Overdue

Hope tells me I'm over due for a blog posting, and given that the last one was over two weeks ago, I guess she's right. In our defense, we were pretty busy. First, we were dealing with sick kids, including Beth's misery with an ear infection (the picture above was at the doctor's office). This was quickly followed by a number of Valentine's Day parties, including the group below, who are in Hope's CCD class:

Beth also had a Valentine's party at her preschool (yes, that is Stephen on the left):

Stephen is a regular in Beth's preschool class and Kenny's first grade class, as Hope volunteers to help out in both of these. Stephen loves interacting with the other kids, and definitely loves playing with some new toys:

Kenny was a little disappointed that he didn't get to attend his class's Valentine's party, but we had other plans: we traveled to Petit Jean Mountain so I could attend another archeology workshop. This one was on the basics of lithics (in other words, stone) used by prehistoric peoples in the Arkansas area. Here is a picture of Stephen, eating his lunch on the way up:

Someone has GOT to convince him that he doesn't have to put his whole lunch in his mouth at one time!! Kenny and Beth love to visit Petit Jean State Park, which is right next to the facility in which I get my archeology training in, because of all the rocks they can climb and caves they can explore:

On the main day of my training (Saturday), Hope took the kids into Little Rock for some shopping. That evening, they joined me and my class at dinner at the facility's restaurant. The food is good, but the service can be slow, and with the crush of people there on Valentine's Day, the service was EXTRA slow--it took us about two hours to get our food! Hope was steaming, and the kids were cranky with hunger, but a rose given out to all of the ladies by the restaurant management at least boosted Beth's mood:

I continued my training on Sunday, and Hope took the kids to the Russellville area to visit some of her ancestors' graves. My training ended by mid-afternoon, so we had enough time to take a hike in the park up to a bluff shelter:

In the small cave you see us hiking to in the picture above, the pictograph below was drawn on the rocks many hundreds of years ago:

This pictograph has fared well over the years because the cave it is in is small and rarely visited--the park's larger and better known caves also have pictographs, but many are obscured by graffiti or worn away by people touching them constantly. Along the trail back to our car, we got this pretty view of a stone arch bridge and the man-made waterfall behind it:

Kenny had a treat after we returned to Monticello. His Cub Scout den (which Hope leads) got to go to a local manufacturer who builds boats. This includes harbor patrol boats like the one they're standing by in the picture below.

The next day (Tuesday) I drove to the Carolinas on a business trip. I had some equipment to deliver to another Forest Service unit in North Carolina, and spent some time in the Forest History Society archives in Durham, NC, before I traveled to the Congaree Swamp National Park (http://www.nps.gov/cosw/) near Columbia, South Carolina to meet up with a group I've been working with (the Eastern Native Tree Society) to measure some big trees in the Congaree. If you've never been to the Congaree before, it is well worth the trip--this park preserves a large patch of old-growth bottomland hardwoods/pine/cypress not far from South Carolina's state capitol. Some of the people I met with were into climbing big trees, as you can see in this picture:

If you look closely, you'll see a man hanging on a branch, tethered to a line. This large branch is about 100 feet above the ground in the national champion (aka largest known) loblolly pine (the tree is about 5 feet in diameter by the ground, and almost 170 feet tall). Below is a picture of another gentleman standing next to a large (but not champion) swamp chestnut oak:

While in South Carolina, I also visited the Beidler Forest (http://sc.audubon.org/Centers_FBF.html), another large old-growth bottomland hardwood/cypress swamp about an hour and a half's drive from the Congaree. Here is a picture of a cypress that the sign next to it claims is at least 1,000 years old:

This trip to these impressive forests was not all pleasure--I was measuring some of the big pines for this tree height modeling project I'm working on. That's one of the great things about being in forestry--you get to work in some awesome places!

Shortly after I returned from the Congaree, we attended a retirement party for the man who was the Crossett Experimental Forest's manager for the past 20+ years, Mike Chain. Mike, as my boss once told me, was truly "the salt of the earth"--a class act, all around. The white-haired gentleman standing up in the picture below is NOT Mike Chain, however, but rather Ernest Lovett, who worked for us for a while on the Crossett. I included this picture to show you that Kenny and Beth are showing their independence (somewhat)--here, they have joined my administrative assistant Paula Hooks (dark hair and green shirt) and her husband at the table next to ours (you can see Hope in the background). They were reasonably well-behaved (Beth eventually joined us for the meal), but did enough goofing off that they'll be rejoining us at the next function we attend...

Finally, we have started another quasi-big home remodeling project--I took Wednesday afternoon off to replace the last major aluminum clad window in our home with a modern vinyl window:

Replacing windows always makes me nervous because the house is then open to the elements, but it is warm enough here (highs have been in the low 70s lately) and the bugs aren't bad yet that we could risk a few hours exposed. With Hope's help, I was able to get the new window installed and weather-tight by suppertime--below is a picture I took just a few minutes ago of the inside view of the new window:

We still have to add the trim and paint, but we should be much more energy efficient with this new window.

I'll try not to let my blog postings go so long next time...