A Tale of a Milling Machine

[11/25/08]
A friend of mine from work, Mark Panzer, recently purchased a milling machine. For those that don't know what one is, check out these links: Wikipedia, American Machine Tools.
It a very versatile tool for machining metal (as well as other materials for that matter.)

Well a Mill is a very large piece of equipment. This one is about 2500lbs. So you can't just throw it in the trunk, or on the bed of a pickup for that matter! Mark being the engineer he is, planned out how to transport it. After days of searching for the perfect trailer, we went to a backup plan of renting a 10,000lbs fork lift. Fortunately for all involved, he was able to find the perfect trailer at the last minute.

Mike Schmitt and I took the day off to help Mark move his new toy. Plus Mike got to put is new truck to some good use ;) Mark decided to put the Mill in my garage since I had 220 and space available. Getting it there though, not simple.

Mark was able to find a rental place that would rent him a hydraulic trailer. The trailer is fantastic.
The center of the trailer lowers to the ground. It is basically flat on the ground with about a 1 inch incline. This was perfect because though we had a fork lift to load the Mill onto the trailer when we went to pick it up, we planned to use a pallet jack to unload it.

First we picked up the pallet jack. Ironically renting the pallet jack cost more than the trailer... Odd but not unreasonable.

Once we picked up the trailer (another rental place), we drove to out pick-up spot. lowered the trailer, put the pallet jack on (thinking ahead on this one, if the pallet jack wasn't under the Mill from the get go, how would we unload it at our destination?).

Everything went smoothly. The guy selling the Mill loaded the Mill on the trailer with a fork lift quite easily. Unfortunately the width of the base of the mill was far to narrow in that orientation to be stable (full weight on the pallet jack). Off came the Mill. We reloaded it after turning the Mill on the forklift. Perfect fit! Tie strap it down and away we go.

We almost made it back to my house without any issues. Mark was anxious the whole trip back, and rightfully so, we're towing a 2500lbs Mill that's fairly top heavy. After stopping and checking the straps were still tight, Mark kept a close eye on our payload. About 3/4 of the trip home Mark thought one of the straps was tearing. I thought he was being paranoid. We stopped to check it out. Sure enough, one of the straps had been cut through about 1/2 way. It was rubbing up against on of the glides on the Mill and that edge was razor sharp. Good eye Mark!

Once we got back to my place, drove across the lawn to get to the back garage and backed up the trailer. We were able to lower the trailer and jack up the front end of the trailer to level out the trailer. After some very tippy moments, and a sledge hammer, we were able to re-balance the Mill on the pallet jack. Then Mark and Mike were able to slowly pull the Mill off the end of the trailer and into the garage. They used 4x4's as fail safes in case they had to lower the jack suddenly. It worked out quite well.

After some huffing and puffing, the Mill found its new home. Congrats Mark on the new toy!

2008_11_25_MillingMachine

Goodbye Cable!

[8/8/08]
Last night I installed our new UHF Antenna. I've spent weeks planning on installing it on the roof. My main trouble with that wasn't getting it working on the roof, it was figuring out how to ground it to protect us from lightning damage. That's a whole discussion in and of itself!
I finally *tried* the Antenna just sitting in the attic. I have received a couple of channels so it was promising. It looked like we'd need a Pre-Amplifier though to strengthen the signal.
Last night I mounted the mast to the rafters on the attic using U-Bolts. This was pretty straightforward but it sure it hot up there! After mounting the Antenna to the mast, wiring the cable down to our cable distribution point, cutting the cable to length, and putting on a new connector, we had Free HDTV! Take a look at the list of channels below!

Base Cost:
$29.99 - UHF 75Mile Directional Antenna (Radio Shack)
$12.99 - 5' Mast/pole (Radio Shack)
$6.99 - 75-300 Ohm Matching Transformer (Radio Shack)
$3.58 - 1.25" U Bolts (True Value Hardware)
Total ~$56.25 (with tax)

Accessories (stuff you may already have or can borrow):
$54.99 - 100' of RJ6 Coax Cable (I have ~80' left...) (Radio Shack)
$19.99 - Crimp tool (to put Cable connectors on) (Radio Shack)
$5.49 - 10 pack of connectors (I have 9 remaining) (Radio Shack)
Total ~$84.50 (with tax)
P.S. I'm selling RJ6 cable at 55 cents/ft if anyone needs it ;)
Also if you need to borrow my crimp tool, let me know

True out of pocket $140.75

HD Channels that we receive:
2.1 - WBAY-HD [ABC]
2.2 - WBAY (Weather)
2.3 - WBAYRTN [Retro Television Network]
5.1 - WFRV-HD [CBS]
11.1 - WLUK-HD [Fox]
14.1 - WIWB-HD [The CW, formally The WB]
26.1 - WGBA-HD [NBC]
32.1 - WACY-DT [My New 32, formally UPN]
38.1 - WPT1 [Wisconsin Public Television]
38.2 - WPT2
38.3 - WPT3
38.4 - WPT4
38.5 - WPNE-HD

Return on Investment Analysis:
$122.10 - Old Monthly Cable bill (Cable + DVR + Internet)
$40.90 - New Montly Internet Bill (internet only, 12 mo special promo)
$81.29/mo savings

So in less than two months we'll have already paid for all our expenses via our montly savings!

There's no place like home!

[July 18]
We made it back home! The house is still here! Thanks BellCorelli's for taking care of the place! Another big thanks to our neighbors, the Debruins, for mowing our lawn.

For those who are interested, here is some quick facts about out trip.

FUEL SUMMARY
Most paid per gallon: $4.36 (Yellowstone, Canyon Village)
Least paid per gallon: $3.84 (Albert, MN)
Most paid at pump: $60.67
Most Miles between stops: 290.5
Least Miles between stops: 43
Avg Miles Per Day: 323.77
Most Miles In A Day: 913
Overall MPG: 18.004
Total Spent On Gas: $956.21
Total Miles Driven: 4209
Total Gallons of Gas: 233.78

LODGING SUMMARY
6-Jul - Comfort Inn --Brandon, SD
7-Jul - KOA -- Devils Tower, WY
8-Jul - Xanterra-Canyon -- YNP
Jul 9-Jul 11 - Xanterra-Bridge Bay -- YNP
Jul 12-Jul 13 - Xanterra-Canyon -- YNP
14-Jul - Econo Lodge -- Missoula, MT
15-Jul - Glacier -- GNP
16-Jul - AmericInn -- Dickinson, ND
17-Jul - Morris City Park -- Morris, MN

Sore Butts

[July 16]
This morning we thought we’d get up early and go white water rafting. Unfortunately it was raining when we went to get up. We hemmed and hawed about whether we should go but decided to skip rafting. After a long run of great weather, the rain man finally caught up with us.

