Happenings of our lives

Emily surprised me when I came home from work on Friday January 15th.  She had everything packed to go camping and wouldn’t tell me where we were going or what we were going to eat.  Well, we ended up camping at the Swan Creek area like we’ve done before.  It was really muddy but we found a spot to put up our tent.  Then Emily set up the stove and warmed up some delicious homemade french bread with spaghetti sauce, breaded chicken and aged New Zealand cheddar cheese I got from work.  It was delicious.  Then we played some games.  Then Emily brought out some creme brulee she had made previously (post on that to come).  Then to top it all off, we had smores.  It was fun.  We slept really well and woke up to the sound of rain on our tent.  That would have been fine under ordinary circumstances; however, the dirt road we drove on to get to the site was really muddy and we actually almost got stuck the night before so we quickly packed everything up and shoved it in the car and drove away.  We then went to Glade Top Trail (which was Emily’s surprise) but I’ll write a separate post about that.

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Jordan loves creme brulee and I just like the custard part. One day when I was driving home from work I heard an advertisement for something and it said creme brulee, so I decided to go home and make some.

I cut the recipe in half because we have small ramekins, but it was still more than enough to fill them.

Here’s the recipe:

Jordan’s favorite part of making creme brulee is torching them (honestly who doesn’t like this part?). We ate them and they were pretty tasty. We even at some that weekend when we went camping. Stay tuned for more on our camping trip.

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So we spent New Years Eve with Ryan and Heidi and then on New Years Day we spent it with them again. Ryan’s brother was moving, so Jordan went to help. On the bright side, we got to go to Ryan’s Parents house and got to see lots of cows.

I was so excited I took lots of pictures (we probably deleted half of them). The cows were so cute, and they loved the food. There were also horses and a pony that was pretty funny looking. I told Jordan that I need a pet cow, too bad they eats lots of food and smell bad.

The other really cool thing was that we saw a eagle in a tree while we were driving there. We even turned around so we could get a picture of it.

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So, in order to redeem myself for the ill fated Christmas Eve trip, Jordan and I went hiking in New Year’s Eve. We got a comment on our smugmug gallery about a specific waterfall that we had been too before. The guy wanted to know the latitude and longitude of the waterfall. We hadn’t been back to Pee’s Holler since Jordan got his new GPS, so we decided to go back so we could tell the guy about it. It is also nice because Jordan wants to put things like that on his new website.

So we drove to Hercules Glade and started hiking. You’ll notice that pretty much ever picture with Jordan has him looking at his GPS and setting a waypoint.

I really like going to places during different seasons. The last time we hiked Pee’s Holler, it was late summer and the leaves were all still on the trees. This time we went and the trees were mostly bare. It felt like a totally different place. Anyway, we had fun hiking and came back home and spent New Year’s Eve with Heidi and Ryan.

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	#	Distance	Time	Movingtime	Speed	Max Speed	Climb Up	Climb Down
	1	0.000 mi	0s	0s	-	-	-	-
	2	1.006 mi	35m 41s	34m 59s	1.69 mph	5.02 mph	190 ft	482 ft
	3	2.001 mi	1h 11m 13s	1h 09m 30s	1.69 mph	7.16 mph	486 ft	942 ft
	4	3.002 mi	1h 47m 50s	1h 45m 22s	1.67 mph	7.16 mph	787 ft	1266 ft
	5	4.006 mi	2h 12m 24s	2h 09m 33s	1.82 mph	7.16 mph	1053 ft	1444 ft
	6	5.007 mi	2h 37m 15s	2h 33m 44s	1.91 mph	7.16 mph	1407 ft	1634 ft
	7	6.000 mi	3h 07m 35s	3h 03m 31s	1.92 mph	7.62 mph	1765 ft	1847 ft
	8	6.064 mi	3h 09m 24s	3h 05m 18s	1.92 mph	7.62 mph	1808 ft	1850 ft
Summary		6.064 mi	3h 09m 24s	3h 05m 18s

Pees Holler

This Christmas was our first Christmas without our families. We were kind of sad thinking about it, but we’re glad that we got to spend it together.

We woke up on Christmas morning and it had snowed! It hadn’t snowed before Christmas, so we were pretty excited about it. We were talking about how we could hardly believe Christmas was almost here because it didn’t look like winter. So we woke up and ate cinnamon rolls and then opened presents.

If you look at the pictures, ignore the crazy hair and faces, I was pretty excited about the things Jordan got me. Jordan was excited too, even though he doesn’t look that excited in the pictures. Jordan got me a bunch of stuff for my Cricut and I got Jordan some movies and a digital picture frame for his desk at work.

We spent most of the day playing with our new presents. I made a bunch of cards with my Cricut and Jordan played his game. For dinner we had a ham that my work gave to us and some other holiday foods. We ate leftovers for a lot time afterward (we still have some ham that’s frozen) because there’s just the two of us.

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So, Jordan already posted about our hiking trip on Christmas Eve. I’ll talk about when we got home. So we decided to come home because it was cold, and raining, and I really don’t like hiking in the rain.

