Cabin: Day 4

7/04/10

The day started for me and my brother at 4:30 in the morning. We got ready and were out the door at 5. Driving by the field by the cabin, we saw that the elk from the night before were still there. As we got to Upper Lake Mary, there was an elk just off the side of the road. We turned around and drove by it slowly taking some pictures. It wasn't scared at all and just kept walking, eating and looking at us. As you can see the elk was a nice velvet. After taking some pictures we headed down a little further to a pull off to go fishing. The sun was still behind the trees and we began our day of fishing. The plan was to be done and back to the cabin by 10, hopefully with some fish.

As we began to fish, we noticed lots of flies of some sort flying around and little fish picking them off the top of the water. The small fish were probably perch and they were jumping at any fly that hit the water. On a few occasions we noticed a larger splash which may have been a pike grabbing itself a morning snack. Our hopes were high, seeing as there was plenty of food for the pike to be in the area. Pretty soon I had a small pike on my line and brought him in. Normally I wouldn't keep one as small as he was, seeing as he was probably under 2 lbs. But after fishing the day before, and that being the size of the fish we caught, we decided to keep it. Shortly after I had another fish that was slightly larger so I kept it. Just then we walked into the sunlight as the sun was slowly rising. The flies were ever more abundant in the light and the feeding fish just the same. The noise from the flies was as if a hive of bees was nearby. You could watch a fly keep bouncing off the water while several minnows followed in close pursuit. If the fly landed for too long it was a gone, followed by a small splash as the fish retreated. Just after that my brother caught one even larger than mine so he put it on his stringer. And just after that my brother pulled in another one even bigger and over 2 lbs. Then I caught another one but it was even smaller than our smallest so I let him go. So we had 5 fish before 8 and continued to fish and we arrived home before 10 like we had planned with a lovely addition to our 4th of July meal later that day.

After eating some brunch at the cabin, the whole lot of us took a hike to this burnt, dead tree. The plan was to push it over. After a couple hours of trying, mainly by a sole person's determined attempt, the tree was still standing. As this was going on, a few of us went around pushing down smaller burnt and dead trees. We had a very interesting experience in doing so, which it's story will be posted later. After all of this we headed home and had our 4th of July dinner.

After dinner my friend, brother and I went out to look for the geocache that we couldn't find the day before because it got too dark. There was also another one close by up on that hill that we wanted to find as well. We were able to drive half way up so it was a short hike to the spot and after looking for quite a while we were unable to locate it once again. Heading back to the truck we stopped by the second cache up on the hill. My friend found it giving a wild exclamation. We then headed back to the cabin, once again feeling defeated for not finding the geocache. I also realized I had lost my pen up there. Now there are two objects that seemed to be lost. 

Cabin: Day 3

07/03/10 

Once again my brother and I got up and left for another lake, Upper Lake Mary, at 7 in the morning to try to catch some fish for dinner. This time we made sure to bring food. We got out there and had 3 fish within the first hour. All about 2 lbs. We didn't want to keep anything that small because the week before that was the smallest size fish we had caught. So we would keep anything well over 2 lbs. After catching another fish the same size and letting it go we decided we should just keep the next one so we would have something to eat and then keep anything larger that we caught later. So we kept the next one I caught which was just over 2 lbs. After another 3 hours, we didn't catch any more fish but had just a few bites. We decided to call it a fishing day and look for some geocaches in the area. After fishing Lake Mary, we looked for two geocaches along the lakeside. We found one right away in a rock pile. There were many coins in there that were advertising for trackable geocoins so we took one with us. The next one we found had been there since 2001. At one point it was the 49^th oldest active geocache. So that made it exciting to find.

Next we checked out 8 more near and along Ashurst lake road. Five of them had already been found on the same day and after finding one we saw some more geocachers looking for the same one we had just been to. We went back to the two at Ashurst lake that our friends had looked for, but now we had a few more geocaches under our belt and had some more idea what to look for. So we found them both very quickly. Five of the geocaches were all from the same person in the same camo containers. In one at Ashurst lake there was a bouncy ball so we traded a fishing lure for it. After getting back to the cabin and eating some food, along with the one pike we kept, three of us decided to look for several geocaches that were near the cabin. On the short drive over to them, we saw 8 cow elk on the side of the road and then 3 deer before we reached them. Our friend had never heard of geocaching so he didn't know what to look for. My brother looked 30 feet away and saw a stump and said, “It's there!!” and ran over there, lifted the stump and there it was. My friend was shocked. “How did you know it was there!!” he yelled. Then we checked out another cache on the other side of the road. We found it fairly quickly and traded another lure for a small dinosaur toy. That way we could keep trading things by transferring them. The next one was .18 miles away straight up a mountain so we headed for it. Boy was that a hike. We describe the steepness as our toes against our shins and our chest a foot from the ground. After finally getting to the top it was getting to dark to see so we had to head back down the very steep hill, though fortunately we found the trail so it wasn't as steep. In the field right before the cabin we saw some elk grazing out in the field. It was getting dark and we could barely see them. So we took the spotlight and walked out into the field. Shining the light at them we saw more than 20 sets of eyes. They headed away from us into the tree line and we finally made it back.