We listened to the Park Ranger’s suggestion and went to a the KOA outside the park for showers, for a service fee ;) It was a great campground, like all KOAs.

Once we got all ready to go, we punched in new destination in the GPS… home! Hello Highway 2… Oh Highway 2, the bane of our existence for the next umpteen hours… The route is flat, barren, straight… The towns are far and few between. Each time we got near ½ tank we got gas, just to be safe. Turns out that is a good idea we got from Grandpa, thanks!

Funny story, our GPS updates us for *every* turn we need to make and any intersection it feels isn’t 100% clear. As we were going through a town it said, “turn left on Main Street, drive straight for 324 miles on Main St.” Yikes, 324 miles on a 2-lane highway without a turn or anything notable! It became the running joke. We like Main Streets ;)

In Chester, MT we saw some old cars along the side of the road for sale. We stopped and looked at the cars. The owner came out to talk to us and showed us his favorite, his sweet Red 1942 Ford Super Deluxe Coupe… Oh, what a sweet car! A mere $25k and it could be ours! It seemed like fate. Its Red, Terry’s favorite color, it’s a ’42, Terry’s favorite number, a Ford, Terry’s favorite brand, and a coupe that’d look awesome pulling the teardrop. Plus get gets 20 MPG! More than we’re getting pulling the trailer ;) We passed on the car, maybe we’ll build one ourselves. Anyone know of one in need of restoration? Or maybe a kit? Or does anyone got $25k they’d like to donate to a good cause?

Further down the road we got stuck on Montana’s only hill for ~100 miles behind truck painting lines on the road going 5mph… What are the odds?

Today’s tagline? Sore butts! Our goal, get the heck out of Montana.

Success, we've made it to Dickinson North Dakota.

Of Billy Goats and Anna

[July 15]
Good morning Missoula! As we were packing back up we were watching George Bush’s press conference. I don’t know why it’s on at 8-9am on a weekday, who can watch that, but we watched it and almost missed breakfast. We made it in time for the continental breakfast and everyone was watching it in the lounge too, so we kept watching it. We’ll spare the politics but it was interesting watching the president take questions and listening to his views on current issues.

Across the road from our hotel was a RV Super Center. We’ve seen a lot of interesting rigs at the various campgrounds so we decided to stop in and see what they have. In particular we looked at some Airstream trailers. They were *very* nice! We only looked at the weight of the small one, no prices (we still want to be able to dream!). We’ve got some friends, Craig and Jane, who have an Airstream and they are sure happy with theirs. We focused on looking at Smaller Class B/C motorhomes. We looked at 23 and 24 foot models. They’re like large conversion vans. We really liked the Itasca and Itasca IQ Models. In fact we took the latter for a test drive! It’s a mere 6 figures so, you know, pocket change right? After we got back the salesman asked if we should pull up to the sales office. I replied “only if you have a winning lottery ticket sitting there for us”. A lot of people buy things like Motor homes in Montana because there is no sales tax. I guess you setup a L.L.C…

We hit the road, on our way to Glacier National Park. 50,000 casinos later we arrived in Kalispell. Apparently Casinos are a dime a dozen here, most gas stations have casinos lounges build right in them. We got hungry, so we popped into a Taco Johns followed by Dairy Queen. When we were in the drive through for DQ, Terry’s Grandpa called. He said he was waiting for us on the corner of Highway 93 and 2 at the Exxon. He said we’d have to make that turn to go to Glacier. Our call ended, we got our DQ treats and looked. We were already at the corner of 93 and 2! No Exxon station to be found. We drove down HWY 2 one way and didn’t see one. We drove the other way and didn’t see one either. We tried to call Grandpa back, no luck, straight to voicemail. We thought maybe he was sitting at a corner where it said ‘To 93’ and 2 instead. We looked up the nearest Exxon in our GPS and drove to it. It was on the way to Glacier. Sure enough we see an Exxon on a corner ~15 miles out of town. Who’s there? It’s Grandpa. We stopped and chatted for a while. He’s looking good. He’s excited and raring to get on his way to Alaska. He’s already planning his next trip… To Arizona. He’s doing a circle of the states in alphabetical order. We think its going to be tricky to get that motor home to Hawaii. It sure was cool to meet up with Grandpa in Montana of all places!

After parting ways with Grandpa, we headed to Glacier (He had just left Glacier). It wasn’t too long before we entered West Glacier. It a mix of a town and the National Park. We drove around for quite a while looking for a parking spot. No luck. Strange layout, it’s a National Park with no real RV parking! Quite frustrating with a trailer. Anyway, Anna got dropped off at the visitor center and Terry drove around in search of a parking spot. Voila, back into a boat trailer spot…

The Park Ranger we spoke with was pretty grumpy and not terribly helpful. He must have been having a bad day? What we did find out was that most people intentionally don’t stay in the campgrounds in the park because they don’t have any shower accommodations. Strange that they don’t pick up on that and put in some facilities like Yellowstone. We also found out about the 21 foot rule. Only vehicles 21foot and shorter can go on the “Going-to-the-Sun Road” so we can’t take the trailer over. We decided to claim a spot at Apgar Campground just inside the park. Basically we drove around, found an open site, parked the teardrop in it, and then filled out a form for the site. It was about 5:30pm and Terry decided to head up and over the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The drive up was great. There was construction going on so we had to stop and wait for a pilot car to take us down the one-lane sections but we got to stop and see the view while we waited.

We crossed the 3 arch stone bridge. This was quite impressive to see. Amazing feat built in 1933! The roadway is amazing, the road edge stops and then thousands of feet drown below. Crazy scary riding in the passenger seat! The views of the valleys and the glacier carved sides of the mountains is just spectacular. Terry could just sit there all day taking it in.

