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The wood gas stove

So this thing is pretty sweet. Fairly small, no fuel needed. You stuff it full of sticks, then through in a fat stick and light her up. Once it gets to the right temp the real fun starts. There is no oxygen in the bottom, just intense heat. The heat breaks down the wood into the flammable gases which rise and mix with the oxygen coming in the holes and ignites. All the ash, particles and smoke that normally fly up when wood combusts just stay nicely in the bottom. It has a fan (powered by double As) that has two speeds to increase the flow of oxygen to the holes on top which really heats up the burning of the gases, but if there is a bit of a breeze it actually works very well without the fan. With the heat transfer coil pot (the jetboil one) it boils water super fast, and with no smoke in your face nor ash flying around in your food. And you never have to worry about fuel. This one is pretty big, but I think they have smaller ones, and I have seen designs to make your own out of 2 tin cans. Pretty sweet.

A.I.

Gardening in small spaces....

     So we planted a garden this year. As we are renting and cannot tear out any of the grass we used pots and had to get creative. We made a hanging garden out of large water bottles with herbs, peppers, tomatoes and one bottle of wild flowers. We planted 2 varieties of cherry tomatoes and one orange blaze peppers upside down, then the herbs right side up in bottles hung sideways. We had several types of basil (from seeds) and three types of mints (from seedlings). All the herbs did quite well, we used some fresh to make tea and to add mint to our chocolate shakes and we are drying a lot of herbs in the basement. The tomatoes and peppers (all seedlings from the nursery) did not so great, we got a few from each but I think they needed more root space, maybe we'll use five gallon buckets with a hole cut in the bottom next time.
      In the pots on the porch we did zucchini and water melon from seeds and green peppers and cayenne peppers from the nursery. (we also had some beans and peas that gave us a few before we pulled them to make more room for other things). The watermelons have done alright, we got one very sweet but small melon and one more we'll pick soon. The zucchini did pretty well, and gave us quite a few. The green peppers have also done pretty well. The cayenne peppers took their time to come along, but we are getting a ton of those right now, so far we have made some very spicy homemade salsa (next time we'll use just one instead of three). And we use the green peppers in all sorts of things. I think we will still get quite a few green peppers, a ton of cayenne peppers, a couple zucchini and the one more water melon. But we lost most of the hanging garden due to wind in the last storm.
     It's been fun, Isaac has really enjoyed it and is excited to do a bigger garden next year, which we are thinking we'll do mostly peppers (since that's what we like and use the most and they seem to do well here) maybe zucchini again and probably add onions.

Timp

Hiked timp from the Timponekee campground on the northside. Here are some panos and a few other simple shots. It's pretty awesome up there.

A few more from Zion

Zion - full trip

So here is the full report from my recent trip to Zion National Park with Paul and Adam McKean.  We went to go hike the Subway with the Ashby family. Due to rain our plans changed. 

I got there monday mid afternoon and it was raining on and off, I arrived in the main canyon and took a few shots. This is the Watchman over the Virgin river. 

I then drove to Lava Point campground which is on the west side of the park off of Kolob Terrace road.  It was overcast and ok light. 

I also saw a llama. 

The next morning we woke up to tons of rain and low clouds in the distance. This photo shows the main Zion canyon full of clouds. 

So instead of hiking the Subway we hiked Angel's Landing. This shot is from the trail head. 

 This is partially up the hike, the light and the clouds was great

Me on the summit.  

Adam on the summit. 

After the hike we ate dinner in Springdale and then went back up to camp, the same way as before. we caught a gorgeous sunset along the road, with a double rainbow and perfect light on the cliffs. I love how the road leads into the frame and gives depth to these shots. We only took 10 or so frames before the wall of water hit us. This was the first of a few perfect moments of light. 

This is further up the road towards camp. 

The next morning we woke up to rain, and decided not to hike our other planned canyon, Pine Creek. Instead we spent the morning taking photos.  These are macro shots near camp. 

We stopped quite a few times to photograph cliffs and clouds.  

 Second instance of perfect light, the sun peaked through the clouds for about 3 minutes.

Third instance of perfect light, a 1/4 mile or so down the road from the above photo. The sun again peaked through the clouds on another set of cliffs. 

Further down the road there were open fields and red cliffs. 

We then went back to the main canyon and took a few more shots of the low clouds. 

We said good by and went our separate ways. I went east and Paul and Adam went west.  The rain picked up and water falls appeared all over the place. 

The east side of Zion is mostly sandstone slabs, which acted like funnels driving the water into Pine Creek.  This is one of many raging waterfalls that fed into Pine Creek. I think we made the right choice not to go down Pine Creek Canyon. 

We had a blast and even though we did not do either of our planned hikes, the trip was a success. Thanks Paul and Adam for a great time.