Pontoon Mama's Blog

Wander Woman Tour 2013

This is my hat that says "Wander Woman" on it!

I had a number of things that I wanted to do on my sabbatical (AKA Wander Woman Tour 2013), these included:

Hike
Fish
Camp
Boat
Read books
Watch movies
Make desserts

I have given a lot of updates on the hiking, fishing, camping and boating activities and here is an update on the rest:

1. I have made a yummy blueberry bundt cake and a yummy lemon meringue pie. I think next up is lemon squares.

2. I have read a number of books:

Guilty Wives by James Patterson - just ok but got far enough into it that I wanted to know what happened - so i kept reading.

tiny beautiful things Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed - this was a really good book by the author of one of my books Wild (about the Pacific Crest Trail)

10th Anniversary by James Patterson - good book that is part of a series with strong women characters

The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith - this is an interesting book about a female detective in Botswana. It is fiction but still has a lot about the culture and way of life. Worth the time to read it.

Next up: Beyond the Bear by Dan Bigley - this is a book about a guy blinded in an attack by a grizzly bear. Jim read it already and could not put it down!

3. I have watched a number of movies:

The Heat - currently in the theater and hilarious! I love Sandra Bullock!

Alex Cross - rented it - sort of scary/freaky/alarming adventure/murder mystery

Road Trip - rented it - hilarious, I love Barbra Streisand

This is 40 - rented it - pretty funny!

Twin Lakes

We spent a whole afternoon on our road trip on Upper Twin Lake. We only caught one fish! But it didn't matter we had fun anyway!

It is funny because the boat is already old news to us (although we love it!) but every where we go, people notice it and make comments. On this trip we had people tell us:

"When you are done with the boat, just leave it here and we will take care of it."

"I will bring the beer!"

"Oh, you are the people with that beautiful boat."

"Hey, there is that cool party boat!"

It sure creates a lot of interest!

Robertson Creek

We did some creek fishing on our road trip and caught some little trout. It was fun to hike up and down the creek looking for good fishing holes.

Waiting on the bank

Sniffing a trout

That;s Gracie crossing to the other side of the creek

Unnamed Lake

Creek going into Unnamed Lake

Unnamed Lake

On our road trip, we did a 15 mile four wheel drive trip on our first day. We stumbled upon this small lake which was unnamed. We stopped, put the kayaks in and caught some nice little brook trout!

Then we did some hiking around the area and saw an old cabin and beautiful wild flowers. We did have one drama moment with the dogs when they ran thru a giant red ant hill. Daisy was ok because they couldn't get thru her fur, but Ahi was alarmed right away!

Jim on the lake

Creek crossing while 4 wheeling

Old cabin

Geochaching

The clue for this one was "fore!"

Did some geocaching in the area yesterday. This is a great way to see things you wouldn't normally see.

We went up a road we had never been on and saw great views of Moccasin and the Power Plant.

These are pics of the 4 of the caches we found. I thought these were great pics because it shows the variety of the caches.

This is a historical building

This is the biggest cache we have every seen!

The cache was hidden behind the reflector!

Time for a little work

It is not all fun and games while on sabbatical - there is still some work to be done! The air conditioner at the cabin has been giving us some trouble. So we did some research about buying a new one and fixing the one we have. We decided to save $600 and see if maybe a good cleaning would improve this one. So Jim took it out of the wall, took it apart and cleaned it. It was pretty dirty from being outside.

So far it seems to be working well. But the weather is not totally extreme - we will put it to test this weekend when its suppose to be over 100 degrees.

Camping Home

Grace slept the first two nites in here - then decided there was a better way and went to a tent!

Twin Lakes

When we were on our road trip, we camped like common folks - in campgrounds!

But we were careful about where we camped and chose spots away from the people and crowds. That allowed the dogs to be off leash and us to not have to deal with people! And it was delightful to having running water and bathrooms with a door! We were also careful to choose spots with no mosquitoes.

Both spots were bear territories, so they had bear bins. We never saw a bear though....lots of beers but no bears!