We made it up past Logan pass. This part of the route had just opened a couple of weeks earlier, before that there was too much snow to have the road open! The visitor center up at the top had just closed for the day so we walked around outside. We decided to forgo the 1.5 mile hike to Hidden Lake since it was very much snow covered, steep, and getting late. Maybe next time ;). We pushed on to Jackson Glacier overlook and got to see one of the last remaining glaciers in Glacier Park! It was very small. By 2030 it’s projected that *all* the Glaciers in the park will be gone. That’s sad. Only 2 Glaciers in the world are growing, they’re in New Zealand and Terry has been fortunate enough to see them (even get helicopter lifted to hike on one of them!)

Our return trip back over the pass was much more notable. We stopped just past the visitor center at Logan pass to do a little walk that we didn’t do on the way up. Anna walked ahead and started to walk up the stairs. She was looking down at a pair of Men’s Hanes Tube socks, wondering what a new pair of socks is doing there. Terry calls out and says “Watch Out!” Anna looks up and and made eye contact, she’s staring right at a big Billy Goat heading right for her, not even 10 feet away. It was heading down the short set of steps that Anna was heading up. She immediately started heading back to the car. The Billy Goat kept after her, not charging or anything but obviously intent on intercepting her. Terry stood by the car photographing the billy goat in awe at the whole scene. Anna ran right to the car and jumped in. Terry stayed out. A bunch a young goats showed up with several more adults. It was obvious the first billy goat (Anna Chaser) was protecting the group and making room for the rest. It successfully displaced both Anna and Terry into the car. It got so close, it nearly brushed against the car. Really cool.

Some other people showed up to check out the spectacle. Just then someone spotted something behind us up the road, Terry opened up the moon roof on the car and stood up through it. It was a group of about a dozen Big Horn Sheep running down the road. Straight for us, in quite a hurry to. It was awesome to see them running toward us. Then we realized they really weren’t slowing down. Just as they got to us they slowed down and lingered and played within 10-15 feet of us. Just amazing. They played and butted heads. Then they ran off. Again there was 1-2 ‘guards’ that made room for the others. As the others left, one stood in the road intentionally blocking cars to let the rest run back up the road. A car tried to pass and the big one tried to block the car -- Unsuccessfully. It ran up along side the car, up the snow along side the road then jumped out in front of the car further up the hill. We thought for sure the car was going to hit it. Whew, collision averted. What a sight!

We drove on. Further down the road we came across the weeping wall. It’s a long wall that the road was cut out of. A large amount of water pours down the side, like a 300’ long waterfall along the road. We rolled down the windows and left the moon roof open. We got wet! That was awesome ;)

We stopped at some waterfalls and to see the sun starting to set over Lake MacDonald before we got back to out campsite. We had some sandwiches in the dark in the car, then time for some Zzzzs. It’s been a full day!

Farewell Yellowstone

[July 14]
Today is the day we leave Yellowstone. We’ve had six nights here (ok 5.5 really). We woke up and headed straight to do laundry… They had facilities right at the campground. After the laundry, he drove up past T. Roosevelt Lodge, past Mammoth, and out the North Entrance of Yellowstone. We got to drive through the Theodore Roosevelt Arch (They were building it when he rode through on his tour of the park. He laid the corner stone). It was a little weird getting out of the park and seeing a regular town again.

We drove along the Yellowstone River Valley in Montana for a while. A very pretty valley. On our drive the landscape turned from lush forest to a dryer landscape without a lot of trees. We saw lots of ranches.

Our next stop was in “Downtown Trendy Bozeman” Montana. It’s a bigger city than we were expecting it to be. Downtown was a happening place, but seemly quite hoity. Supposedly a lot of movie stars hang out there but we didn’t see any.

As we were leaving we decided we needed to get an oil change. We stopped at a Jiffy Lube and where shocked by their $40 price (and that we would need to disconnect the trailer). We decided to try somewhere else. It turns out that the normal price for oil changes here is $40-45 for a standard car… Little did we know that we were just starting to learn about the high prices in Montana…

One more stop, a quick visit to McD’s at Wal-Mart… Well we have re-enforced our distain for Wal-Mart, even though it was really McD’s that was bad this time. We had McNuggets. Super dry, yeech.

We pushed on and made it to Missoula. We decided to stay at a motel for the night, to get cleaned up better and hopefully find a pool ;) We stopped at several hotels, going rate was $145+ after AAA discount! Yikes! More high prices in Montana. We kept looking around and found a much more reasonably priced Econolodge. As soon as we checked in we headed out for Pizza. We stopped at Mackenzie River Pizza Company. Wow, this was great. We had a 50/50 pizza, half was a Taco Pizza, the other half a Hot Hawaiian. The toppings were fantastic; the taco side was our favorite. It was on a scrumptious sour dough crust with blue corn chips as one of the toppings, yum! We’d definitely eat there again.

Now before everyone thinks that all we did was eat out, so far we have had two loafs worth of sandwiches, packages of summer sausage, salami, and ham. Lots of beef sticks and some cheese curds from back home. Lets not even talk about the tubes of Pringles and Herseys bars…

When we got back to the hotel, we hit the hot tub. It didn’t satisfy the desire for a swimming pool but it was still great.

Parched Terraces

[July 13]
Today we decided to finish the upper loop. Our first big destination was Mammoth Springs. On the way there we stopped at two of our favorite type of stops… Waterfalls. One of them had water cascading along a large rock, not really a falls but still quite pretty. The other was a classic wide waterfalls, it had three big tiers and was wonderful.

We eventually made it to Mammoth, home of Fort Yellowstone. There is a village there for park employees; it reminded us of the “Other’s” village in Lost. There were a bunch of Elk loitering around the town; we didn’t stick around to see what they were selling…

We went to Minerva Terrace, the grandest and most dominant mineral spring at Mammoth. Unfortunately it, along with the vast majority of all the springs at Mammoth, is now dormant but are expected to come back again in the future. The terraces are still a spectacle to see but rather blah without the pools of water to give them life. We walked around the various trails and did get to see of few of the springs that were still active. Such pretty colors.

Next we drove to the Norris Geyser Basin. It’s much like the Old Faithful Basin but without regular geyser eruptions, seemingly less active. We’ve about had our fill of geysers by now but Terry was still keen to see the pools so we walked around the upper basin. As we approached Steamboat Geyser, it was churning away. A Park Ranger was giving a talk about steamboat geyser. He told a funny story about how one of his colleague’s first day as a ranger at Norris. She was standing right where we were at, next to the geyser, and talking about the geyser, when it went boom. It had erupted. It had hit over 400 foot high, what a scary first day at work! It hasn’t erupted in many years and today (unfortunately or fortunately depending) it didn’t go off either.

