Blog | Gibby's Girl

Playing Hookie

Last week was full of ups and downs plus a 34th Birthday thrown in to boot. On Sunday, I decided to skip out on a mandatory staff meeting at the rec center in order to spend some quality time with Chucklebutt. While I essentially used my one “get-out-of-jail-free” card, it was well worth it. We made another trek to Salome Wilderness and the super cool pools of water we had visited earlier in the summer. This time we were a lot more prepared with water, flashlights and highspeed cameras. Check out these pics!

This time we got a much earlier start and were not as rushed to get back to the car. With the help of Google Earth, Chuck was able to find a much faster route with less time on dirt roads.

This is our first glimpse of water.

Unlike last time, we went farther up the trail and found a much easier entrance into the pools. Again, we had the entire area to ourselves. It was aweseome!

The scenery is so enchanting it reminds me of a movie set.

We had a ball swimming. There were spots that it was way above our heads. The only icky thing was the algae which grew on the rocks. Once you started swimming and stirring up the waters, the algae would break free of the rocks and float to the surface. A few times I squealed thinking it was a creature. Tee hee!

We gave ourselves a lot more time to make the trek back although we still got back to the car in the dark. On the way, we ran into some other hikers who were swimming further down stream. They too had to break out their flashlights. We were quite a ways a head of them and could see their flashlights in the distance. We also ran into a smelly feller along the way.

Isn’t he cute? Good think we didn’t aggravate him.

Anyway, it was a great Sunday even though I get some flack from my boss. I also applied for a job (didn’t even get an interview), had some great rehearsals, taught class and had a super duper birthday. My friends at work decorated some fun pictures for me while another friend sent me floweres. My mom gave me an AMAZING jacket and Chuck spoiled me like there was no tomorrow (he even got me a yummylicious birthday cake). I’ll try and post pictures tomorrow along with some art I’ve been working on. In the meantime, enjoy some cute photos of our girls.

Awwwwwww!

Google Earth Rocks!

Not too much has been going on in the Gibson-Rice household although we did discover Google Earth last week. Chuck downloaded the software and it is amazing! We had a great time finding our house, Mom’s and Christine’s and watching the program fly between each (we’re watching you ladies). We also went cruising the world and looked up Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Eiffel Tower. What a kick-ass program! They even had buildings rendered in 3-D for various cities. One of my co-workers said she had heard that the satellites caught a picture of a woman bathing in the nude. Perhaps it’s urban legend but I suppose it’s possible.

We were supposed to go camping this weekend, but Thursday night I became aware of my throat. As my wise father once said, “You should not be aware of body parts.” By Friday morning, I had a full case of body melt down. Alas, I felt to pooey to go camping so we had to postpone our trip. Hopefully we will go next weekend as long as Chuck doesn’t catch what I have.

On a more interesting note, last night we had a tremendous storm role through the Junction. Winds of at least 50 miles per hour, torrential rains and power outages created an exciting evening.

You can’t really see it in this picture, but Chuck’s radio antenna is at a 30 degree angle. I was really worried a window was going to blow out. Apparently some folks near-by had their roof blown off. It was intense. The power was off for two hours and we both read our books by the remaining daylight. Once it got dark, we decided to play cards by candle light. It was pretty romantic despite the lack of air conditioning. Once we got all the candles lit and the cards out, the electricity came back on. We still played and I kicked his butt 2-0.

We have baby birds in one of our hanging baskets and Chuck noticed during the storm they had been blown out. He was only able to find one of them and put it under a tarp until the rains subsided. This morning I saw the momma bird and her other baby back in the nest. Yipee! A happy ending.

This picture was taken last week. They have grown considerably. Take note of the “Popeye” look — the sun was pretty bright that day.

Here is the bird yesterday huddled away from the storm.

Chuck has been working really hard to get some shots of all the hummingbirds in our yard. He got some great ones yesterday and I think this one was taken last week. He also got a beautiful shot of the mountain and a rainbow — again, from a storm last week.