When we got home, we got warm and decided that we wanted to open one of each of our presents (actually Jordan decided this). Jordan knew what my sister had gotten me for Christmas and he wanted to watch it, so we did. I wanted to watch it too, but I could have waited a day.

So we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, it was our second time seeing it, and I think it’s a pretty good movie. Maybe ask me again when I’ve read the book again.

So Jordan got Assassin’s Creed II, and while he played it I took pictures of our trees. Now on to Christmas…

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Here’s a super easy fudge recipe, it’s great because, depending on how long you let it boil, you will get pourable fudge, or fudge that you can cut and eat in pieces.

The day after Christmas Emily and I went back to the Devil’s Backbone wilderness that we went on Christmas Eve. This time, we hiked the whole McGarr trail loop. It was so much fun (Emily probably didn’t think it was as much fun as I did but she still enjoyed it deep down, I’m sure). It wasn’t raining this time which was good. Part of the trail comes really close to the white fork river and you can actually go into it. There is a good spot to set up a tent by the river so it would make a fun backpacking trip in the summer because you can go swimming and stuff since the river is big enough. I tried to get her to go camping this trip but we decided to make it into a day hike (with the promise that we could hike Pees Holler in the Hercules Glade wilderness area, post to come). I’ll post a map soon enough so you can see where we went.

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	#	Distance	Time	Movingtime	Speed	Max Speed	Climb Up	Climb Down
	1	0.000 mi	0s	0s	-	-	-	-
	2	1.002 mi	24m 22s	24m 03s	2.47 mph	4.61 mph	781 ft	482 ft
	3	2.001 mi	47m 42s	47m 20s	2.52 mph	5.09 mph	1001 ft	741 ft
	4	3.005 mi	1h 14m 22s	1h 11m 33s	2.42 mph	10.46 mph	1332 ft	1299 ft
	5	4.006 mi	1h 50m 42s	1h 46m 18s	2.17 mph	10.46 mph	1824 ft	1732 ft
	6	5.003 mi	2h 29m 33s	2h 23m 48s	2.01 mph	10.46 mph	2185 ft	2087 ft
	7	6.001 mi	2h 59m 40s	2h 53m 45s	2.00 mph	10.46 mph	2644 ft	2612 ft
	8	7.007 mi	3h 23m 13s	3h 16m 35s	2.07 mph	10.46 mph	2966 ft	2828 ft
	9	8.001 mi	3h 47m 34s	3h 40m 54s	2.11 mph	10.46 mph	3317 ft	3002 ft
	10	9.004 mi	4h 11m 39s	4h 04m 55s	2.15 mph	10.46 mph	3596 ft	3235 ft
	11	9.025 mi	4h 12m 46s	4h 06m 01s	2.14 mph	10.46 mph	3615 ft	3255 ft
Summary		9.025 mi	4h 12m 46s	4h 06m 01s

McGarr Trail Loop

Emily and I went out to do some car camping on Christmas Eve. We loaded up all our gear and our wrapped presents into our car and took off to a section of the Mark Twain National Forest that is near West Plains in the Devil’s Backbone Wilderness. We parked our car at the McGarr Ridge trailhead. (Eventually I’ll put a map on here like I did with the last post). It was a really beautiful area and I’m really glad we went. Anyway, it started to rain really hard while we were hiking. We had rain coats and stuff but Emily doesn’t really like the rain so we turned around to the car and ended up going home the same day. We found the McGarr springs which was a pretty little spring coming out of a hillside. It was just really pretty and other than the rain, it was a fun little adventure. Emily will post soon about our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day adventures.

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	#	Distance	Time	Movingtime	Speed	Max Speed	Climb Up	Climb Down
	1	0.000 mi	0s	0s	-	-	-	-
	2	1.002 mi	33m 42s	33m 26s	1.78 mph	6.38 mph	262 ft	230 ft
	3	2.008 mi	1h 14m 18s	1h 12m 33s	1.62 mph	8.30 mph	823 ft	797 ft
	4	3.005 mi	1h 40m 42s	1h 38m 49s	1.79 mph	8.30 mph	1047 ft	991 ft
	5	4.003 mi	2h 10m 39s	2h 08m 29s	1.84 mph	8.30 mph	1276 ft	1243 ft
	6	5.002 mi	2h 31m 08s	2h 28m 35s	1.99 mph	8.30 mph	1476 ft	1457 ft
	7	6.004 mi	2h 49m 39s	2h 46m 58s	2.12 mph	8.30 mph	1637 ft	1617 ft
	8	6.017 mi	2h 49m 55s	2h 47m 14s	2.12 mph	8.30 mph	1640 ft	1621 ft
Summary		6.017 mi	2h 49m 55s	2h 47m 14s

Devil’s Backbone

Well I finally got someone to go backpacking with me other than Emily.  The Budd’s are our friends in the ward and I convinced Ryan to go with me on Dec 18-19.  It was pretty darn cold but we stayed warm enough.  We left after work so it was already dark.  We went to Hercules Glade Wilderness area and started our hike on the Long Creek Trail, taking the second right.  Halfway to the pilots trail, we set up our tent.  The next morning, we finished the loop.  It was fun but pretty darn cold.

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