I saw a bear!

Naturally, I have no photographic proof. But it was a black bear cub. We didn't see the mom, despite putting the car into park in the middle of the road and waiting. I had my camera out at that point, waiting to get a picture.

But the day wasn't a total waste. I DID get some other pictures. We took a short roadtrip to the Monogahela National Forest and a couple state parks nearby. It was beautiful! And, because it was higher elevation (we made it to 3800ft.), it was prime fall colors.

Monongahela



this is Watoga State park
Ferns at Beartown State Park. Had to include some green




The Cranberry Botanical Area. These ferns were huge and I felt like there should be dinosaurs around
A gigantic root cluster
Some wildflowers! They're actually tinted purple
Cranberry glades. Cranberries grow wild all over this bog/field
Totally unrelated, this is a climb that Micah bolted and will send soon. It looks like a ship's prow. Unfortunately this isn't the best picture to show that.
Hope everyone (Jay, maybe you're the only one reading this) is having a great season! I love you,
Stella

pictureless update

hey everyone. Not much super interesting is going on around here. Just thought I'd update anyway. My sweet job is no longer my sweet job - the farmer doesn't need my help anymore. Now I'm looking for a filler job - one that will get me some money, but I'm not particularly attatched to. Hopefully that'll happen soon. I've been climbing a little more often now. The group of full-time residents at Roger's campground has increased. Now we have me, Micah, Toby, (Michael jut left today), Vince, Stephanie, Dolci, Brian on and off, Chris, Joel, and Craig. So even when Micah's working, there's still plenty of people to climb with. Not everyone gets along perfectly, but at least drama is interesing? I'm going to stick with that.

My crashpad got stolen the other weekend, I'm pretty sure. If you ever see anyone bouldering with a purple, pink, and yellow crashpad... it's probably mine.

On the upside, this week is supposed to be beautiful - sunny and 80 everyday. I hope I get to take advantage of it and have some fun!

Maybe I'll even take some pictures...
Love,
Stella

my sweet job!

here's some pictures from the farm! This is Larry's house (the farm owner) with cows in front. The ones further back are Dexter cattle. They are only about 4 feet tall. The ones closer and to the left are miniature zebu cattle. They're originally from India. See the hump on the back of the black one? All zebus have that hump.



a new baby!! There are two more on the way. She's almost a week old.these are miniature horses. They were far away, so sorry about the bad picture. And unfortunately, you can't see it, but there's a full-sized goat that lives with them, and it's unnerving to see that the goat is the same size as these!
Here's some more dexter cattle and miniature donkeys behind them.
a better miniature donkey picture. There's a baby with them! That fence behind them is probably 3.5 feet or 4 feet high. All the fences are the same height - if that helps with perspective in any other pictures.
these goats (full-sized) were sniffing my fingers. There's a baby in there!
that baby horse again. She'll grow up to be 2000 pounds at least. These are the only full-sized animals on the farm (I guess except the chickens, which I don't have a picture of. Guinea fowl too). They are draft horses - which means they're bigger than any other horse I've ever seen.
some more baby goats. Springtime means babies all over the place
a mommy goat! She's friendly
2 young rams. They are called babydoll southdown sheep. Which means miniature. We just moved these guys into this stall today and the black one sat on my lap. He was the size of a toddler and so cute!
an emu! There's 2 emus on the farm. They've been there 2 years and between them, they've laid one egg. Which they accidentally crushed immediately.

a new addition to the farm! There's only 3 chickens, but soon there will be more!

all of the sheep on the farm were sheared last week, but Larry doesn't do anything with the wool, so I volunteered to take it. I have 12 fleeces. Yesterday I tried to dry them all out. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped. Soon I'll wash them all. That'll be a big task. I'll take more pictures as I do stuff with the wool.as for climbing, I've only been 3 times so far in the last two weeks. I'm always too tired after getting home from work to climb, but I'm still having a great time. I'm sure I'll get in more climbing days soon.
See you all later!
-Stella

Alpacas!

Hey everyone! We're at the New. At home, I threw my winter mittens into the closet and pulled out the intertube.

When we got here it was snowing.

But it was warm today! I went to a farm near Charleston for an alpaca shearing! I didn't take any pictures, but I made a friend who's a knitter (and a Grandma). She taught me how to knit and e-mailed me the pictures she took immediately! Here they are:



I watched the lady above (I forgot her name already! That's f-ed up) spin some wool. She also taught me how to card wool (it's really hard! I suck at it!). The others are alpacas: the one with its fore-legs up on the fence, just leaning there. A baby alpaca, and a sheared alpaca. Their necks are so scrawny it's amazing they hold up their heads!

I also got a parttime job on a local farm here. I'll get some pictures soon. It's amazing!

bye for now,
-Stella

here's a quick blog entry:
After Salt Lake, we went to Joe's Valley (2 hrs. south). Amber and I went to the Joe's Valley Reservoir, which was frozen.





Then we headed southwest to check out Zion, Bryce, and Capitol Reef National Parks (I bought an annual National Parks Pass - it was so easy to get our money's worth). Here's a part of Zion we didn't see before called Kolob Canyon. Amber did the obligatory overlook hike, and we hiked up a dome.







Micah and Michael in Bryce Canyon

And some petroglyphs in Capitol Reef.
and here's a play-by-play of Michael doing a boulder problem.





