First Official Farrar Family Christmas Party

We decided as a family to begin having our Christmas celebration together prior to Christmas so that each individual family could spend their Christmases with their immediate family without that guilty feeling of having to visit another home on Christmas.
There were only two siblings and their families, plus a niece and nephew from another family, who were unable to attend this year. Although we missed the ones who couldn't come, the rest of us still had a fun time playing games and visiting with one another. Here's to many more Farrar Family Christmas parties!

My two (so far) great niece

My great nephew

Merlin and Michael compete while Mom keeps score

My youngest nephew (love his hair!!!)

M&M compete, with Carma keeping score. (And yes, that's nephew Ryder, asleep in the background.)

Alicia and Jason

M helps guide her mother's ping pong ball into the cup.

Amanda and Mike's turn

Merlin and Lynette were the funnest to watch! You can tell they've been married for a few years.  :)

 

Louie Lake and Boulder Lake Hike

Carma, Amanda, Mom and I planned a fun hike for Labor Day weekend. Carma had done a backpacking trip with her young women up to our old haunt, Boulder Lake. She had read about a trail that connected Boulder and Louise Lakes and we all agreed we could do a six mile hike. When I told Cathi about it, not mentioning the mileage, she questioned whether we should take Mom on such a hike. She had done the hike from Boulder Lake to Louise Lake the previous year and recalled it as being strenuous. I just laughed her off, telling her that she had gone the long way.

Creek crossing on Louie Lake Trail

Mom crossing the creek

 We decided to do the hike from the Louise Lake side so that we could find the Louie at the Lake letterbox series in the correct order. Cathi had found them backwards and another letterboxer recommended that it was difficult to find them going the opposite way.
The trailhead to Louie and Boulder Lake are in the same parking area. We parked near the start of the Louie Lake trail and donned our day packs. We took the dogs, of course, and they were excited to be going. They must have crossed the creek at the beginning of the trail three or four times, getting in the way as we attempted to keep our feet dry. I gave Mom trekking poles, which proved to be wonderfully appropriate.

 
Finding the first of the Louie Lake four letterboxes was fast and easy. We climbed a further up the trail and came to an exceedingly steep stretch. Upon reaching the top of this stretch, we found that we had passed by box number two. None of us wanted to go back down that stretch, as we had a long ways still to go, so we logged into box number three and continued on to Louie Lake. 

Tali taking a break at box 3

The road continuing up to Louie Lake was dusty, the dirt billowing up over our shoes. One nice thing about this weekend seemed to be the lack of people. We only saw a few fishermen on this side of the mountain. 

Amanda topping the little rise for our first view of Louise Lake

Louie Lake from box 4

 

After logging into the fourth and final box of the Louie Lake series, we continued around the lake and up the trail. We climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed. It was a good thing that the dogs had all taken advantage of the cool water of Louie Lake, because there was no water on the long (five mile!) hike between the two lakes.

Carma watching the dogs swim at Louie Lake

 

Resting under a tree

Continuing up the trail

On the downhill side

After a long dry walk, we finally started down to Boulder Lake. The dogs were hot and tired, and so were we. But we were only halfway there. We still had to reach Boulder Lake, walk all its length down to the dam, and then follow the trail two miles back down to the trailhead.

Boulder Lake

Even Blew was tired by the time we headed down the trail. While waiting for us to traverse the rocky, rocky trail, Blew kept laying down to take rests. Sometimes, she would lay down right in our way and refuse to move. I've never seen her so tired.

 Even though the hike turned out a lot longer than we had planned. We had a really enjoyable time. I had planned on planting a letterbox at Bouder Lake, but was too tired to hike any further than down the trail. So, Carma and I took another trip to McCall in October, hiked to find box 2 of the Louie at the Lake Series, and planted "My Mountain" at Boulder Lake.

Why I Like Letterboxing

Looking back at some of my pictures I thought maybe I should do a blog on why I like letterboxing. I like treasure hunting as much as the next person, but the thing that I really love the most about letterboxing is you find these really great places that you might pass by just following every day normal life.

I've lived in Island Park for ten years now, and have driven to Bozeman too many times to count. Someone planted two letterboxes at the end of the fall last year on the north side of the park as you head toward Big Sky. The first one was just off the highway, but the second one led you up a little used road that traveled through a dude ranch. (Public access to a trail head.) One of the clues said to look for a fish jumping just above the water on your left as you are driving up the road. Like a fish is going to be jumping every time someone goes up that road? Ha...it was. Someone had carved a fish from a fallen tree and it is just above the water (and ice when I took the picture). I probably would not have noticed it if I was just driving up, intent on reaching the trail head, but because it was listed in the clues I saw it. What a nice bonus this added to this particular letterbox.

After my car wreck in February, Cathi and I drove down to Ogden for a letterboxing event. The Fifth of the Five Orders traveling letterboxes had arrived at a letterboxer's house and she was willing to share with anyone that wanted to go to the event. I had read about these boxes on Atlas Quest and really wanted to go, so I asked Cathi to go with me. We drove down that day, picked up a few letterboxes along the way, went to the event and then headed back home that night. A long day, but totally worth it!

This particular letterbox came with a cryptex that had to be solved in order to get the key to open the letterbox. The clues traveled with the box. Each person was only supposed to have an hour to solve the puzzle, but I am terrible at this type of thing, so I was glad we were working on it as a group. It took the whole group of us three hours to actually solve the puzzle. We all laughed when we finally solved it and the cryptex opened. It is hard to believe all the work that went into putting this letterbox together. Just the woodworking alone was amazing.

