Hunting

image

Yesterday I went on my first hunting trip with my brother. He drew a tag in a pretty saturated area so we saw lots of deer. In a town. You can’t really hunt a deer in town.

After some time he found a few deer west of that town and he stalked up behind them and drew his bow and took a shot. The shot was a good one because the deer bolted and fell about 75 yards away. The arrow had punctured one of the deer’s lungs cleanly and we found it under a tree.

The mess of field dressing the deer was fascinating to watch. Deer, humans and vegetarians are all meat donuts. Field dresssing is just a fancy word for “get the digestive, urinary and breathing parts of the donut out so they don’t spoil the muscle. This was fascinating to watch and I can’t wait to do it myself.
Skinning the deer was amazing. I want to learn so much more about the processing of the hide as it requires using a lot of the deer on the deer if I understand correctly.

The deer has its appendages removed and then you need to age it in a meet locker for a few days. This cures some of the open cuts and firms up the muscle as I understand it. Again, amazing!

I totally recommend bow hunting as it ups the challenge (compared to rifle hunting) and helps control the deer population all while getting you exercise, meet, and of course biology lessons.

image

Don’t Be Hasty

image

Sometimes I’m thankful for how slow a week will go. This slug was out in the small part of my in-laws’ property that is deforested (that is not always a bad thing). It looks pretty big in this image, but I had my camera down on the ground right next to it 🙂

Seaside to Astoria to Kalama

image

Today we maxed our day out by packing up our vacation gear from the condo we had rented. Went out to a tasty breakfast. Rode a surrey (Jess, Evie & I), drove back towards Kalama stopping to have lunch on the pier in Astoria. Came home and played with the dogs.
Tonight I got ribs rubbed down for smoking tomorrow…

And we played a game called Nickels.

Not too shabby for a vacation day.

2013 Family Cruise Part I

I think that title is possibly one of the most boring headings I’ve put on this blog.  Apologies for that I’ll try to do better in the future. We were on vacation for 9 days and a lot happened – more than I can put in a single post – so I’ve decided to make this part 1 so I can at least start somewhere.  And that’s enough editorial gibberish…

We flew out of Denver March 21st in the morning and arrived in Ft. Lauderdale in the mid-afternoon.  After meeting up with Jessica’s dad’s family we went to dinner at a place called Rok Brgr where we ate gourmet kobe beef burgers and I had a local beer called Panic Attack.  The burgers were delicious, the service was good, and the family caught up on travel details by discussing how we would rework most of today’s modern air transportation to reduce headaches.  The usual.

We shared these

We shared these

After a leisurely meal we parted ways as I wasn’t feeling 100% and needed to get some rest.  Our Peterman 4 went to a hotel that Jessica had arranged and the rest of the family went off to Miami’s South Beach where they had accommodations.

Nutella, yum!

Nutella, yum!

The next day our 4 headed to a small French cafe for breakfast.  It was very French and we had to pay in Euros (not really, but the prices were high), but the food was good.  We finished off the brunch with a few dessert crepes because that’s how we do things.  Evie ate a nutella crepe and Abby had a white chocolate strawberry crepe and Jessica and I hovered over both taking bites like crepe vultures [not really, but we did sample the crepes].  Even the coffee tasted French, which is to say that I prefer a lighter roast.  The coffee wasn’t cuban, though, which was good because I don’t prefer to have my spoon stand up in the coffee.

So this washed up on the shore

So this washed up on the shore

We then headed to meet Jessica’s dad’s family in South Beach.  There we generally hung out at their place, went to the beach (which was overcast and windy) and collected shells, avoided jelly fish, and discussed the coming trip.  The girls were cute and played for quite a while in the water and then we eventually got cleaned up and headed to dinner at a great Italian place called Pasta Prima.  Jessica’s dad and sisters had actually been there before but couldn’t remember the name.  So when Jessica did research she found it highly recommended.  Once we walked in they all said, “Hey, we’ve been here before!”  It’s a great joint with awesome food, fast, friendly service, and apparently so many famous customers that they don’t decorate with anything but photos signed by famous people.  I got the Gnocci and if you don’t at least have one person in your party try it, you’ll be sad.  We left stuffed and happy.

We then made our way to the fanciest Target I have ever been to and proceeded to buy all the things we left at home and rounded out our trip gear.  For me that list involved a hat that embarrasses the family (but keeps my face and ears out of the sun) and for various other family members it involved other things that I paid for but could not tell you what they were 🙂

The next day was the beginning of the cruise, but you’ll have to wait to read about that.