2005 Summer Vacation - August 1st - Day 3

It was raining when we woke up Monday. We took our time getting going but finally got on our way to the Olympic National Park. Our first stop was the Visitor Center in Port Angeles. The center had quite a few interesting interpretive displays including a section of a 700+ year old (spruce?) tree with labels showing the rings when Columbus came to America, when the pilgrims landed, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, etc. The kids also liked the cougar and Roosevelt Elk that were displayed. We did not attend any of the Ranger talks but they look like they could be interesting if you were going to be in the area for a couple of days. We however were ready to go hiking.

We requested the Junior Ranger workbooks for Kevin, Kyle, and Kirsten that they would be able to work on over the next two days.

The drive up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center (webcam)took about 45 minutes and the view of the Olympic Mountains is fantastic. It is amazing to be able to drive from the sea to the mountains in less than an hour.

The kids got quite a kick out of the fact that Mount Olympus is located in Washington state. An English sea captain, John Mears, was so impressed by the mountain he saw in 1788 that he named it Mount Olympus, after the mythical home of the Greek gods.

After eating some sandwiches we drove further up the road another mile and a half to the Hurricane Hill trail head. Whether it was the rain in the early morning or the fact it was Monday morning, there were none of the crowds we had expected.

The trail is labeled as a ‘moderate’ hike that climbs 700 feet to 5757 feet over it’s 1.6 mile length. It is one of the longest 1.6 miles I have ever hiked! The trail is partially paved, half the width of the trail is paved in most places. There are a few benches along the way and some interpretive signs to help you learn a little while you walk.

When we finally made it to the top of Hurricane Hill. To the north you could see Port Angeles & Vancouver Island, Canada beyond and the San Juan Islands & Mt Baker beyond. To the south you can see the snow & glaciers glisten on Mount Olympus and her sister peaks.

The hike back down was much easier. Since the grade was not too steep you did not have to worry about burning out your ‘breaks’ on the way down.

We met a Ranger, I will call him Ranger Bob, on the way down so I had the kids ask him some questions. Ranger Bob was quite young, mid 20s I would guess. He said the hardest part of his job is being able to answer the same questions over and over again and still impart his love of the outdoors. Ranger Bob’s answer to how he became a Ranger was interesting. He had visited a national park as a teen with his older brother. He really did not want to be there and was determined not to enjoy himself. As he was waiting for his brother to return from a hike, a ranger approached him and started a conversation about girls & rock&roll. As the ranger built rapport with him he directed the conversation to the national parks and his work as a ranger. Ranger Bob got hooked and really enjoys his work. He has worked at 6 parks so far as different job openings have become available.

After that short break we finished our walk down the trail and found some cold soda-pops for everyone.

More Photos:

• Hurricane Ridge
• 2005 Summer Vacation

As I am filing away photos taken during our Summer Vacation I noticed that my Club Photo account has exceeded the 40 albums they allow for permanent storage. Many of the albums do not have any where near the maximum number of photos allowed (100?) but they still count as if they were full.

I have toyed with Flickr and set up my own account there to test it out. It has quite a few interesting features - but primary is that as long as you have an account there all the photos you upload will always be there. Their limit is not the number of albums but the bandwith you use to upload photos.

The free accounts are allowed 20 Meg of upload bandwidth per month - not much if you are uploading photos that average 1 meg per photo, but quite a bit if you allow their system to resize them. There are some other restrictions on the free account but I am not too worried about them because if I am going to use it then I will want a Pro Account

There appear to be a number of Flickr Wordpress Plugins available. I want to install a plugin to put a Flickr Badge (currently testin on the bottome of my sidebar) of specificly tagged photos with certain posts instead of individual photos. So will begin doing some research.

BBC News reports:

US software giant Microsoft has won a $7m (£3.9m) court settlement from a businessman considered to be one of the world’s biggest senders of spam e-mail.

I really like the quote from Brad Smith, Microsoft chief counsel:

We have now proven that we can take one of the most profitable spammers in the world and separate him from his money

Microsoft states they will use the proceeds to continue their fight against spammers. I believe even Matt will have to tip his hat to Microsoft on this one :)

I checked out from my local library a CD from CarTours titled “Driving Tours: Olympic Peninsula Road to Hurricane Ridge,” but I forgot to pack it and so could not take it with us on our trip up to Hurricane Ridge.