After Norris we went down south a bit to go see Gibbon Falls. To Anna it was just a good falls but to Terry, it was probably his favorite. It had many cascading levels and pieces. Quite a spectacular falls.

We drove back towards Canyon via the center of the two loops. One last waterfall to see. We took the scenic drive to Virginia Falls. We had one false trail that we started hiking on before we realized it wasn’t the correct trail at all. We got back on track and saw the falls. Another great falls. In case you can’t tell, we’re both rather fond of waterfalls. Anyone want to put a waterfalls in pour back yard?

We went back to Canyon village to walk around and then have dinner at the Canyon grill, more yummy chili. Then back to our campsite to kick back and enjoy a big fire.

Hike to the Summit

[July 12]
Today we left our Bridge Bay campground and traveled back up to Canyon Village Campground. (That’s were we stayed in the emergency spot the first night in YNP). We were relieved to find that we had our spot as expected! (A small victory!)

We showered up; this place does a flat rate of $3.25/person rather than $2.00/6 minutes. They have nice facilities but not quite as good as the showers in Grant Village, though at least these are actually at the campground we are staying at ;)

We setup camp in our new spot. It’s a beautiful site in the woods. Its snuggled within the tall and old trees. We’ve got lots of room too.

We headed out to see the North side of the park (upper loop). Our first stop was Mount Washburn. We packed some spare warm clothes and began our trek up the mountain. We started at about 8500ft and over the course of 3 miles climbed to 10,250ft. It was a fun hike up the mountain. The path used to be an old road from the 1920s to supply the fire lookout tower at the summit. It has clearly been in disrepair for many decades, perhaps since the 50’s. (There is another route for supplies now). During one part of the trail, it was completely covered with snow, many feet, perhaps upto 8. As funny as it sounds, we were quite scared to walk across the snow. Imagine a steep rocky drop-off to your right, snow crossing your path at about a 30 degree slant to that drop off. The snow is wet and slippery and you’re wearing running/tennis shoes… Well we made it past, whew! The view, particularly once we got past the tree line, was fantastic. We eventually made it to the top. At the top was an old fire tower. It’s still staffed by someone all summer. They have a really small apartment, all 4 walls are windows. They only have a radio, books, and the view to pass the time, no TV or anything else. That takes a special person to fill that position! Only two other towers are staffed in Yellowstone, and one of those only during heightened fire danger times.

After enjoying the 360 degree view of the valley and all of Yellowstone (and the Grand Tetons in the distance), we headed back down from the summit. Our hike lasted 4-5 hours. We were glad to get back and out of the sun (Anna has turned into a Lobster)

It was getting late in the day, we made two more scenic stops. We stopped at Tower falls first, it was a great falls but unfortunately the lower viewing platform was closed to due washouts. There was a bunch of hub-bub too because someone feel down one of the steep slopes and we watched them get rescued.

Our last stop was at the Petrified tree. It was cool to see a 50 million year old tree still standing! Too bad the others had been pillaged by souvenir takers earlier in the park’s history.

We headed back and decided to grab dinner at Theodore Roosevelt Lodge to celebrate our ONE-WEEK-AVERSARY! Terry had a big bacon cheeseburger and Anna had a taco salad. They were both great but Anna’s Taco Salad was amazing! Whatever they put in the salsa, just amazing!

After our dinner we were simply driving back when we came across a bear-jam. That’s a bunch of cars making a traffic jam because there’s a bear in sight. Anna got out to see the bear but it wasn’t visible. Anna went back to the car and Terry went to take a look. After a little while a Black Bear showed itself in the distance. Terry got to see it walk around for short time before running off. We didn’t get to see the 2 cubs that were with her. It’s just awesome to get to see a bear in the wild!

Back to the campsite and to bed.

WiFi

[July 14]
Well we finally found WiFi so we made a few posts ;). We'll get some pictures posted... sometime...

Old Faithful Tavern

[July 11]
Today we decided to head to all of the geysers around the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. When we arrived, Old Faithful was just about to go off, so we sat and watched that again. It was getting to be close to lunch time (ok, really brunch, but we were hungry). We decided to head over to the Old Faithful Inn to see if we could get lunch. We walked into the original ‘tavern’ that was built in one year back in 1904 (originally it was called the Old Faithful Tavern instead of an Inn). We know that interesting fact and more because when we walked in there was a tour *just* starting that we got to go on. We got to hear some great history of the building, the disasters and close calls it has had; the stories about the lobby and it custom mechanical clock; and about the Blacksmith who had the best job during construction. We also got to tour an original guest room, no TV or bathroom in that suite! It was a great tour. After our tour we did get to have lunch in the original dining room. Mmmm, Bison Chili…

Then we walked around and saw a whole bunch of pools and geysers. Our favorite features are the pools, maybe because it real hot out and they look so inviting. We really like looking at Morning Glory. It has such pretty colors. They have signs everywhere telling people not to throw objects in the pool as it clogs it and it looses a lot of its cool color features. You are to report anyone to a Ranger immediately. They do bring in a big truck every year and remove a whole bunch of debris that people have thrown in. It’s sad that something so unique could be ruined by people being thoughtless and stupid.

After Old Faithful area we drove around and some scattered geysers and pools near by, working our way counter-clockwise around the southern loop. We made it as far as the Grand Prismatic Spring. It just like Morning Glory but ~350 foot across! It’s so massive and the colors are just magnificent. We really liked it there. Its be great if they had build a little viewing tower so you could see over it and really get to take in the full scene.

We turned to head back to our campsite. We wanted to finally get back in time to spend time at our site. We made some sweet and sour pork with rice out of a dehydrated camping pouch. Wow, that was great! That was out first meal cooked out of the back of the teardrop ;) After dinner we sat around our little fire for a while, then went to the teardrop to start watching a movie. We were soon exhausted and called it a night.

