My new favorite t.v. show is 'An Idiot Abroad' on the Science channel. If you've been over to our house recently, there's a good chance you were forced to watch it. The basic premise is they (Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant) make the 'idiot,' Karl Pilkington, choose activities to do based on a list of the top 100 things people say they want to do before they die. These aren't things Karl wants to do before he dies. He's more of a homebody type. So to see him put into all these crazy situations is pretty dang funny.
This got me thinking of what would be on my list. My "Bucket List." I've actually done a lot of things that'd be on your typical list, so I think I'd have to get a little creative and/or specific. I don't have any desire to do things involving large amounts of adrenaline. At least the type that comes with risking life and limb. No bungee jumping or sky diving for me, thanks. I think most of my to-do's would involve outdoor activities, traveling, and food. So... let's see what we have...
Fly fish for Browns in New Zealand
Eat an authentic French & Italian meal (ideally in each of those countries...)
Visit New England in the fall
See the Northern Lights & an iceberg
Have an article or book published
Go backpacking in the backcountry for at least a week
It's actually really tough for me to think of things I'd want to do before I die because usually if I want to do something I just do it! Most of the things I haven't done are simply because it takes a little extra cash to accomplish them.
So what do you think? What do you want to do before you die?
Seth and I spent the last couple weekends backpacking up in our local mountains: the Uintas. It had been a couple years since we'd last gone so we were excited to get out and give it another go.
On our first trip we headed for a group of lakes near Christmas Meadows. Here's the route we took:
I'm not going to lie. That was a HARD hike. It was about 5 miles to our camping spot at Ostler Lake. Five STEEP miles. My butt almost fell off. But we made it!
It was a very secluded spot and we were the only ones camping there. It was the quietest night I can ever remember with not so much as a gust of wind.Unfortunately it was a pretty rough night as far as sleeping goes. Neither Seth nor I slept much at all and we were both pretty disappointed with our new sleeping bags.
The next day we fished Ostler Lake. I caught 3 fish: 2 good sized cutthroats and a tiger trout. Somehow Seth managed to get skunked.
After fishing there for a few hours we ate lunch and napped for a little while and thought maybe we should just go back home after the horrible night we'd had. But, after packing up our gear and heading back out onto the trail, we realized we weren't ready to leave yet and made our way up to "No Name Lake"... a little lake just southeast of Ostler. No Name Lake was incredibly beautiful and our camping spot was even better than the one we had the night before.
I managed to catch 2 cutthroats on a beetle at No Name but somehow, Seth got skunked again. The next morning we decided to hike up to Amethyst Lake before heading home. We only got to fish for about 45 minutes before a storm rolled in, but we both caught a few brookies in that amount of time. I believe I caught 3 and Seth caught 9! We wished we had more time to spend there, but we now had about 6 miles to hike to get back and figured we'd better get a move on it.
This was a pretty aggressive trip for our first time out this year, but we had a great time. It was nice to finally get in some fly fishing after going the whole spring and summer without it. Not to mention some camping too!
On the second day of our Oregon trip, Seth and I decided to go check out one of the nearby lighthouses. We ended up at the Coquille River Lighthouse just outside of Bandon. We were going to go to the Cape Arago Lighthouse, but somebody pointed me in the wrong direction. I'm not sure who it was...SETH.
We were able to climb to the top of the lighthouse and check out the view with the tour guide. Apparently there was a family that lived there for a bit and took care of the place. The mother would row her kids across the river/inlet everyday to take them to school. Way cooler than riding the bus.
After the lighthouse tour we walked along the beach and dipped our feet in the freezing cold water.
Seth taking his shoes off...
Awe... look at Seth's cute toes!
After our walk on the beach, Seth showed me the trick to putting your shoes on without getting sand in them.
After our beach trip, per recommendation from the lighthouse lady, we drove into Bandon to check out the town. It was a cute little place with tons of touristy shops and a boardwalk. We bought some fancy chocolates and did a bit of window shopping then headed for home. It was a great day.
I know you'll all be shocked to know that Seth and I took a break from all of our house junk and went camping on the Oregon coast for a week! It was a much needed vacation and we had such a great time with Seth's family.
On the first morning after our arrival, we decided to do a ranger guided tide pool tour. We were a bit skeptical of the "guided" part as it's usually kind of boring and too structured, but it ended up being our favorite part of the trip! We got to wander around the tide pools looking for different sea creatures and ask all the questions we wanted. The best part was, only four of us showed up so we got a private tour!
Looking at a small crab
We saw tons of these sea stars in all different colors. The white dot in the middle on top is it's butt. See! I learned something!
Group shot of the adventurers
We found one sunflower sea star... much bigger than the other sea stars and tons of legs!
The underside of the sea star with all its sucker feet
The FourVirgins? Why yes! This post is about four virgins. Let me explain.
Yesterday was my virgin ice fishing trip this winter. It was also my virgin ice fishing trip to Pineview Reservoir. During said trip I caught my first ever crappie AND perch. So there you have it! Four virgins.
My first crappie.
My first perch.
You'd think I'd have spent millions of hours at Pineview Reservoir over the course of my life. I mean, my grandparents have lived in the area for more than my entire life. I've driven by it countless times, but including this weekend, I've only ever been there twice. I've definitely been missing out.
On Saturday Seth and I met up with The Navajos and Eric (that should be a band name), to do some ice fishing. We chose Pineview because of its close proximity to our apartment and the fact that it was completely iced over. Pineview is a little different from most lakes in the area because it's not a trout lake. It's known more for perch, crappie, and tiger muskie. We set out to catch some perch and catch them we did!
We probably showed up later than we should have because the fish were only steadily biting for an hour or so after we got there. The total for the group was 8 perch and 2 crappie. Seth decided he needed more perch so he went out again early Sunday and caught 13 more.
We all had a great time and I'm sure this won't be the last time we ice fish at Pineview this year. It was definitely a beautiful place to be.
Seth was really angry at his fishing poles. Or maybe he was giving them a pep talk. I can't remember.
Eric, Ramona, and Gabe heading out onto the ice.
Woah. That's deep.
Seth showing us the ways of the auger.
Eric tries his hand at drilling.
Seth with his first catch of the day.
If you don't fish, you may be wondering why on Earth you'd want to catch and keep such small fish. I'll tell you why. Those perch are good eatin. Never cleaned a perch? I hadn't either! But we found this great video on YouTube that explained it really well. Also just FYI, these things are like mini catfish in the sense that they DO NOT DIE. Our perch were sitting out on the ice almost frozen solid for several hours after which they were put in a ziplock bag and taken home. I was half way through gutting one when it started flopping around. ALL of them did this. Creepy huh?!
For the record, we took way longer to clean ours than 10 seconds a piece, but this tutorial made it way easier to clean the fish than anything we would have come up with on our own.
Gutting the perch... it takes lots of concentration...
Some finished cleaned perch. That Leatherman Juice knife is the best for gutting fish, especially after being sharpened by Dad Hanson.
Don't know how to cook these guys? Well you're in luck! I've got the best recipe ever for fried fish from the fish cooking master herself.... Mama Hanson. Check it out over at Gravy Training!
And on the second half of the second day we did thus travel far to view the hidden secrets of the universe... some did call it Buckskin Gulch. And it was good.
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