Motorists can drive the spectacular highway to Hurricane Ridge with an interesting group of experts, including tribal elders, scientists and park rangers, along for the ride. This economical and timely travel guide enriches the touring experience with intriguing facts, stories and legends of Olympic National Park.

Visitors and locals alike will find The Road to Hurricane Ridge an easy CD to enjoy. The first in a series of self-guided tours of Olympic National Park, the detailed narrative allows motorists to get the absolute most out of their trip. The tour begins at the entrance to the Park and winds its way through the stunning views of the Olympics as the road climbs 3400 feet over seventeen miles to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. Gentle acoustical background music and authentic sounds of the forest enhances the story telling. Along the way the audio tour shares historical information that spans from primordial times to the present, including the areas violent and often frigid (20 separate glacial periods) geological history Drive this spectacular highway with an interesting group along for the ride, including a naturalist, an anthropologist, two tribal elders and three park rangers. “I drove up to Hurricane Ridge this morning, listening to the tape. It’s a really wonderful product and will help visitors better understand our park.” Michael Smithson, Olympic National Park

I was really kicking myself at the time , but I decided to listen to it when we got home now know we did not miss anything!

The narrator’s voice sounds like a ’smooth fm disc jockey’ that is trying to put you to sleep. If it was just that, I could probably put up with it — I mean I listen to NPR most afternoons! But then they had Ben Charles, a Native-American ’storyteller’ recall some legends of the area. I do not mean to disrespect the stories - but I think I am a better storyteller — and I cannot tell stories! He rambles and repeats himself and, at least to me, looses my attention with his style.

You can listen to a sample of the CD on the CarTours website. You can fast forward about 3 minutes into the sample to hear the ’stories’ too.

I read in the Tri-Cycle Herald this morning that a pesky skunk took a dirt nap with the help of Max Benitz Jr., one of the Benton County Commissioners. Seems Benitz did not know that it was against the law to shoot skunks in the city (he is a ‘county’ official not a ‘city’ official, so how would he know).

Besides the facts of the story a couple things struck my funny bone:

He said they called animal control and other authorities, but no one responded.

If a county commissioner can not get animal control or other authorities to respond - what are we poor peons to do when we need help?

But the question I will pose to Miss Mrs. Grammar is this sentence from the Prosser Municipal Code:

“Any person who, within the corporate limits of the city of Prosser, loads or discharges or fires any air or gas or other compression gun, rifle or pistol is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

So my question is does this statement only apply to air or gas or other compression firearms? In other words do ‘air or gas or other compression’ modify just gun or all three nouns, gun, rifle and pistol. Look at their other uses of ‘or’ when they meant 3 different things earlier in the same sentence they do not use a comma to separate but a redundant ‘or’:

loads or discharges or fires

If they really did not mean to limit it to air pistols and air rifles they should have put those two items before the modifiers, i.e.: “pistols, rifles, or air guns.” No confusion.

Another question I have as I read this statement again - if it is illegal to load a firearm in the city, is it legal to carry a loaded weapon in the city that I loaded in the county? If Benitz had a ‘conceal carry permit’ could he do any of the above illegal activities? Police officers are allowed to do these ‘illegal things’ so what are the other exceptions?

But my real question is the first. Could you get off on a technicality - I thought it only applied to Air Guns, Air Pistols, and Air Rifles?

A while back I wrote that I was participating in the Sunnyside OCRC men’s discussion group of the book The Lords Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship by Jeffrey J. Meyers. We finally made it to the last chapter, “We All Partake of One Loaf: Restoring Our Children to the Lord’s Table,” and this session was led by Rev. Donald VanDyken, minister of the Sunnyside OCRC. One of he reasons Rev. VanDyken was chosen to lead this chapter’s discussion was because he does not hold to the paedo-communion position. Another reason was probably the hope by some of the men that he would be convinced by the books arguments. :) He started the discussion by giving us a 17 page paper he has started that interacts with not only this book but also Tim Gallant’s Feed My Lambs, which he deems the “best defense of paedo-communion out there.”