Checkout Them Grand Tetons

[July 10]
We decided that we would head out of Yellowstone today and go to the Grand Teton National Park. The two parks are actually connected on the southern side of Yellowstone. It was a pretty drive. We spoke to a woman at the Visitor’s Center and she told us to take a look at both String Lake and Jenny Lake, so we did. We stopped and had a lunch at a picnic table right near String Lake. The lady also told us that this would be the best place for swimming, if we were looking to do that. We decided to go test the water and it was crazy cold, so we decided just to wade in it. It was beautiful, just at the base of the Tetons themselves. There were some families there with a whole bunch of rafts and kayaks and they were having a good time in the water. The only people we actually saw swimming were two men who had to have been training for a triathlon, sporting wet suits. We got some pictures of us wading with the mountains behind us then we decided to head for a waterfall area.

We drove a little further south to Jenny Lake and took a pontoon boat ride across the lake, this took about 15 minutes. From where the boat docks it’s about a ½ mile hike up the mountain to the waterfall. It was kind of a chilly walk. There was a river and rapids all throughout the area that gave off a really nice breeze. We then made it to the falls, they were fantastic. We sat there for a really long time just staring at it. We decided that waterfalls were our favorite things in nature. This one gave off a fantastic mist that kept us cool.

We then decided to head back to the boat docking area. We didn’t get far when we saw a sign for Inspiration Point. This was another ½ mile hike up the mountain. It was a fairly good path to climb, until you came to just about the end. We were right on the edge of a steep drop off and it was just a pile of rocks you had to climb over. Because she was so afraid, Anna was holding Terry’s hand so tight that he thought that she was going to break his fingers—she didn’t though. So we got to the top and it was a beautiful view. A great overlook of the lake and surrounding mountains. The hike down was just about as scary as the walk up, if not more. When we got to the bottom, we headed for the boat dock and waited awhile for our turn. Because we are geniuses, we didn’t bring anything to drink with us. We really thought that it was going to be a quick run across the lake and back, silly us. By the time we got back, we were soooo thirsty. We headed straight for the store and downed some Gatorade right there. We thought that as a reward for the tough climb, we should also get some ice cream. It sure did taste good.

After a little break we decided to head to Jackson, WY. This was about a 40 minute scenic drive. Not really knowing much about Jackson, it was a surprise to see how cute and lively it was. There is a huge downtown area and a big grassy mall area. There were people everywhere and we felt very underdressed everywhere we went. It seemed like a really hoity area. We stopped at a sporting goods shop and Anna bought a big brimmed hat. After having been burned for the past few days, she had had enough. Then we went to another store and purchased two long sleeve shirts for her too. She looks a lot darker now than she did just a few days ago.

After those quick shopping trips, we went to Billy’s Diner. It was a place that looked like the 1950’s inside. Terry had a super huge burger and Anna had a grilled turkey and swiss sandwich. They were both really really good.

After dinner we decided to head out back to Yellowstone. We got back around 11:00 pm and headed straight to bed.

Old Faithful

[July 9]
Because of the fiasco the night before, we decided to set the alarm for 6:45 am and be at the registration desk right when it opened. Terry went in and was able to get everything all figured out. We ended up getting campsites for the next 5 nights, three nights at Bridge Bay and two nights at Canyon. From there we decided to head down to our campground and stop at the sights along the way. There were some amazing waterfalls to look at. We first stopped at the Upper Falls. This waterfall has twice the dropping distance as Niagara Falls, not nearly as wide, but definitely beautiful! We took a hike down Uncle Tom’s Trail to see the Upper falls from below the falls (instead of the brink of the falls). It was 384 steps down a cantilevered metal walkway down the side of the canyon. It was really awesome to see the falls from this view. We then went to Lower Falls and Artist Point. From Artist Point you can see the Lower Falls and what is referred to as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It was really pretty.

We then headed down to Hayden Valley and stopped at most of the scenic stops along the way. We saw more waterfalls and great views of the river. In Hayden Valley we saw a herd of Buffalo. It was neat to see so many in one spot. We didn’t get quite as close to the buffalo as we did during our late night drive the night before where we nearly clipped one with our passenger side mirror!

After Hayden Valley we stopped at the Sulphur Caldron, our first thermal feature sight of the trip. The name is fitting, mmm sulfur, can’t forget the waves of sulphery mist as they roll on you ;) Right around the corner is the Mud Volcano stop. It’s a nice walk through various bubbling pools and fumaroles. Unfortunately the mud volcanoes weren’t doing the globular ‘blop-pop’ they do after a rain fall.

We rolled into Bridge Bay and got to setup our campsite. We setup our new changing room (thanks Suzie!), and our 10x10 shaded canopy area, this was definitely needed since our sight didn’t have any trees. The place looked really nice. We got a little oriented to the campsite—finding bathrooms, talking with people at the desk, seeing the humongous RVs…this site seems like it is more for retired people or people without children, we didn’t see a lot of families there.

At around 4 pm, Terry’s dad and his wife Lynn came up from Laramie, WY to visit us. They also brought along their two dogs. They are very cute and well behaved. We chatted with them for a while at the site and then decided to head to Old Faithful. We stopped at a few of the scenic sights along the way and got some great shots of Yellowstone Lake. Our favorite spot was the waterfall Kepler Cascades. It had a great overlook and a lot of cascading small falls. When we arrived at Old Faithful we saw that it was going to go off at 7:03 pm, so this allowed us about 45 minutes to walk around and see some other geysers, but Terry’s dad and Lynn stayed behind and waited for Old Faithful. They got us a great spot to view it from when we came back! We made it back from around the loop just in time to see it go off. It was really neat to see. It did spout quite high and it lasted for about a minute with spouting at different heights. After that we decided to get dinner. We went to a restaurant right by Old Faithful, at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Dinner was really good and Terry was quite adventurous and had Bison Ribs, they tasted a lot like a pork roast. From there we parted ways and picked up some forgotten necessities at the general store. Terry’s dad and Lynn stayed the night at a cabin in Canyon Village and we headed back to our sight at Bridge Bay. On our first turnoff from the main highway, we almost ran into three moose crossing the street. We saw them early and stopped and pulled to the side. There was a vehicle coming from the other direction that came about a foot from hitting them. Had the moose not gotten startled and backed up earlier, the car would have it them. It was kind of scary to see. We passed by the moose and got to our campsite at about 11:00 pm and headed straight for bed.

We made it, we think...