From here, we went to Moab, where we met up with the WOODS spring break group. You can check out those pics (as well as our traveling home pictures) on facebook.


Love you all,
Stella

the internet in Bishop is bad, but we're not in Bishop anymore!

We just came to Utah for the March portion of our trip. Right now we're staying at our friend Amy's house is Salt Lake City before heading south to Joe's Valley, Moab, and Zion. Anyway, here's some pictures to catch you up from the past two months. Like last time, they're backwards. So feel free to start at the bottom and look at them from bottom to top.

I had three 4-day weekends from work, and we went somewhere each time. This most recent time we went to Joshua Tree National Park. Where Amber climbed... the bathroom?
She also did this sweet run-jump problem.
The 2nd trip we took was just Amber and I and we went on a tour of the western sierras. We stopped by Sequoia NP, Yosemite NP, and San Fransisco. Amber knows a girl who lives on a farm just outside of San Fran, so we got to see some sheep! This is Mimi. The one next to her is unnamed because he's a boy and is going to be eaten. There were goats too! One was only 2 days old.
This is not a 2-day old goat. It's a lamb!!!
We also went to the beach in San Fran. I saw my first tide pool. Here's a starfish and sea anenomes (sp?)!
and just a few more starfish...
Amber's foot with some awesome sea-shaped rocks, shells, and glass
The Yosemite part of the trip: Amber sends a V10!
and she meets John Muir and gets very forward and outright touches his beard
Yosemite Falls. We were wondering if the water turns to snow (ice?) as it falls because it seems to be landing on a snowbank...
This is not Yosemite Falls. This is in Sequoia NP - at a low elevation. I feel it's important to mention that we also saw a bobcat but didn't get any very good pictures of it, so I didn't include it. Feel free to look at Amber's facebook photos to see it.
And up at the higher elevations. We couldn't even drive all the way here. Chains were required, and we didn't have any, so we had to walk the last mile. I did finally acquire a set of chains on our last day in Bishop. Too late to use this year, but they were free.
Here's a bit warmer weather. The first weekend trip we made was to Vegas. We saw our friends Tony and Sara from the New (and Mania from Bishop!). Sara's 5 months pregnant, so that was cool to see. And we went to Red Rocks. It had just rained, so we didn't do much climbing there, but Amber and I explored the rocks and found this!
Okay, so here's January. Or, as the locals called it (though this picture doesn't show it) JUNEuary. We had a couple visitors. One was Evan. Here he is on his birthday trying to climb the Birthday Boulder! (He did it a few days later)
Also in January Amber did this. It's much more normal looking now.
Uhh... way out of order... here's a controlled burn (we think) outside of Bishop on our way to Joshua Tree.
Hmm... more JTree. Micah's doing a classic problem called Saturday Night Live (V4)
A January trip to Alabama Hills. It's an hour south of Bishop. This is a pretty famous arch that you can see through to Mt. Whitney - the highest peak in the lower 48.

but for being so famous, it's a little smaller than I expected.
A lot of movies were filmed in the Alabama Hills, apparently. Here's a random hole blasted in the rock. It looked like a sweet living quarters.
This is a picture of Rock Creek - maybe a half hour north of Bishop - but nestled right up against the Sierras to the west, so the sun goes down pretty early there. I didn't see it though. I was at work - which I wish I had some pictures of. On my last day of work, I got a pizza party! With cake, banana bread, and a present of two books!!! It was awesome!
Here's Juneuary at it's finest at the Buttermilks.
Amber and I took a day trip up to see Mono Lake. There are Tufas there. Kind of like stalagmites, they are calcium deposits.
Our other visitor in January was Amy (whose house we're at right now). This is her attempting the beautiful but scary as hell Heavenly Path.
We went to the Dreamers (another place just north of Bishop). It was a fun day.

Okay. That catches you up! I'll hopefully get a chance to post again soonish. Love you all,
Stella

Well, we've been in Bishop for over a month now. I have a sweet parttime job at the local bookstore, Spellbinder Books. The rest of the time I spend exploring, grocery shopping, and climbing. At least 12 hours a day is devoted to sleeping, of course, too. Christmas was pretty fun. We adopted our neighbor, Mike, a couple days before, so if you don't recognize him in the pictures, that's who he is. We've also had two Wooster visitors so far: Matt (who came on part of the last road trip) and Evan (Amber's boyfriend). We also had Amy visit us - Micah and I met her over the summer at the New.

Anyway: here's some Christmas pictures:
backwards through the day (sorry! It takes SO long to upload pictures and move them around on this site. Just start from the bottom if you want the real experience). Anyway, here's our nightly fire:
some entertainment at the local Senior Center free Christmas dinner!
this awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas Dinner:
some more entertainment:
another awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas dinner: Mrs. Clause
Amber crochets all the time. Being at Denny's for Christmas breakfast doesn't bother her.
Our new friend/site-mate Mike (Michael) is with us at Denny's and he's hungry.
Micah and Toby having a good Christmas
Present opening time! Toby got a book!
Amber got a book!
Micah got a book!
We woke up to a white, white Christmas. And it was packing snow, so we made a snowman. The snow just doesn't roll up clean from the gravally ground here like it does in grass.
Christmas tree!
Our fire pit, covered in snow
the Christmas lights!
Our decorated yard
good morning!

See y'all later!
-Stella