 To the left is the actual letterbox that had to be opened with the key from the cryptex. Inside it were two stamps. Below are some of the people at the event stamping their personal logbooks and doing exchanges with others.

Meeting others who enjoy this hobby is another benefit. But, still, my favorite part is seeing the beauty of this country in ways that I never imagined would happen.

 

Letterboxing With Amanda

View from the missing letterbox.

Amanda and I were supposed to go to Disneyland with Becca, Mike and the Goof last October. We both decided that we couldn't afford it, so Amanda came over to my house instead, and we spent some time together letterboxing. I've mostly found all the letterboxes in this area, so I just re-went to them with Amanda. We tried to pick up a new one near Jackson, Wyoming, but it had already disappeared.

Deer we saw at another letterbox near Jackson, Wyoming.

On our way back to Boise, we stopped to get a mystery letterbox. This was a fun one that I had tried on my own once, but didn't have a bright enough flashlight. This time I went prepared with my headlamp and a spare flashlight. I'll let you guess where this letterbox is, as I don't want to spoil the mystery for anyone else.  

The following are pictures from this fun find! 

The trail back to the car, looking like a liquid river in the twilight.

Here's a clue!

Do you think it is cold in here? Brrrr...

 I took a picture of Amanda, and she took a picture of me before we left the area where the letterbox was hidden. It is snowing outside as I write this, and I'm getting chilled just thinking about being back there.  :)

 When I looked closely at one of the pictures, I noticed that you can tell exactly where we were. At least I didn't post the name of the letterbox that we found there!

 

I Am SO BLESSED

I found this old post in my drafts and decided to get it on my blog, too. This was from two years ago!

I am so ultra blessed. I had planned on going for a drive yesterday--the Ashton Flagg Ranch Road before it gets snowed in, and through Yellowstone Park and then home. I had to do a little shopping first, so I packed, went to the dump, put air in my front tires, and went down to Rexburg. I took a picture of Sawtelle, with it's little bit of snow on top right after going to the dump. Then, I stopped at the historical site at the bottom of the Ashton Hill and took a couple of pictures of the colors on the hill, hoping that they would look as good as they do in person. After stopping at three places in Rexburg, Blew and I headed back up to Ashton and out the Ashton Flagg Ranch Road. We stopped at the first view of the Tetons and Blew and I got out and walked a little bit, while I took a couple of pictures. The next place we stopped was Indian Lake. I took some pictures of aspen leaves, and the aspen among the green pines. Then we walked down to the lake and I took more pictures. We drove for a little while, and when we crossed South Boone Creek, I saw the Grand sticking up above some trees. I pulled over and walked back to the creek and took more pictures. When I walked back to the car, I saw my left front tire was very low. Needless to say, I turned around. I started to change to my donut spare tire, but couldn't find the lug wrench! Horrors. Needless to say, I prayed all the way to Ashton that I would make it home. I stopped at the Shell in Ashton and filled the tire back up with air. On the way up the hill I wondered why a sinner, like myself, could be so blessed. (Sinner because I opted to go for a drive instead of listening to conference.) The answer came so crystal clear--because I have a Heavenly Father who loves me. He may not approve or love what I do, but he loves me. I made it home (found the lug wrench in my car on the third examination of my car), and will take the tire in tomorrow to get it fixed while I am at work. I did listen to the Saturday morning session of conference (thank heavens for the internet!) last evening after listening to the afternoon session and
taking Blew for her evening walk.

I am so blessed.

Newspaper Tree Adventure

I've got a lot of catching up to do on my blog. I finally went through and downloaded pictures off my card and can't believe all the memories they bring back.

Falling down mine

This is an adventure that Carma took me on last October. She had taken her Young Women on a hike to some newspaper trees that someone in her ward had told her about. There is no trail to these trees, you have to know where you are going. I'll take that back, you can follow a road part way there, then you have to cut across country. This was a mine that we passed on our way up the road. We took Suri, Tali, and Blew with us on this hike.

Tali cooling off.

It was a beautiful fall day. The colors were lovely and it was just cool enough, but obviously warm enough for Tali to lie down in the creek to cool off. When we got to where we had to cut across the mountains, Carma pointed out where we were heading. The mountains above Idaho City are steep and dry. We tried to hold to the creek bed, but it was rough going around fallen trees and rocks, so we started following a game trail. 
The game trail wasn't very wide, and I felt like I was walking on the sides of my feet all the time. It was nice when there was a little up and down so that our feet could be in a different direction.

Blew took off not too long after we left the trail. The labs stayed close by our sides. Every once in a while we would get a glimpse of Blew. But she didn't come back to us until we were almost at the trees.

Newspaper Trees

 Our first glimpse of the trees showed a stand of aspens amidst pine trees. When we got up to them, we were able to see all the old carvings made by sheepherders who spent their summers in these mountains. The earliest year I could detect was 1935.

This was an amazing look into the past. Hopefully I will be able to do this hike again. Carma and I were discussing the possibility of planting a letterbox here, but the problem would be how to explain to people the way to get there! I think we would need a hand held GPS to get coordinates, and maybe the people following the clues would also need to have a GPS. Like I said, there isn't really a trail to get there. 

Carma's hand in one of the carvings.

Coming back we walked along more game trails, our feet slanting in the opposite direction. The walking sticks that we got in Zion National Park would have been a great help.

The following are more pictures that show some of the carvings on the trees.

1935

Use your imagination, can you see the elk?

Traced their arm?

This looks like a grumpy person :)

On our way back, I saw the perfect frame for a picture of Carma and Suri! What a cute family portrait.