Thanksgiving 2009

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at our house this year. Ron decided to try some recipes from Sunset Magazine, so we had a Modern Thanksgiving Dinner. Jennie and Amber each had a couple recipes to make and we did the rest. We had a day filled with cooking. Here is Amber getting her fingerling potatoes ready for grilling.

Ron is preparing the Grilled Butterflied Turkey. This is a first for us. Other than it taking longer to cook than it said, it tasted pretty good!

This is Gary the Turkey. Jerad got him as a white elephant gift at a work party, but he has ended up on our Thanksgiving table. We think he is pretty nice.

Here is the end result: Grilled butterflied turkey with rosemary dressing, Pancetta sourdough and apple stuffing, Chile-roasted acorn squash, Sauteed spinach with crispy shallots, Grilled fingerling potatoes with dill. What you can't see is the Asian pear salaad with pecans and the Pumpkin pie and Pumpkin bars. Mmmmmmmm....

Jennifer and Ron in the buffet line. Eat up!!

Clam Digging Day 2

Day 2 of clam digging was not so much fun. A storm had moved in, which brought rain and very high winds. In this picture Jennie is just leaning into the wind. There was so much water rushing across the sand that we couldn't see where the clams were. It was cold, wet and miserable. However, Jennie and I looked and dug and did manage to get one limit between us. She found most of them. As for the rest of the diggers, they also managed to get only one limit between them. Ah, did I mention there were 4 of them?
I shot a couple videos just to give you an idea of what it was like out there. Listen to the wind blow and look at the water being blown over the sand. What were we thinking?

Clam Digging 1

We went clam digging at Moclips with Jennie, Will, Randy, Beth, Brad, Robin, Evan and Lanissa. The house we rented was amazing and we had a great time with family and friends.

This is the view from our deck. As you can see it was a very short walk to the beach.

Ron and Jennie are all bundled up and ready to dig.

Jennie and I got right to it and had a pretty easy time finding the clams.

Look at all the people out digging. We definitely had plenty of company.

Jennie is counting her clams to make sure she hasn't gone over her limit. We were pretty happy as we had our limit before the boys. We were done and they only had 1 or 2 in their net. Hmmm, we don't even like these things, but we were the champion diggers.

The boys are giving the clams their first rinse to get most of the sand off of them. As you can imagine everything gets covered in sand when you are at the ocean.

Beautiful Day Fishing

The day started out with a beautiful sunrise, and just got better from there. You can see they are keeping their warm clothes on so it must have been cold. I don't think they really care as they are having a great time fishing.

They get up early and freeze their fingers, but when they get a fish on it's all worth it. If this was a movie you'd see that Norm has a fish on and that he caught a very nice Steelhead.Norm just netted this nice Steelhead for Randy. Randy is showing you his catch of the day. See that smile?

Happy Boys

We had some pretty happy boys today. The weather was beautiful and the fishing was even better. Here's some pictures of Norm and Randy with the catch of the day.

Pumpkin Carving

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Dave and Amy went home last night after dinner. It's a pretty quiet day around camp with only me here. Ron and Norm are out fishing, so I decided to carve the pumpkin Norm brought me. This was the most unusual pumpkin I have ever carved. It had VERY thick skin and not many seeds. It was not even slimy inside, but more fuzzy. It made the clean up pretty quick and easy. I then roasted the seeds for the men to have for snacks. They loved them.

Snake River Trail

Amy and I went for a walk along the Snake River at Hells Gate State Park in Lewiston, Idaho. We were looking for the "Hen and Chicks", which are Indian petroglyphs. It was supposed to be about a 2 mile walk along the river. We walked and walked, and looked and looked, but also stopped and took lots of pictures. We were gone for 2 1/2 hours and never did find the petroglyphs. Later the ranger told us we stopped about 40 feet short of our destination. We were disappointed, but will try again next year. The petroglyphs are fading and getting harder to see, so we were hoping to find them this year. This first picture is Amy walking along the trail. The trail starts out wide enough a car could drive on it, but it is getting pretty primitive as we get further away from camp.We saw some amazing rock formations. These pictures are good examples of columnar basalt.

I was hoping to get a photo of Amy. Here she is in front of and sitting on some columnar basalt.

I never pass up a photo opportunity.