[July 8]
Today we woke up at the base of Devils Tower about 100 ft from the entrance to the National Park. We got going around 8:00 am to head over to see Devil’s Tower. We ended up buying a National Park Annual Pass, what a great idea. This will allow us to get into any National Park until next July. The card goes with the person, not the car, so if you want to go somewhere, we’d be more than happy to go withJ Once inside the park we walked up a trail to see the sides of the mountain that we couldn’t see from our campsite. Terry then decided to go bouldering up to touch the actual base of the tower. For this, you have to register with the Ranger Station, that way they know who is up there and if you don’t return. We both began climbing and scrambling over the boulders at the base of the tower. Terry is much braver than Anna. He made it just about to the top, but then it got really steep and without proper climbing gear, he couldn’t reach the tower. He was within loud talking distance of a guy who was scaling the vertical face of the tower. Anna on the other hand, thought she was going to pee her pants because she couldn’t figure out how she would get down, so she stopped half-way up and just sat on some really big rocks and waited for Terry to come down. We both successfully made it down and after that we turned in our card to the Ranger Station and we were on our way to Yellowstone.

We decided that we were going to enter Yellowstone through Beartooth Pass. This took quite a while to get to, but it was definitely worth it. It started just outside of Red Lodge Montana. The road winds up the mountain and, with making a few scenic stops, it took us about 4 ½ hours from the start of the Pass until we hit Yellowstone. It was definitely worth it! The pass reaches a point of 10,900 ft. In addition to the fantastic views and scenic vistas, we got to see some marmot, billy goats, and of course a bird. Not just any bird, but a dead one hanging upside down from our front bumper, the only part being exposed was its little head. It was very sad and disgusting to see. Terry ended up taking pliers and removing it. Other than that the scenery was great! When you reach the top, you’d think you’d just start heading back down the other side, not here. You reach a giant plateau at the top of the mountain, beautiful and remarkable. This Pass is a high recommendation for anyone heading out this way.

Okay, for this part I have to back up a little earlier in the day. Terry called the campground in Yellowstone around noon-ish to let them know that we were running late and if there was anything special that we needed to do for our reservation for that night. They looked up our confirmation and told us that everything would be okay and that they would simply put our name on a board with our site number, easy enough. We ended up getting to the Canyon Campground around 11:30 pm-midnight. This is at about the middle of Yellowstone, so quite away in. Our name was nowhere to be found on the board. We stopped some Park Rangers and they said there was nothing that they could do for us and they told us to speak to the people in the lodge. We went to the Canyon Lodge Office and the people told us that there was nothing that they could really do for us. They could see our reservation on their computer, but instead of it being for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, like we planned and spoke with two different people about, they had our reservation starting on Thursday and going through Saturday. So, its midnight and we have no place to go. We asked the person at the front desk what we were supposed to do. We asked him if we could sleep out in the parking lot in the teardrop, he eventually said that we could. We then decided to go in and brush our teeth and such. Terry thought that it would be a good idea to get a note on some sort of letterhead saying that there was some sort of computer error and that our reservation was somehow messed up. The person we had originally spoken with had us then speak to a manager, but she could not give us any sort of thing to allow us to park there. She said that the Ranger’s would come by and either tell us to move or fine us. Terry, who is so good in these situations, (as embarrassing as it can be) pressed the person for options. This person finally called someone else, who then told her to contact the Rangers about an emergency campsite. It was that simple. She called them and within a minute they told us that we had campsite, Canyon A-1, for the night and that we could go to the registration/reservation desk at 7:00 am the next morning. We were so exhausted. It was 1:00 am at this point and we had a very, very long day. We simply left the camper attached to the car, put down the front wheel and fell asleep. Oh, the Sherman luck, isn’t it grand!

Encounter of the Third Kind

[July 7, 2008]
Today we drove from Brandon, SD to Devils Tower in Wyoming. We didn’t really do much along the way. We stopped off at a wayside in SD where they had a Lewis & Clark exhibit. It was pretty cool considering that on our first date we went to an IMAX theater to see a Lewis & Clark documentary (we know we’re nerds). We skipped all the things to see in SD like Wall Drug, the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and Crazy Horse, because we had both seen these before a few times. We really wanted to press on and get to Devils Tower. We arrived at Kampground Of America (KOA) Devils Tower around 7:30 pm. This was the first chance to set up the teardrop on our trip. It went really well. We met a very nice couple from Appleton that had an Airstream camper (jealous!!). They were on their way back home from Yellowstone. We had a great site it was at the bottom of Devils Tower on the east side. It was amazing to be so close. The campground had a community bonfire and they showed a movie at 9:00 pm. We did watch the movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” In case you have not seen this movie, SPOILER ALERT, it is about these aliens that visited the town where Richard Dryfus lives. They shined a big bright light on him (and other people) and then the people kept having visions of Devils Tower. In the end the aliens and a few select others are all at Devils Tower. This was a good movie, but terrible for Anna to watch. She hates aliens or anything like that. She made Terry go with her everywhere the rest of the night. After the movie we were pretty tired from a long day of driving, so we just went to bed. It ended up raining in the middle of the night. It was a nice rain and we didn’t get wet, a major bonus!

Honeymoon Update

[July 6th]
After having a wonderful brunch with both families at the Fin n' Feather in Winneconnie, we finished packing up the Teardrop to head out West. We left the homestead about 2:30pm. We decided to push to get to South Dakota, get out of the familular Wisconsin/Minnesota region and get well into our trip! We've made it to Brandon, SD. Everything has been great! The trailer pulls well and is a breeze to tow. Time for some Zzzz's!

Two Rings to Bind Them

[July 5th 2008]

On the Mend

Grandpa is doing a lot better. I spoke to him on the phone both yesterday and today. He's in good spirits and is on the mend. He's been up for a walk, and has been watching the news. His visitors keep him busy ;)

