To Ecuador! (or avoiding altitude sickness)

I'm in Ecuador this week visiting a friend and looking around to see if it is a place that we may want to come to in the future. After a bit of a delay in Panama, I finally arrived just before midnight on Monday. I slept lightly. I had a fairly easy day today (Tuesday), which is good since I spent most of it trying to adjust to the high altitude. I cannot recall being so high (10,000ft)...that is about twice as high as Denver, CO! Well, by  the end of the day, I am feeling much better...no more headache. This is good since the real adventure begins early Wednesday morning as we leave for a smaller town called Shell. My understanding of the trip is this - it is a four hour bus ride, not exactly sure where we are staying yet, I am the designated translator (ha!), we will return to Quito the next day.

...we will just have to see what actually happens...

Enjoy!
Taylor
P.S. - I am unable to upload pictures at this time, but if I have time to figure it out, I will.

Jelly Making -or- Taylor living dangerously ;)

Something our family really enjoys about being in TX in the fall is making Prickly Pear Jelly, that is, jelly from the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. The fruit by itself is flavorful, but not at all sweet and full of seeds, which is why jelly is about the only thing people make from it. (Cattle, on the other hand will risk a face full of stickers to eat them off the cactus pads, especially in a dry year when the grass is scarce.) On our way home from our camping trip in Mason, we stopped to harvest a bar-ditch we had seen on the way in. (as noted above, the cows had eaten most of what was on their side of the fence.)  Today, Glory and I finished making the jelly. Hurray for Fall!

Camping / Hunting trip

Sorry they are late, but here are a few pictures from the trip we took to my Grandparents' land in Mason, TX. It was so much fun hiking around! Glory's favorite was wading in Dog Branch Creek, which reminded me so much of MY childhood camping trips there! :)

 

The boys liked "hunting" around the cabin. 

A bit of natural science education. :)

 The kids are still asking when we can go back...it makes me happy that they love being out there so much. :D

it's a bird, it's a plane......

it's a flying pyramid???

While Taylor was off on his mighty bow-hunting adventure a couple weeks ago, we found directions to make this kite online. It is string, tissue paper, rubber cement and drinking straws, which was cool...though the rubber cement was a bit obnoxious (and noxious) to work with. If we do it again, I'll try a something else to glue it with.  But still! It flew!!!!  :D

For anybody interested, here is the link.
http://www.squidoo.com/pyramidkite

A Hog's Tale

This last weekend was the open weekend for archery-only hunting here in Texas. My fellow archer friend, Whitley and I went hunting down in Mason county where our family has some land. This was the first year where I felt really confident about my shooting ability. Anything up to 20 yards and I can put my arrow where I want it; I'm shooting quite well at 30 yard too, but not good enough to where I would risk only injuring an animal.

Early Saturday morning I headed off to the spot that I had decided on for the morning hunt. It was quite cool, so I headed out with a jacket and some light gloves...and my bow and arrows, of course! I got to the area that I wanted to hunt from and spent a few minutes thinking about the best place for me to setup (assuming the deer to come from the downed fence that leds to the creekbed). Once I got where I wanted to be, but before I had any real chance to drop all my stuff I heard some rustling behind me, and then I spotted them: 3 big hogs and one little hog, black, and noisy. I was astonished at how noisy they were, so much so that I just listened and watched them. They were across a neighboring fence (i.e. private property), but then I realized that they were headed my way...and I was totally unprepared! I scambled to get my arrow nocked in the bow and turned around to be set in a good position and as I put my right hand to the string I felt that I still had only a glove on.

I must pause my story to explain something here, I pull a 60# bow, which means that when I draw my arrow back ready to release, I am pulling about 60 pounds with my three fingers on the string. That kind of weight is hard on the fingers, so I use what is called a "tab" to protect my fingers; it is made out of thick leather.

