My AMAZING Wild Horse Video - Soon to be Seen on the National Geographic Channel ;-)

Back in late summer and early fall, during the height of my wild horse obsession, I was making an AWESOME video of my horse stalking excursions. It's not finished, but it's been sitting untouched for a while, and I don't feel like doing anything more with it at this point, so here it is. It has a few thrilling fights, and some 'oh how cute' moments as well. I filmed almost all of it just below the Sage Hill Gun Club.

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Wild Horse Showdown At The DR (Damonte Ranch) Corral

After not seeing any for a couple months, the wild horses came back to the the hills east of Damonte Ranch in full force about two weeks ago. I thought maybe they'd gone to the glue factory. One evening we walked to the park in the late evening with my in-laws, and from there spied several groups near the lone white house on the hill. Joanie (my wonderful new mother in-law) and I decided to drive over and take a look. We had no idea we were in for a wild horse showdown!!! There was a group to the left of the house that decided to come down the corral area, and a group to the right. One of the stallions from the group to the right was having none of their encroaching on his territory, or his lucky ladies, and went over to take care of business! And he did!!! He confronted the opposing stallion, had a little smack-down, and effectively drove the other group away. Of course I had my camera with me :)

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A mare nurses her young one

Over looking Damonte Ranch High School - home of the Mustangs

Future Olympians In Training

My niece Jamie is an excellent diving coach, and she's only five! I think she has a future in coaching, and Sophie may someday become a champion diver under her tutelage. This is Diving 101 - With Jamie and Sophie

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Here's a look back at the greatest diver ever, Greg Louganis. And the 1984 Summer Olympics were my favorite.

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Pt. 1

I'm dedicating Pt. 1 of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk portion of our weekend post, entirely to the Looff Carousel and the Giant Dipper. The family photos must wait :) These two attractions alone are not only blog worthy, but worthy of taking precedent over the family pics and having their own post!

To begin with, both the Giant Dipper roller coaster, and the Looff Carousel were declared National Historic Landmarks together in 1987. When you ride them, you're riding history (I love history, btw). The Giant Dipper was built in 1924, and the Carousel in 1911. The carousel also still has its original pipe organ that was constructed in 1894, so not only are you riding history when you're on it, you're listening to it as well.

I first rode the Giant Dipper with my friend Tauna Fudge when I was a teenager. I remembered it all these years until we went as a family to Santa Cruz last year and rode it again. The thing about riding a National Historic Landmark that happens to be wooden roller coaster that is over 80 years old, is that you feel that you are taking your life in your hands when it's your turn to step into its car. Half the thrill of the ride, is realizing the cars didn't jump the tracks and you weren't killed or maimed. Besides that, it's just a great ride!!!

I've been to the Looff Carousel a couple times too, and even have a cute picture of Eva and Sophie riding it last summer. But I guess I'd never been on it myself, or I would have noticed that it's not your ordinary carousel, besides being a National Historic Landmark. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't notice before what's different about it. This carousel has a brass ring dispenser that you can grab a ring from as you ride past, and then you try to throw the brass ring at a giant clown face. The target is the clown's mouth. I was wondering why all these adults were chucking money at the wall kind of violently when the ride started, and I was down watching the kids. Then I peeked around the corner from where I was standing and saw the clown. I didn't realize at first that they were grabbing rings. Well it was all such a surprise - and a pleasant one! To see a bunch of adults taking over a child's ride and wildly throw things at a target was heart warming :) Of course I had to do it myself too! Unfortunately, we were moving on as a group to do other things, or I would have stayed and done it a few more times. You can rest assured, that the next time we go to the Boardwalk, I'll be pushing children out of the way to get to a horse on the outside - my own children if need be :) That carousel is too much fun!!!

This is the ring dispenser and clown face target

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Hangin' With The Berkeley Tree Sitters

On Friday we went to Berkeley to pick up KC Ben (our cousin from Kansas City), who was at Berkeley for a two week summer film camp, so while we were there, we took the opportunity to see the spectical and insanity that is the Oak Grove tree 'sit in'. Ah, Berkeley! There are no words really. Well I guess there are a few, but something like the tree sitters really has to be experienced first hand to appreciate. But here's a small attempt anyway, to convey a little bit of the atmosphere at the Memorial Oak Grove, just west of Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley, where some tree sitters have been tree sitting for over 600 days to spare The Oak Grove from becoming pavement, or a practice stadium - or something like that. We found out that much more is at stake than just these trees though! Zachary Running Wolf explained to us (it's in my video), that this is about UC Berkeley being a nuclear super power and trying to rule the entire world! So there - take that! ;-)

Zachary Running Wolf

This was like a flash back (and appropriate phrase to use when talking about Berkeley) of the four years we spent living in Humboldt County, California - which I loved, btw :) Oh how I miss constantly hearing about the virtues of hemp and how it can save the world, seeing middle class white kids turned hippie trying their hardest to wear their hair in dreadlocks, and seeing "Save The Headwaters Forest' spray painted everywhere ;-) Well of course I'm being a bit silly, but I do miss those first two things in a strange way. And I especially miss everything being green (I mean the landscape), and the friends we had there.