Long weekend for Grandpa

While Anna and I were in Morris, Grandpa stayed in the hospital. After we left on Thursday, he began bleeding again. Nothing serious at the time, just that he wasn't well enough to leave yet. He has some more transfusions. By Friday the Doctors were talking about surgery some more, but again, only if needed. Grandma had stopped bleeding again so things were again looking better. By Saturday things were still roller coastering with good and waiting to leave (silly homogloblens), so the doctors decided to o some scope work to look around. First they looked around his intestines and they all looked ok, so they went back in to look around the stomach, everything looked good there too. Their conclusion was that it had to be his diberticulitis. Come Sunday, his rollercoastering has meant he had had 11 transfusions. You can only have someone have 12 transfusions before the body begin to seriously reject the new blood. It was decided that on Sunday he'd go in for surgery. The surgery was slated to begin about 9am but that slowly crept back to about 10:45 or so. It was going to be a 3 hour surgery. While they were in fixing this problem they also decided to do some other things as well. He has had a hernia for 20+ years and his colostomy was difficult to maintain where it was. They decided to move and update is stoma, remove his fiscula, and remove his hernia (which was likely the cause the problems anyway).
Anna and I headed back to Eau Claire and got back about 4:30pm or so. We had thought we'd be back a couple hours after his surgery so that he'd be in the recovery room. We were surprised to find that he was still in surgery! Coincidently there was a major storm heading to Eau Claire as well. He finished surgery around 5pm or so. He was moved to a recovery room but because of the storm, and the hospital moving everyone from the rooms (avoiding windows), we didn;t get to see him in his room until about 8:30pm.
He was in alot of pain but was coherent. It was a long and tough 6 hour surgery. I'm 28 and 6 hours of surgery would be brutal for me, he's 80!
Late Sunday night/Monday morning, about 4am, he was moved from his regular room to critical care for closer monitoring. He's been making progress to recovery. He's coughing better and has been keaning up more (up to 25 degrees). The doctor stopped in and they're working to get him sitting up today or tomorrow.
He's still got a tremendous amount of pain and is fighting low blood pressure but is doing well. He's in good spirits, and is looking forward to his trip to Alaska with my cousin Johnny (who is graduating this weekend). He had one of the nurses talked into going too, until he told her she'd have to drain the sewer ;)

Welcome to Morris

Anna and I made it to Morris Mn, thanks to out new Garmin 260W GPS! It was a test drive of the GPS before our big honeymoon trip! We were the first to arrive in Morris (Anna's Sister, brother in law, children as well as her parents were also going as well, they had a 8-9 hour drive from Marinette).
Dave and Becky live on campus at UM-Morris. Its a town of about 2000. Their apartment was quite nice. They have a full kitchen, living room, and 2x bedrooms.
More about the trip later!

Get better Grandpa

Last Wednesday morning, about 1am, Grandpa decided he should drive himself to the hospital. He was having some bleeding issues and he finally had enough and wasn't feeling well. When he got to the hospital, they gave him a bit of a scare by asking if he had a power of attorney. He made a couple of calls and my Mom Sue and my Aunt Deb were at the hospital faster than you could say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
I finally received a phone call about 7:30am Wednesday. Shortly there after I decided to head over to Eau Claire. (Anna and I had been planning to head over to Morris, MN Thursday to see her Brother Dave and Wife Becky.)
I made it to Eau Claire about Noon. Grandpa was on the fourth floor. He was in good spirits, laughing and joking. He had a couple of blood transfusions and his bleeding had stopped. Anna took part of the day off and came to Eau Claire early Wednesday evening. By Wednesday night the thought was that'd he be getting out sometime Thursday. There was talk of surgery but only if needed. He was all good to go but he needed to have his hemoglobin go up some more. Grandpa likes to pronounce it hemo-glob-en. :)
Upon Grandpa's recommendation, Anna and I stayed at the Antler Motel. Its a great, clean, cheap place to stay in Eau Claire if you're ever in town.
Thursday morning, the prognosis was still good. Anna and I left for Morris, Mn.

Put up that wall!

Along the Front and Left side of the house we have some red lava rock for landscaping. The front of the house has always had a retaining wall to separate the yard from the landscaping. The left side of the house though just had a plastic separator. The separator hasn't been doing a good job! (The lawn mower can attest to that!). We decided to finish the wall and have it wrap around the left side of the house.

We ran to Menards and purchased over a ton of blocks. They guy at Menards thought it was funny for me to ask how much the blocks weighed. I told him I had a car and ding, he understood. 2000lbs = 2 trips with the trailer.

Funny story. Anna and I were loading the trailer. Anna wanted to have me put the blocks on the trailer (she didn't want to be responsible if they broke) so that meant she was getting the blocks from the pile and carrying to me on the trailer. A lady walked up and gave me a scowl. Here I am 'making' Anna do the hard work. I mean it's obvious I, the Man, should be doing that! And on top of it, poor Anna, the lady thought Anna was a cancer patient and gave her a big hug. Turns out I wasn;t 100% bad... The lady said "Well at least he's on his knees!"

We dug up the grass where we wanted the wall. Flattened it all out. We put some pea gravel down and started laying the blocks. Oh the description sounds so easy! Well a full day plus later, we have a new wall! We're proud of the work we did. Go team!

Garden Planter

We've been wanting to start a garden but haven't figured out where. One day while we were shopping at Menards we came up with the idea of building our own raised garden bed. We looked at lumber sizes to get some ideas. The next day I asked around for ideas on how to build it. I heard tons of great ideas. Slowly I settled on an idea. Last Sunday my buddy Adam and I drove out to Menards to get supplies. Did we have a detailed plan? No. Did that stop us? Heck no. Once we got there we made some quick sketches, picked some lumber(easier said than done), and headed home.

Once we got the goods back home, we started to get to work. I'll spare you the construction details but the dimensions are roughly 8ft x 2ft. Tonight it got finished up by adding the outer lip and putting in the inner liner. You can see Anna demonstrating its size. As Adam says, I'd be a great coffin maker for NBA players. ;)

Its going to be an awesome garden! Can't wait for the deliciousness!

New blogging tool!

Hey, I just found out about a new blogging tool! It's called Windows Live Writer. I know, its from Microsoft. Believe it or not its just amazing, and FREE! It supports blogger quite well. You have more configuration than you do on blogger itself (WYSIWYG type stuff). I highly recommend trying it!

FIRST - Atlanta

FIRST update from the Championship competition!

.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics Team #93 attended the Championships held in Atlanta GA this past weekend. There were approximately 340 teams divided into 4 divisions at the competition this year. We were part of the Archimedes division with 86 teams. As with the other competitions the N.E.W. Apple Corp attended this year Thursday is tech inspection and practice. The team used this time to update some of the electronic controls to help us in knocking a ball off of the overpass in hybrid mode and also fine-tune the robots control software. The team was ready for qualifying matches to start on Friday. We would play 7 matches starting Friday morning ending Saturday at noon. Unfortunately the matches did not go as well as we had hoped.