Back to my account: With two of the hogs now within 30 yards of me (thankfully they had not seen or heard me yet...again they were making too much noise of their own), I quickly dropped my glove and reached for my tab, but I had put my tab in a zippered pouch which was in a zippered pocket in my jacket. The hogs began rummaging about 25 yards now as I worked through my zippers to get to my tab with only one hand...I surely was not going to set my bow down with those things that close! One of the hogs, not knowing I was there began heading my direction and at only 20 yards. With my tab in hand, I got myself fully set and finally raised my bow, though half out of protection to see that the hog was now at only a little more than 12 yards away, heading directly toward me, but with a tree between me and it I had no shot.

Also, with him facing me, I have no shot. I really needed it to turn, even just a little bit, but no. At 10 yards, his face toward to ground and walking my way. 8 yards, he is in the clearning but still facing me. 7 yards, he turns and I release my arrow!

My arrow drills into his side, just behind the shoulder blade, exactly where I was aiming. He turns, squeels, and runs away. Now that the "danger" was gone, I realized that he is running off with a $20 arrow. "Hey! Come back with my arrow!" I say to myself. I carefully watch where he runs off to and make a note of it, but now is not the time to chase him, instead I relax and begin taking off my jacket and setting my stuff down. For about 20 more minutes I just stand and watch and listen and recount the events of shooting the hog. I also watched another hog rumaging for food, but he is about 700 yards away and across a dry creekbed. I casually glace over the fence, near the spot where I last saw my hog and I notice a little black spot on the ground. Interested in what it is, I get out my monocular and see that sure enough there is a little round black thing about 100 yards into the neighbors pasture. I wait another 10 minutes but my curiosity gets the best of me and I want to know if that is my hog. So I set my stuff up in a secure place and walk down to the small creek because it looks like the easiest place to cross the fence. Once I get across the fence I remember that there were some other hogs nearby, so instead of my bow I pull out a small 9mm pistol that my friend loaned me for "protection". Sure enough, that little black spot that I saw was a hog, but there was no arrow sticking out of it and it appeared to just be sleeping. I only saw its backside but I could plainly see from 15 yards that it was breathing. Bummer, probably not my hog because I last saw my arrow in the animal.

As I walk down a small but steep incline, the sleeping hog startles and in doing so it turns its broadside to me and runs off. I only saw it for a second, but it sure did look like there was a hole in the side of that pig! Darn! Well, to make a long story a bit shorter I learned from a lot of mistakes that I made that day and I learned a lot about tracking an animal. With my friend helping me, we started from where I shot the animal and followed its path. Along the way I found the end of my arrow broken off and a few yards later I found the broadhead also. Sigh, no wonder that "sleeping" pig didn't have an arrow sticking out its side. We followed the blood tracks toward where I startled the sleeping pig and there were a few spots of blood. Not much but some. So that was my hog. Darn again! We traked the pig for seveal hundred yards, but could not find him again. :-\

Back at home, I did some research on pig anatomy. Curious at how that pig ran so far when I put a broadhead through him right where I wanted, I found out that a pig's vital organs are NOT in the same place as a deer's vitals. Surprise, surprise...sigh. In fact, they are significantly lower. Yet another lesson learned: Know the anatomy of the animal(s) you are or may be shooting.

Enjoy!
Taylor

Growing...

Nate is weaned, walking, and sitting in the carseat face-forward...

Dan is a thinking, helping, learning-not-to-fuss, little individual...

Levi "is almost grown up to be five"...

Glory, she's my little lady...


Growing - everyday growing - by God's grace.

The Bowyer Experiment

So a couple weekends ago I had some spare time, and after reading an interesting web article I decided to conduct an experiment. The result is what Glory is holding in her hand in the below image.

...yes, the bow shoots!...actually it is a bit more powerful than I had originally expected. The arrow that she is shooting in this image has a whistle point on it so that it whistles as it flies through the air. The kids really enjoy listening to it and then going to fetch it.

For those who are interested, this bow was made with a scrape piece of pine from our house construction with a cedar riser. I am looking forward to going to Lubbock to get a nicer piece of wood and try my hand at making a nicer longbow...as I stated above, this first bow was an "experiment", but now I'm hooked on this bow building stuff!

Enjoy!
Taylor