Blue Lake Blast (pun intended)

We just got back from Blue Lake, Utah, which is just on the border of Utah/Nevada about 20 miles south of Wendover. It's a desolate place with one redeeming factor. It has a 60 foot deep geothermal heated lake. Now you ask why that is a redeeming factor to anyone? Well to Scuba Divers who happen to live in such a dry place as Utah - a 'year-round' lake is a dream. Ok, it's not a dream, but it's the best we got. It maintains a temperature of about 70 degrees on the surface and gets warmer the deeper you get.

David, Kurtis, and Me (Mike) went out there with the compliments to James for the use of his SUV. We towed David's tent trailer out there (we took mine last year and fagged out the suspension which resulted in a new axle). Well you would think that with 3 guys out in a desolate spit of earth you would get pretty bored pretty fast - well lucky for us we anticipated this and brought our own entertainment! What a Blast!

I think that we counted 15 guns between the three of us. We each needed a shotgun, each needed a minimum of two pistols, each needed at least one .22 rifle (cheap ammo), and we each needed a high powered rifle. So you do the math. Now sadly, not every gun that we brought was shot, but you have got to be prepared for anything. I also think we had somewhere in excess of 2000 rounds of various ammo - not counting .22's.

We have accumulated more and better 'stuff' over the years, and between the three of us we only had like 4 GPS's, 6 cameras (2 water), 2 video cameras, and 3 iPod's, etc etc etc.

Kurtis bought this M44 .30 a couple of weeks ago and it is a Russian Surplus gun from WWII - complete with Bayonet. I am here to attest that it shoots very straight and very accurate and it is very very powerful. I will demonstrate with a few pictures below.


David built this cool little swinging target to shoot at A while back. If you get it dead on, then it swings around 360 degrees - pretty cool. Well If you shoot it with an M44 it barely moves. The pressure does not go into it, no no no - the pressure goes through it! You're looking at 1/2 inch solid steel with a smaller piece welded on the back. BLAST! Yeah!


This is my attack - nice exit wound.


I brought James' .223 Carbine along and had a good time with it. We found a 6-pack up there and decided to dispose of it. If you look closely, the entry point is just below the "L". The exit point is the rest of the bottle! BLAST! Thought that it was a cool picture.



Then we moved on to shotgunning. We had a fun time (blast) with that too. This actually was the shortest of our gunning activities. The Beer Bottles were the funnest. The liquid (beer) filled bottles exploded on impact sending shrapnel everywhere. Oh the picture above was with a bottle that was emptied before we shot at it - I mean before we found it....



Then it was back to shooting at the target and I drew my 9mm and started shooting away - shooting the target away that is. Yeah I shot right on the weld and blew the target right off! You can see my M44 holes clean through, with a shot indentation on the very top rim - that was the final blow! BLAST!



Then after the lights went out - it was time for a small conservative fire and a couple of mild fireworks. HAH! If you believe we're going to follow typical campground rules in the middle of the desert - then you do NOT know us. To get a feel for the size of the fire, the box looking thing in the center of the fire is a dresser with the drawers strewn through there somewhere. Se found a sheet of plywood and a bunch of 4x4 posts and other crap there in the lot that we contributed to our light show of blaze! Blast!





We had an awesome time and the biggest draw back - other than the fact that all of us weren't there, was the **expletive** Horse Flies! Holy **colorful metaphor** !!! My body is freckled with red marks from **expletive** Horse Flies and mosquitoes. We decided that the moderate weather is not worth the trade off of having **you know what** Horse Flies. So we'll push this back into October - and hopefully it will be less buggy!



Diving Update: Nice water! 15' visibility or so. Calm silt. Dove Friday a.m. and early p.m. We beat the crowd - literally (The Dive Shop from Bountiful was there). Found "The Stop Sign", Horizontal, and Vertical boats, Parking Meter, floating Dummy Head, Golf Clubs, the Sea Turtle, some very active Hot Pots, and lots of Fish.

I bought a brand new Mask from Adventure Scuba in South Ogden. Coolest mask that I have ever seen! It worked perfectly. It is big and allows for peripheral vision and has a nose purge. We also rented our tanks from them. They are a very nice dive shop. They are the Dive Shop that we went to Flaming Gorge with in July.