Only after summarizing the paedo-communion position in a fair and objective manner does Rev. VanDyken begin his response. (I wish those who disagreed with the Federal Vision position would do the same). After responding to the paedo-communion arguments, Rev. VanDyken then gives a preliminary outline of his defense of the reformed practice of credo communion.

We only got to page 4 or 5 of the 17 pages after over an hour of discussion - so we will continue the discussion next month. Hopefully we will cover a little more ground, but the topic is interesting enough and relevant enough to justify more time if need be.

I just came back from a very mind-boggling lecture. It was sponsored by LIGO Hanford (wiki) and was entitled “The Bizarre Quantum Nature of Light”. The properties of light have always fascinated me since high school physics class. Nergis Mavalvala, a professor from MIT, was the speaker. She is a very good speaker and kept the audience’s attention with a very fast paced discussion of stuff way over my head!

Some of my notes:

• She gave the background on the apparent schizophrenic nature of light. Is light a particle or a wave? She gave the history of scientific studies that led to the discovery that light sometimes behaves as a wave sometimes it behaves as a particle, and how now it is understood that light is not special in this regard. All particles have wave-like properties but due to their size the wave nature is usually not noticeable.

• Then she discussed how vacuums are not truly empty and not because we cannot empty them but because of ‘virtual particles‘ that are ‘created’ and ‘destroyed’ within the vacuum. (This was the beginning of the deep water that I soon started treading.)

• Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - that in measuring one aspect of a particle (say the speed) you alter the position of the particle. This led to a discussion of what she called ‘Quantum Exotica’, including ‘Entangled States of Light’, ‘Squeezed States of Light’, and ‘Quantum Non-Demolition’.

• Generating Entangled Squeezed Vacuums - Professor Mavalvala then concluded by tying this all together with the experiments at LIGO to measure gravitational waves.

I left the lecture feeling like a junior high student who had just sat through a graduate level class. And I guess that was pretty close to reality. Professor Mavalvala though did a very good job of explaining things in a way that I left feeling I had learned a lot and that I was very glad I had attended.

We had a great time at Johannes’ 2nd birthday party on Sunday after church. Both sets of grandparents and his 3 4 aunts and 5 6 5 uncles were there to help him celebrate.

He received baseball equipment, a stick horse and cowboy hat, a sword and armor, playdough, and a bunch of other stuff.

He could not believe all the presents were for him but I think the best part for him was when his mom gave him a huge piece of cake to eat all by himself!

More Birthday Photos

2005 Summer Vacation - August 1st - Day 3

After our hike to Hurricane Hill we decided to drive Hwy 112 from Port Angeles to Neah Bay along the northern coastline and then on to Cape Flattery, the most northwestern part of the continental United States. The drive varies from views of the coast and its beaches to routes along the rivers as the road avoids some coastal mountains.

Cape Flattery and the town of Neah Bay are part of the Makah Nation (wiki). It was fun to confuse the kids, telling them we had just entered another ‘nation’ and yet were still in the United States! There are signs as you enter the reservation that you are required to purchase a $7.00 Makah Road Use Permit to stop at any of the scenic pullouts or to drive out Cape Flattery.

We saw that the Makah Tribal Center was half way to Cape Flattery so figured we would purchase it there. When we got there it was about 7pm and the hours were posted as 8 to 5 with no way to purchase a permit after hours. We decided to continue our trek to the point since we were more than half way there already. We figured out after the fact that we could have purchased the permit at most of the stores in town had we stopped.

The road was pretty rough to the point but we finally made it to a spot that seemed to be where we wanted to go – there was a big sign that said the Cape Flattery Trail Head Repair Project and had some portable outhouses and a half-dozen vehicles all with the green Road Use Permits in them. Since we did not have a permit we did not want to chance parking the vehicle while we took the hike (and after the trek up Hurricane Hill we didn’t need much of an excuse).

