A walk in the woods......with snakes

A couple days ago my friend Tony called me and asked if I could help him out by taking some pictures of waterfall canyon for him.
He picked me up from work in his stick car (if you want in on the joke check it out here) and we went on our merry way.

The walk up the canyon was pretty uneventful. Tony had a cheerful conversation with himself while I wheezed and puffed my way up the hill.

As I walked, I thought about my favorite travel author Bill Bryson. He too had taken a similar hike. Well not exactly similar because he had hiked half of the Appalachian trail whereas I was taking a dinky 10 min walk up the canyon but still. I felt we were in a similar situation. 

'Finally with a weary puff, you roll over, unhook yourself from your pack, struggle to your feet, and realize -- again in a remote, light-headed, curiously not-there way -- that the view is sensational: a homeless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction. This really could be heaven. It's splendid, no question, but the thought you cannot escape is that you have to walk this view, and this is the barest fraction of what you will traverse before you've finished.'(36)  

a WALK in the WOODS

I couldn't have said it better myself Bill, I couldn't have said it better myself. 

After we reached the area where Tony wanted to take pictures, I dropped my gear and got to work. Basically Tony just wanted a couple nature shots for a brochure he had to make for class.

Me: So want kind of pictures do you want? Classic nature pictures or me pictures?

Tony: What's 'me' pictures?

Me: Me being creative and doing whatever the heck I want.

Tony: .... let's go for that one.

Tony's a good sport.

When I was finished, we headed out. Poor Tony had to endure the humiliation of not just carrying my camera bag, but also carrying my purse. Like I said he was a good sport. I promise I'm not normally this wimpy. It's only because I hadn't had a chance to eat lunch that day because work was crazy so I was running on empty.

Half way down the trail we encountered this guy in the picture below. We wouldn't have seen him if it weren't for Tony's x-ray vision. I was oblivious to everything except for the mirages of food in the distance. For those of you who can't tell, this is a baby rattlesnake. They're unfortunately the most dangerous because they don't control their venom yet. So if they strike something they pump all their venom into their victim rather than just a little bit.

Needless to say I was terrified and Tony thought it was adorable. I refused to move from the big rock I was standing on until it had slithered off into the bushes and I couldn't see it or hear it anymore.

We made it down without another encounter, but you can bet my eyes were glued to the trail the whole time. Moral of the story is snakes are icky.

A classic fair with classic cars

I love fairs and this weekend I was able to enjoy a fun filled day at the Peach day celebration. They had rides, booths and of course blocks and blocks of classic cars. Before the fair opened up, a parade strolled down Main St.

 

 Anybody know what's missing here? No candy is being thrown. It was very disappointing.

My parents met up with me later on after the parade and after strolling around the rides for a little while and scaring my little niece to death, (the noises from the rides were too much for her) we decided to let my dad (and mum) indulge in some automotive eye candy.

Anybody else remember the part in Charlotte's Web when the rat is running around the fair at night singing about how great it is to eat the garbage?

Anybody?...........

No?

 Kristina does a lot of things on her own. Posing in front of cars is one of them.

 I love the little yellow mini.

 The middle is a picture of Kristina trespassing in someone's motor trailer that was on display. Like I said, she does things on her own.

Eventually dad decided that he'd had enough of Kristina's shenanigans so he put her on his shoulders. A few mins later mum and I heard dad telling Kristina to knock it off and we looked over and saw that Kristina had managed to ruffle dad's hair to the point where it was sticking straight up. I apologize for no picture. I was laughing too hard. 

ps. after I finished writing this blog and had P proofread it for me, I started singing the song that the rat sings while eating the garbage from the fair and P leaned over and said, did you look up the lyrics? No P I have them memorized still, how sad is that!?

A stick car and a cooking tip

So last night while I was sleeping soundly in my bed, I had the most unusual dream; and in that dream
I had the weirdest encounter. Many of you may remember me mentioning my friend Tony once or twice. Tony is the friend who is responsible for bringing me to Pete and vise versa.
Anyway, I dreamed that I needed my wedding dress back in a hurry because for some reason Pete and I were getting married again for the second time but Tony had my dress. Which actually is true because Tony just recently got married to the lovely Veronika and I loaned her my dress to wear.

The crazy thing about it though is that Tony showed up driving a stick car. That's right a stick car. A car made out of sticks. Not twigs, not logs but sticks. It wasn't a lot of sticks either. It was made out of about 20 sticks. Even the steering wheel was a stick.


For your viewing pleasure I have recreated this scene in my dream using Paint.....viola!

I remember asking Tony how on earth it ran without an engine and this was the reply:

"I dunno....but I've been driving this thing since the 1st grade."

hmmmm....

...........  0_o

On to the cooking tip!

So I'm sure many of you have gone to a plethora of restaurants and you find yourself bringing home leftover french fries from your meal to eat for lunch the next day. I have done this to, not a lot of times I assure you but it's happened every so often. Well it happened to me again last night.

P brought me home a hamburger that came with fries but I wasn't able to eat them. There were a ton.
So when I got home from work today I decided to eat them. If you're like me you just throw them into the microwave and call it good. Well I was sick of doing that because it made the fries nice and hot but it also made them unbelievably soggy. So I thought to myself, surely there's a better way to reheat french fries so they're crispy again. Let's ask Google!
This is what I found out:

There are many ways to reheat your fries.

I chose to use the oven.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Spread the fries on to a cookie sheet

When the oven is ready, bake the fries for about 2 mins.

Make sure you keep a close eye on them so they don't burn.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with a little sea salt.

Enjoy!

Yes I did enjoy them....thank you for asking.