Kittens and Our Winter Home

Since the last post, we have moved! We now live in a small cabin right on the edge of the gorge. We walked to Fern Buttress to climb yesterday. The cabin isn't finished (no insulation or drywall), but we have free electricity (and rent), and a small wood burning stove. We've also got a fair amount of kitchen appliances including a stove (6 burners in all, if we really want to go crazy), a grill (one propane and one charcoal), a toaster oven (2 of those too), a waffle iron, and a crockpot/oven. Sweet! The only thing we're missing is water. There is no running water, so we have to go down the road to a spring labeled "Not Potable". That scares the crap out of me, but everyone around here insists that they've been drinking water from that spring for 10 years and they've never gotten sick. But have any of them actually gotten in tested? No. I'm 80% sure drinking this water is going to be a decision I regret come 12 years and I've got mercury poisoning or something. I'm considering a water filter. On the upside, we have a bona fide outhouse with a moon cut in the door and everything.








Here are some pictures of our kittens! They're Megan's kittens now, she took both of them. Kofi is the red collared one (the girl - even though Kofi is actually a boy's name), and Mou is the blue collared one (the boy - pronounced Moe. He's named after my chinese name).

Megan found them on a cold, rainy night and wrapped them up in a towel in her tent for the night, but Mou was bored, so he left. I found him shivering on the porch at Roger's and he spent the night with us in the van.

Since then, Megan has moved on to the Red, and the kittens with her. I miss Mou (and Kofi), but I know Megan's taking good care of them. I'll visit them sometime later this winter.





See you all next time I see you! Love,
Stella

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