Finally here we are enjoying the stars while laying on the dock.

Still Waterskiing in September

Last Tuesday we decided that our waterskiing days were numbered and Tuesday was one of them. So we packed up with the Coombs and hit the dam.

Here are the girls - doing what they do best! They make it look so simple.



The water was refreshing, but not too cold yet - it's getting pretty close to wet suit weather though. I've been an avid boater/water enthusiast since we got married. I have never been an accomplished waterskier though. I attribute that to whatever. It took me a while with the knee board mostly because I needed a board big enough to drag my long gangly body up onto. Well here I am - clearly on one ski. That is pretty freeking awesome! I've only done it once before.



Here is Kyle caught in an interesting dilemma. What goes up, must come down - only problem is, he's going in face first....

Upcoming Scuba trip.

For those who may not understand why we dive or even for those who haven't been diving in a while, this one's for you.

Michael, David and Kurtis are going to go to Blue Lake to shoot and to dive. If you want to know where it is Michael will have all the details from his GPS after they return. I merely wanted to show you a few shots I got off of my camera from last years adventure.

These images were taken while at our diving trip last year at Blue Lake. It has it's own wonders to behold for those willing to journey to that remote little paradise.

I did have a fun little video but it wouldn't upload so I decided to go for a couple of pictures instead. These don't quite show you the fun we were having by setting off fireworks and such but you can clearly see we did have fun and also found a bit of time to relax as well.

It was a nice night and a good trip. We had had the buffet in Wendover that night if memory serves. I drove my Durango and pulled Mike's tent trailer. It was quite the slick set up. We fit quite comfortably I believe. I was comfortable. I had plenty of space but being the driver I get that! Not a bad way to go. We also had some firearms that aided in the entertainment value.

I do enjoy Blue Lake. Not a bad spot to have some fun.

-James

Dinner at Mom's

Sunday was our first "dinner at Mom's" since about June. July we bagged it since we were all camping together, and August was canned since everyone was busy. Well Nothing was going to stop September from having a dinner at Mom's. Jenni came up with the idea - I give kudos to her, we had Navajo Tacos and along with it we had scones. They were good. Don't know what else to say about that.

Travis and Grace and Chad and Heather each brought their child with them and they were able to come. Sybil was there too minus her hunting half - who was gone hunting. And I understand that as of Monday morning Daryl 'got' his Elk! So don't think for a second though that we're going to be seeing more of him now that he's 'got' his Elk, because he aint done yet.

There wasn't any special activities going on, just chatting and laughing and having good old friendship building conversations....

There are tentative plans for any interested - Sybil etc, is going to hike Mt. Timpanogos (the Caves up the canyon) on Saturday morning. Call Sybil or Grace for Details.

I don't think that I had many flattering pictures taken tonight - except of Hollie, and Travis - but James and Becky and Mindy etc are interested in seeing what we looked like - so I just take them as I see them. Sorry - smile next time! It's not like I'm going to not put pictures just because you didn't smile!

We Ran Another Race

We ran in the Layton Classic 5k on Saturday. Carl and his sister also came and walked the 2 mile walk. It was a good race. It wasn't my best time, but I was there for the physical expenditure more than anything - and we got a really nice yellow shirt! We only started back up running about 10 days ago or so, but we were happy in the end.

Since we were running for our heart - they had dougnuts for us at the end. HaHa I just had to laugh at the irony. I was drained of energy and the muffin and PowerAid at the end really helped.

We also ran into Ashley and JJ who ran it while pushing a stroller - tough! And we also saw one of Colette's HS friends - Emma and Brent.

Labor Day Camp Trip

We ended up going to our Ward's camp out on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend - and since that was the highlight of our weekend - I thought that I would add a few pictures and comments.

Mom was on her way out of town to go to Idaho - as was David and Hollie as I recall. On the other side of the family - everyone was either going camping or doing major weekend projects, so we decided that we would participate in our annual ward camp out. We took the 4-wheeler and had a good time riding. We rode up a road just North of Liberty, UT. We didn't see much more than cows, but it sure was pretty.

Mike's Birthday Weekend - Part III

I finally got it. Here it is: