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Terra's niece (Mark & Starr Ollerton's youngest) Karalyn came down to stay with us June 20th until June 30th. She has just finished her first year at Eastern Arizona College. She is currently studying pychology and like most freshman doesn't have a clue what she wants to do. I remember that - it actually took me about 4 years to figure out what I wanted to do, and by that time I had to start over. This brings up a good point, why is it that when you are young and dumb, you make all of the life altering decisions that affect the entirety of your life? Decisions like, Do I go to school? What do I study? Who do I marry? Where do I live? What career/job/vocation do I start? Do I serve a mission? For some reason (still unknown to me) these major life affecting decisions are made during the time of life when you don't have a clue what you are doing or where you are going. It is amazing that some of us actually come through this time of life relatively unscathed, or even better yet, with a good direction. I don't think I want to calculate the odds of that happening... |
| While Karalyn was down, Terra and the kids took her along and went and played around doing lots of pretty neat things. Unfortunately I was involved in the labors of working and missed the most of it. Poor Karalyn also picked about the hottest time of the year to come and visit. It was just before the monsoons had started and the temperatures were at the highest of the summer. Oh well, that is how life goes in the desert (particularly during the summer time). One thing that I did manage to do was to go out in the hills between Cascabel and Reddington and see if we couldn't find some dinosaur tracks. I had heard rumors that there were some up the washes in this area and if you chose the "correct" fork in the wash you might find some. Well we took the bronco up the washes, and managed to find these specimens that we are standing on. |
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I don't know what type of tracks these are, but they measured about 16" across. What it looks like is that this area was wet (either near a pond or bank of a river) and some animals walked through the area. This walking on wet dirt/clay caused the edges of their foot prints to protrude up and curl up around their feet. Similar to what happens at a beach when you take a step in the wet sand. This particular area was in some rocks that had moved and were slanted at about a 20 degree angle protruding out of the sandy wash. You could also see where the top layers of rock were missing. It was rather fascinating, and I would love the opportunity to go back up and explore some other fingers of the washes in this area. I suspect that north of south of this location would yield similar tracks. |
| The kids really got a kick out of finding them and looking them over. That is at least until they stepped in one and then they were complaining about not having water to drink and the temperature and the distance from home, etc. I don't know why kids think that if they complain about their situation you can magically change it for them. I don't know how many times I have had to explain to them that I don't have a drinking fountain in the cars. Followed up by why I can't just install one for their drinking pleasure... |
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Another sight that we were able to see (again with Karalyn) was the local Am Track train stopped in Benson. Apparently Benson has a stop for Am Track and the have scheduled visits to Benson. This is quite a sight, when the train stops it blocks traffic for about 20 minutes while people get off, and others get on. I have yet to do it, but one of these days I plan to take the train to Tucson and back (or maybe just a one-way trip depending on the train scheduled - I can't imagine that they are that popular). It would be neat to see some of the country between Benson and Tucson that I haven't seen before as the tracks don't run directly adjacent to the freeway. |
During some of the time while dad was in Mongolia, we visited Barbara in Oracle. We made either 2 or 3 stops out there during his absence. On one of our visits, I managed to avoid stepping on a rattle snake. This little guy was about 25-30 inches long and fairly skinny. He was between the rabbit house and the shed. I almost stepped on it, then waited for it to slither into the rabbit house before going on about my way. He seemed to have a rather calm disposition, and only rattled as he slithered by my foot. I went in and got AJ and then brought him out to take a look. He decided it best to take the snake and relocate it to someone else's property. Brittney wasn't adverse to this idea, but told AJ to let Nate play with the snake as he didn't have health insurance. |
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We went out to the rabbit house and found him again and started the great dance trying not to upset it, while not touching it, and all the time poking and prodding it with sticks to get it to go into a 5-gallon bucket. We finally managed to get it into the bucket, and Brittney wouldn't have been to impressed with the methods imployed, but the snake never displayed any inclination of it being threatened, and for the most part seemed to cooperate. AJ finally managed to pin its mid section with some angle iron and we got the bucket in front of the snake, and AJ directed it in. Once in the bucket we put a lid on it and drove the snake out to the back road to San Manuel and found the first spot to pull off the road and let it go. It turned out to be a Black-tailed rattle snake with 4-5 rattles on its tail. |
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I know this is not a great picture, but it sure tells a great story. Ever since I have been put into the bishopric, Terra has the great pleasure of dealing with the kids by herself. Our kids aren't the best behaved in church and when we were living in Arkansas I had to take Ethen and Kyle back to church after dinner on a Sunday and let them practice being quiet during church. I simply took a few chairs and set them up - took a timer and set it for 10 minutes. If they talked I would restart the timer. After about 1.5 hours Ethen & Kyle decided that they would be quiet for 10 minutes. Well today, after many threats, Rachel volunteered for the same training class in that she wouldn't act like a sane person during sacrament meeting. So after I got home and we ate dinner, back to the chapel we went for some "practice". Rachel didn't take as long as Ethen & Kyle did, but then again there was only one of her - and therefore less distractions. After I took this photo (~ 3 quiet minutes) she turned to me and said I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut for that long. Well she is correct. She kept making noises of one kind or another and we were there about 45 minutes before she had enough "practice". Now we will have to wait until next week to see if she actually learned anything... |
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