More on Leah's Silver Award

 As Marc's last post said, Leah earned her silver award this year.  She worked with another scout in her troop to create a portable signboard for one of the local Girl Scout camps here.  It turned out to be a big project for us to focus on during the pandemic.  The girls worked over the phone, google chats, and video calls as well as wore masks and social distanced to get the project done and delivered before the deadline. 


Her troop also had a bridging ceremony at the end of summer where she went from cadette to senior scout now that she's in high school.  Leah did her nails for the occasion.

Back to the silver project.  I actually managed to get Marc in one of the pictures helping out supervising the building of the signboard roof.

Here is the finished signboard that had to be transported in 2 vans & the girls put together on site. 

Her troop leader surprised us by giving her the silver award at a fall outing to work on their first journey they need to complete for their gold award.

I was able to pin it on Leah's vest for her.  I also was outdoor chef that day cooking burgers & dogs on the charcoal grill at the park we were at that day. 

Hope everyone enjoys this peek into some of our scout activities!

Catherine

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone - wishing everyone a safe, happy, and healthy Thanksgiving this year!

To help celebrate, I figured I would post a photo of Leah with her new Silver Award from the Girl Scouts.

 

She is starting to work on her Gold Award, which is equivalent to the Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts. Lots of work ahead of her for this next one, super proud of what she did to get this one done during COVID - it wasn't easy!

Cheers,

Marc

Happy Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day everyone!

The clinic was closed today in observance of the holiday, so I had a chance to sleep in . . . and squandered it. Darn internal clock!

It rained most of the day, so we were inside, which gave me time to plan out a beer project - looking to make a stand for my grain mill.

Christina is here visiting while she is having some remodeling on her home, which has helped to pass the time here.

Otherwise, nothing terribly new. Cheers!

Marc

Assateague/Chincoteague

Catherine has wanted to see the ponies at Assateague/Chincoteague for some time now, and this weekend the timing was right. We made the 3-hour drive to Chincoteague, and got to enjoy the park with plenty of sunshine and some good warmth for the day.

Assateague has a herd of wild ponies that gets rounded up once a year, with the ponies sold off. We did get to see some, but it was from quite a distance.

We also got to see the lighthouse, and Catherine got to dip her toes into the ocean. 

Our hotel was right on the water, facing north and west. I went out to pick up dinner, and when I came back, this was the view I saw from our balcony. Gorgeous warm light on the bridge connecting us to the mainland. There were several paddle boarders out enjoying what could be the last warm day of the year.

I think Catherine enjoyed checking off this bucket list item. Cheers!

Marc

Boy Scout Camping

Ian and I went camping with his Boy Scout Troop this past weekend - and had gorgeous conditions!

We went to Camp Sinoquipe in southwest Pennsylvania, a Boy Scout reservation where Ian did summer camp last year, and where we've done some winter camping the past couple of years. The last time we were there, we went hiking on the abandoned Pennsylvania turnpike, and thought it would be fun to bike it. The photo below is the view of the second (western-most) tunnel entrance, with the hillside in pretty color.

So that is what we did. We totally lucked out on weather - it warmed into the low 60's during the day, with clear blue skies. It did get pretty chilly as soon as the sun went down, dipping below freezing at night. The photo below is from near the campsite. I saw the neon-yellow leaves and thought I'd snap a photo.

Nothing that a warm/large campfire and a down under quilt for hammock couldn't handle. We also lucked out on the leaf colors, they were at peak...and it was gorgeous. The photo below is from our campsite on the lake at Camp Sinoquipe. The leaves on the south shore were fantastic, and I lucked out with no wind for a reflection.

We biked 8-9 miles out on the abandoned turnpike, which was rough in places (not used for car traffic since the 50's), enjoyed lunch, and then biked back. We had two tunnels to bike through, one is a mile long, the other much less (you can see daylight from the other end). There were loads of people out, plenty of bikers, hikers, a couple of photographers, and even a couple of hunters.

I can't wait for peak color to hit here - hopefully in the next week or so. Catherine has plans to head to the east coast of Maryland - maybe get a peak at the ponies of Chincoteague with pretty fall color.

Cheers,

Marc

We now resume our regular programming...

I got up early on Monday thinking I had to work:  I didn't. Extra day of vacation!

Not to get too nerdy, but I spent a huge chunk of the day working on an equation with multiple references for my homebrew software set up (recipe design with brewed recipe page - like a cookbook). Software sounds cool, it is really just a fancy google sheets - itself a dumbed down version of excel.

So prior to getting ready to read before I go to bed (Radical Uncertainty by Kay and King), I figured I'd snap a quick photo of the kiddos. A couple of quick edits, then throw this in to Blogger with a scheduled release after the Mountain Man day 4 post (itself on a scheduled release).

Enjoy a peek behind the curtains everyone!

Cheers,

Marc

Mountain Man Adventure, Day 4 - the last day

It was a cold night - and we were attacked by a roving band of raccoons. I actually slept through the whole thing, but Jason tells me everyone around us was yelling and banging on pots or whatever to shoo the trash pandas to the next campsite.

The clouds had cleared off at some point in time, and the lake we were camping on (the view below was about 30 feet from our campsite) had a ton of mist floating on it.

The mist burned off as the sun was rising, but there was still some light mist to provide some drama to the photo.

Shortly after I took this, we packed up camp, loaded up Jason's truck, and made the drive home. I think we lucked out - phenomenally - with the two absolute gems of Loyalsock and Rickett's Glen. The weather was just about perfect, the leaves were pretty near peak color, and we got to spend some time in a beautiful place that I never would have attributed to Pennsylvania. Two WELL-kept secrets!

Cheers!

Marc