We drove to a turnout that had a great view of the lighthouse and got out to stretch our legs. Then figured we would continue on the Cape Flattery Loop Road. Only thing was the road began to disappear on us! Before we knew it we had overgrowth brush dusting off both sides of the vehicle and it looked like a huge mud hole just ahead where the road gets even narrower. We decided to back out and go back the way we came.

More Photos:

• Cape Flattery
• 2005 Summer Vacation

2005 Summer Vacation - August 2nd - Day 4

We left the campground at Port Townsend at around 10am after a breakfast of pancakes and breaking camp and arrived at the Hoh River Resort around 3pm.

After unhooking the trailer we drove back north to Rialto Beach near the Mora Ranger Station. This is near the southern end of the section of the Olympic National Park that, except for Indian Reservations, follows the entire western coastline of the peninsula.

Inside-Out Washington says:

Rialto has picnic facilities, a large parking lot, and other amenities. But the beach is the lure. It’s a beauty — one of those very few picture-perfect Washington scenes you can drive right up to. A series of sea stacks lurk in the mist to the north, and the unusually steep-sloped beach makes for frothing, always picturesque surf.

The wind was really blowing so, while Von stitched in the car, I took the kids for 1 1/4 mile walk along the beach to a gorgeous spot called Hole in the Wall where a huge hole was worn through the rock by the ocean waves in a rock outcrop. We arrived about 15 minutes before low tide and spotted dozens of starfish of various colors, sea anemone, hermit crabs, etc. We spent a good 45 minutes hopping from rock to rock exploring all the tidal pools and collecting pockets full of interesting wave-polished stones before heading back.

After dinner Brendan (13) and Kirsten (8) took a bundle of wood (purchased on our way back from the beach for $2.00) and went out to the fire ring and got a campfire started. We all gathered around the fire and Kirsten started us out with the story of the gecko. Each of the kids then told stories as they came to them. It was soon bed time and all went to bed exept Brendan who did not want to give up on his fire. Finally got him to bed and I doused the fire.

More Photos:

• Rialto Beach
• 2005 Summer Vacation

2005 Summer Vacation - August 2nd through 4th - Days 4, 5, & 6

We decided to make the Hoh River Resort near Forks, WA our base for the two days we were going to spend on the west side of Olympic National Park. The campground is about 2 miles south of Hoh River Road which leads in to the Ranger Station.

Its location makes it central to many of the attractions in the area. We visited the Rialto Beach, Hoh River Rain Forest, Ruby Beach and some big trees.

The campground has some nice sites shaded by some big spruce trees. Some of the sites are out in the open but could not imagine going to the Rain Forrest and not being covered by trees.

There is no RV dump so we paid the extra $2 for EW&S for a total of $22 + tax a night. The convenience store you check in at is open from 8am to 7pm with no instructions on what to do after hours. Showers are supposed to cost $3 but the shower building was being remodelled.

The RV portion of the campground was empty when we pulled in at around 3pm on a Tuesday so we had our choice of lots. All the sites appeared to be near level and ours required no leveling pads. The grounds were clean but appears that not much upkeep has been done lately. The picnic tables have all seen better days and the 4 cabins on site appear to be in various stages of renovation (although two seem occupied).

Would we stay here again? Yes

2005 Summer Vacation - August 3rd - Day 5

After breakfast we headed to the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center (wiki) which is 19 miles inland from Hwy 101 under a canopy of ever-thickening, moss-draped trees.

12 feet of rain a year would probably create a rain forest anywhere! This is not a tropical rain forest though, since we are no where near the tropics. Instead, it is a temperate rain forest with ferns growing the size large shrubs and trees as tall as skyscrapers.

We missed the guided walk by 15 minutes so did the self guided tour around the 3/4 mile Hall of Mosses trail loop.

The trail was a nice easy walk through a hundred shades of green. Moss, lichens) liverworts, and licorice ferns hang or sprout from just about everything. The exposed roots of huge trees eerily provide evidence of having rooted in fallen trees that have long since rotted away, these ‘nursery trees’ sometimes causing natural rows of trees to grow in this otherwise chaotic scene.

