, and ran past more awesomeness. Photos tell the story better than I can….

Goosenecks State Park, Serpentine Ridge:

Awesome Highway (yes I said highway, just before the bends below it was 4 lane blacktop):

The Mexican Hat:

Monument Valley:

Our initial plan was to head down to Flagstaff and camp out for the night, hang around there through Sunday and head home. We arrived in Flagstaff at about 8pm and caught some dinner, and the call to our own beds was too strong to resist. After walking the dog around town a bit, we jumped in the Subaru for a final 4-hour push to get home. We returned to Vegas late Saturday night, happy to be home, and rather pooped from the marathon drive. It was nice to wrap up the long weekend with a relaxing Sunday at home.

Couple more favorite photos:

Panos: (Highly recommend viewing full size)

Something arrived on our doorstep not long ago. What could it be? It comes from a rather suspicious location in NC. Mollie hasn’t the slightest.

Its not every day that we get a package in the mail, so Mollie was kind enough to wait for me to arrive home from work before opening the mysterious mail. Its light, squooshy, and possibly a little sweet smelling.  I don’t know how the mail-guy resisted peeling open the package. Wonder if he got more attention than usual from the four-legged locals.

None other than HANDMADE B&G FRUIT PIES DIRECT FROM NC!?! Quite the surprise…but how would they taste after traveling far and wide to arrive on our doorstep?

Hmm…Peach had to be first to sample.

Deep in thought. Interesting texture…

A little sweet…

Definitely tangy….

Definitely delicious!

I must say that this was one of the tastiest packages I’ve ever received in the mail. They were a little worse for wear from the trip, but still tasty. Nyah agrees.