We lost our first 2 matches 122 to 70 and 88 to 76 winning our next 2 matches with scores of 58 to 30 and 92 to 56. The last match of the day was one of the strangest we've seen in sometime. The first 15 seconds of the match is know as hybrid mode. Robots can run a preprogrammed string of commands or a student armed with a TV remote control can send the robot a command.

Our student or AKA Robocoach has 2 commands stop and raise arm. If were lucky enough to have a trackball on the overpass ahead of us we will try to knock it off by raising the arm. Unknown to us at the start of this match one of our teammates used the same remote commands and told our robot to raise it's arm. Because of the custom high power remote they made our Robocoach could not get our robot to stop and if that wasn't bad enough our robot raised it's arm to high. Our robot basically clothes lined itself landing on it's back with in the first 5 seconds of the match. Needless to say we lost that match even though we were with two very good robots.

On Saturday we would split our last two matches winning 94 to 64 and losing 120 to 104. Leaving us with a 3-4 record ranked 42nd out of 86 teams. We were picked by the 2nd seed alliance for the elimination round. In the quarter final round we lost the first best of 3 match before working out a winning strategy to win the last two. In the Semi finals we won the first match but, one of our team mates had a transmission problem that we couldn't repair 100% ending our run towards the finals. Tobor 11 this years robot has held up remarkably well due to the hard work of the students on the team. Not once has team 93's robot been unable to help their alliance partner in a match because of a mechanical break down.

On a side note as with all of the championship events you never know who will be there . This year was no different than in the past. During Fridays opening ceremonies one of the presenters was none other than our 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush. One of his comments seems to have become very popular with the FIRST community. Buttons started to appear on Saturday quoting the President " FIRST robotics is like the WWF, only for smart people."

N.E.W. Apple Corps Robotics, Team #93 continues to be a very well respected and competitive team among our peers.

We had some free time while in Atlanta. We arrived mid-afternoon Wednesday, just enough time to buzz through The Georgia Aquarium. Because we got there so late they gave use 1/2 off out admission! After our hurried (but fun) underwater exploration, we decided to see if Coca-Cola World was still open. Surprisingly it was! They closed the ticket booth already but one of the security guards got one open for us so we could pay and get in as the doors were closing.

Last tour of the day (sweet). This is the new facility they recently built. It was great!And the taste testing lots of good stuff! yum!

I brought my Wii along too so we had a blast with that. C'mon guys, fight!

One thing that was very apparent as we walked around near the Georgia Dome, was the aftermath of the tornado that had struck there earlier in the Year. Lots of broken windows, torn metal sheathing, and broken glass on the sidewalks. Yikes. Scary to think of a tornado rolling down a big city street!

A Stitch in Time

I made an awesome discovery for my camera! It's an open-source software package to run on my Canon camera! Here is a link to an article about it: CHDK. It brings out all sorts of options for my camera. The coolest one is changing the shutter speed. I can now set shutter speed at 1/8000 to 1/60,000 of a second! This is fantastic for high speed photography. After learning that I setup the faucet to drip and started taking a ton of pictures. I caught some fantastic pics!


Another awesome feature is time-lapse photography. I downloaded a script that allows me to setup my camera to take a picture every X seconds. Now I am on a lick to take time lapse photography of a lot of stuff. From fixing the trailer to pruning trees.

One more item that seems useful, though I haven't yet tried, is bracketing. Its a technique where you take say 3 pictures of the same scene. Each photo is taken at a different exposure setting. This is useful for when you take a picture and the building is fine but the sky is all washed out white and the ground is dark. Now you take 3 photos, one where the building is good, another where the sky is good, and yet another where the ground is good. You then mix the pictures and get amazing results.

Of Gates and Axles...

[Sunday April 6th]

The fence gate behind our 2nd garage has been annoying me. It just doesn't close right. I took a closer look at it and realized that the gate itself was too wide! I decided to shorten it. Now that may sound easy but its harder than you might think. You've got to take off the gate, then take off the chain link of the fence that is stretched on the fence, so it's a little tricky to get off. After that you have a basic frame to dismantle, cut shorter and reassemble. Some elbow grease and some big swings of the hammer breaks the pieces lose. Unfortunately it also breaks one of the corner pieces ;) After getting the frame and new parts together, how does one stretch the chain link back onto the gate? Enter some cranking tie down straps! I used them to pull the chain link tight.

Now that's out of the way, time to start a challenging project. Relocate the axle of the Teardrop trailer! Turns out that the tongue weight of the trailer is 185 lbs, a little hefty for my Ford Taurus who's limit is 175lbs. It's close but I'd feel much better if it were under! My theory? Move the axle forward and the tongue weight will be less! After several hours of wrenching around, I managed to get the tear axle moved ! Not only did the tongue weight go down, but it looks alot better too! After weigh it, we dropped from 185lbs tongue weight down to 120lbs! Not bad!

Teardrop!

[Sunday March 30th]
Anna and I have been toying with the idea of buying a teardrop camper. We did a lot of searching for companies that make them. As it turns out they are becoming more and more popular . All the manufacturers we spoke with had hefty backlogs.

Anna looked on http://www.craigslist.com for used trailers and found one up in Sandstone, Minnesota. Since we were in Minnesota for FIRST already, so we decided to drive up to Sandstone after FIRST and check it out.

On our way up there we stopped in Hinkley, home of a big casino. Unfortunately their hotel was booked so no crazy night of gambling for us! We pushed on straight to Sandstone itself and found a classic country highway motel 'Motel 61'. Ah, Motel 61... It had the essentials ;)

As you can see by the pictures, we bought it! The couple selling it were very nice and let us take it for a test tow. We took it out on the highway and around town. The car pulls it very nice. We got inside and checked it all out. We found ourselves starting to say things like "we'll do this, or that". Then we knew we were going to buy it.

The guy who we bought it from built it himself. Its primarily plywood sitting on a commercial frame.

So what is it? Its a lightweight trailer for camping ;) The inside has a bed thats just a little smaller than a full size bed. 4'x6' with a foam mattress. It also has some cabinets, a ceiling vent with fan, and lighting. Around the back, and under the hatch, is a kitchenette. It sports a three-burner gas stove, sink, and cupboards. Other items to note are the AC outlets so we can plug-in at campsites as well as a battery and inverter so we can run stuff without having an electric hook-up.

We're very excited! We're planning on taking it on our honeymoon.