There are many cleverly named businesses on this road. Places like the Hoh Hum Ranch and Westward Hoh. We stopped in at the Hard Rain Cafe just to take a peak at what they had inside. Besides food and overpriced t-shirts (any t-shirt costing more than $3.00 is overpriced) there was not much reason to stop or shop.

More Photos:

• Hoh Rain Forest
• 2005 Summer Vacation

2005 Summer Vacation - August 3rd - Day 5

After visiting the Rain Forest we set out to see a couple of big trees and spend some time on the beach.

We drove south till we came across a road sign between mile posts 170 & 171 that proclaimed “Big Tree”. We followed the signs down and around the forest service roads for about 4 miles to the largest Western Red Cedar. The sign at its base declares it to be 178 feet tall and 19.4 feet in diameter! What was interesting was that it looked like a large standing piece of driftwood due to the lack of large neighboring trees to shade it and countless tourists asaulting it.

We then continued south on Highway 101 and found near Beach 6 a sign for Big Cedar. The tree has been dead for many years but is being used as a standing nurse log by many other trees and plants.

We then travelled back north to Ruby Beach, located at the northen end of a string of beaches in the Kalaloch area. The beach gets it name from the redish sand that occasionally concentrates in patches. The book Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula for Dummies describes the beach:

Towering stacks of basalt stand at the mouth of Cedar Creek, which pours into the ocean here. The stacks are remnants of cliffs that were slowly, but steadily, pounded into sand by the waves.

We walked north about a half mile to one of the large basalt sea stacks that was uncovered by the low tide. Here we were able to find numerous starfish and anemone.

The kids spent the better part of an hour digging in the sand and playing in the waves. But not more than knee deep since rogue logs (as seen piled at the top of the beach) would win any encounter.

Kyle noticed the people next to him looking up so he hollered over to Kevin that there was a hawk overhead. Kevin noticed the white head of the bird and corrected Kyle that it was a Bald Eagle. I watched it as it went overhead and down the beach searching for a meal.

The tide started to come back in so I gathered up the kids and we all headed back to the car, hungry and tired!

More Photos:

• Big Trees
• Ruby Beach
• 2005 Summer Vacation

Do you deal with things before or after they become urgent? How often do we justify our decisions by the urgency of the situation? Has urgency become the excuse we can use to justify our shoddy work? How often is my procrastination not laziness but instead an excuse to not do the job right?

Seth Godin writes in his article ‘Hurry! that urgency has become the way to prioritize. Instead of doing what is important now, we deal with things when they become urgent. He gives an example of going to the airport ‘on time’ and having to run for the plane or waking up 10 minutes early and concludes:

It’s easy to justify running for your plane when it’s leaving in two minutes and you’re only five gates away. It’s much harder to justify waking up 10 minutes early to avoid the problem altogether. Alas, waking up early is the efficient, effective way to deal with the challenge. Waking up earlier may seem foolish to the person lying in bed next to you, but when you enjoy the benefits of a pleasant stroll to the gate, you realize that your difficult decision was a good one.

Or in the business world:

Organizations manage to justify draconian measures–laying people off, declaring bankruptcy, stiffing their suppliers, and closing stores–by pointing out the urgency of the situation. They refuse to make the difficult decisions when the difficult decisions are cheap. They don’t want to expend the effort to respond to their competition or fire the intransigent VP of development. Instead, they focus on the events that are urgent at that moment and let the important stuff slide.

It’s a good article to read through and contemplate both on the personal level and the business level.

Tip of the Hat to TheOfficeWeblog who suggests:

Read the whole post. Share it with your co-workers (and especially with your boss). Consider it a cheap epiphany.

I was in Office Depot the other day and on their clearance table they had an gadget that looked very interesting. The price looked decent but I was not sure what the thing really retailed for. When I got back to the office I looked the item up and found out that just about everyone sells that gadget for the same price Office Depot had it for ‘on clearance’. And some of them had a $30 rebate off that price!

Enter Froogle Mobile

About to buy an MP3 player at an electronics store and want to make sure you’re really getting a bargain? Access Froogle on your mobile phone or device and search for lower online prices when you’re away from your computer.

This would be a cool feature.
Now I just need to set my phone up for data service :) Maybe the next phone :)