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Wilipedia link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_University_of_California%2C_Berkeley_Oak_Grove_Protest

Wild Horses

For the last few weeks, I've been seeing articles in the paper about yet another plan to get rid of the wild horses. The issue comes up every couple of years it seems like. Usually, the BLM is accused of having managed the wild horses poorly, or they say no one wants to adopt them, the state doesn't have the money to support them any longer, blah blah blah. I really don't know anything about how much it costs the state, who is responsible, or what the answers to the problem are, I just know I'll be sad if they aren't here anymore! Here's one of the latest articles:

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008807200339

The horses come and go in this area. Sometimes they're around for weeks or months, and other times they're no where to be seen. Lately, I haven't seen any. I think these horses belong to what is called something like 'The Virginia Range Herd', and they have a large area to graze and wander. But when they're here, I just love driving down Steamboat, and seeing them dot the hills. It makes me happy! They're easiest to spot while driving down Steamboat in the late afternoon and evening, when the sun is shining from behind as you're going east, and there aren't as many shadows. I look for them all the time coming home this way. And of course I love it when they wander out of the hills, and just kind of meander around and do whatever they want - because they can :) I have a lot of pictures and some video, but not all of it is digitized. Here is what I could whip up though.

Dang, forget about the whales! I live in the desert - save the horses ;-)

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Police concert

Last night we saw The Police in concert with the O'Neils at the Sleep Train Amphitheater outside of Sacramento, in Wheatland. It was a great show, needless to say. It was The Police after all! They did all their big hits, and also lots of lesser known songs, which are just as good and sometimes even better than the biggies!!! My favorite number was 'Wrapped Around Your Finger'. Stewart Copeland had every imaginable cymbal type dangly thing to make noise with, and a huge gong. He's so impressive! There wasn't one song the entire evening I didn't enjoy. They are incredible performers, and Sting's voice is fantastic live!!!

I'm afraid this tour has taken a toll on Sting though. He now looks like a grandpa in his scruffy grey beard, and much older than he did only a year ago when we saw them in June 2007. Chris said he looked like Popeye's dad. That was kind of impressive, because I didn't even realize that Popeye had a dad. But with the help of google - here he is. You be the judge...

Popeye's dad - Pappy

At the Grammy awards in 2007, when they announced they would tour again

But you know, I liked Cary Grant best in his late 50's and 60's! I don't care if Sting is aging. He's doing it well, and he's been my one and only constant celebrity crush since I was a senior in high school (I was already a big fan, but when Sting's 'Nothing Like The Sun' came out, I was completely smitten) - and he still is, even if his last album was 17th century lute music :)

Matt, Me, Nicole, Chris

I love my new Fidel Castro-ish/Police hat ;)

The people watching was fun too.

This was a couple sitting right in front of us, sporting matching his & hers ear plugs. They were deafinitely ready to ROCK OUT! The plugs stayed in ALL night.

A good time was had by all, even the hearing impaired. Actually, that describes us after the concert - the people who didn't wear ear plugs :)

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The audio is terrible, but you get the idea

Sand Harbor - another video with our Kansas kin :)

In this video, Ben and Ella jump the 'runway rock'. I don't know what that rock is actually called, or if it even has a name (someone should name and map out all the jumping rocks at Sand Harbor), but it's the one that has to be run down before reaching the point at which you can jump. You can't tell from this angle, but it's only about 3 feet wide at the most all the way down, so not slipping or tripping is critical!!! Ella has wanted to do this for a long time, and it's always made me nervous, but she finally did it on Friday, and so did Ben! There were no injuries sustained, yay :)

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Emerald Bay and Eagle Falls outing

Here's a little video montage of our outing last week with our relatives from Kansas. I already posted a couple pics from this last week. They'll be at my sister Janene's house today, after having been to San Francisco, Berkeley, Napa Valley and Chico - all after leaving Lake Tahoe on Sunday. They can watch this when they finally get home and have recovered :)

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Summer rain

We had an unexpected, but very welcome torrential downpour yesterday. It did cause some flash flooding in the North Valleys, but it didn't do anything here but clear the air :) Yay, we can see the mountains clearly this morning. I haven't heard if it put out any of the California fires though. The smoke will probably be back soon.

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Afterwards, we had some lovely sunlight cast through lingering clouds

p.s. to all my LDS friends who have moved away - I would post some pics from the ward BBQ last night, but I couldn't be there because it was back to school night *SCREAM*.

I just wanted to whine some more about school in July!

And can I just say how wonderful and joyful I felt yesterday, knowing someone else was planning the ward BBQ and worrying about whether or not to cancel it because of the weather?! I think I might have had a heart attach if I had still been the Activities Committee Chairperson when that rain started, which was at about 4:52, according to my video timer. It ended here in our neighborhood at about 5:20, and the BBQ was scheduled to begin at 5:30 out at Bower's Mansion. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was just thinking about someone else having to deal with it :) Matt took the kids and said they had a great time.

We uncovered a hoax at the family reunion

We could have just looked at some youtube videos to figure this out, but we didn't have any wireless service up at the lake. And besides, it was more fun doing it ourselves.

Here's the video Heather saw (I think this must be the one) that started it all

And here's us being gullible enough to think it might actually be true

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Fourth of July weekend

For the fourth of July weekend, we invited ourselves to Joanie's cabin. She's quite a hostess, and even gave us the master bedroom, and we were selfish enough to take it, because that's how we are :) We all had a great time, and the smoke mostly even stayed away until Sunday.

Here's a video montage, my very first, that's not yet finished. I've been waiting for some pictures from Joanie, but she's taking her sweet time, lol. Send them when you can Joanie, and I'll add them. Mostly I can't wait to post this video because I'm anxious to see my superior handiwork on display ;-) I also have some captions, but that feature is a 'premium' feature, and I don't feel like going to fetch my wallet to sign up for the service. So, here is the as yet unfinished montage (I also have to take care of some of the bad wind sound)

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