Octopus man befriends baby.
Squid Attack!
Bird-chomper
Octopus Man!
Hugs
Outside the delicious restaurant which first introduced Ginny to Vegetarian Biscuits and Gravy! YUM!
Steve teaches ginny how to use a camera at the botanical gardens.
Lena, Jesse and Violet outside the CLIMATRON!
Lena's mortal wound and Violet's awesome "I LOVE BILBO" shirt!
Arriving at another raft which was moved by these two men using a rope to pull it across.
Baby Louse
Dragonflies emerging from their nymph shells
Ginny at the Space Museum!!
Steve rows at the lake house
Jesse explodes his brains for the amusement of Violet
Ginny and an awesome sparkler
S and his sparkler
Steve admiring Violet's shirt outside lena's lake house in Missouri
Steve and Violet are very stylish
Lena, Ginny and violet say good bye
Rickety stairs up to a very tall disintegrating tower
Ginny in the tower (not shown: shaking legs)
Steve in the tower, somewhere in Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest
Ginny descends...
Ginny at the intersection of Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas!
Steve dives into New Mexico's Blue Hole
Steve and his magically delicious pancake mix.
Steve and his niece Kat with her baby Kayla.
G & S in Albuquerque
Dinner Circle at the Rainbow Gathering.
Ginny covered in flour after kneading dough at Lovin' Ovens.
Steve plays old timey music with random string people.
After the storm some rainbows came out. The people got REALLY excited about this.
Random hillside
Four Corners. Ginny waits to have her picture taken, but there are too many slow jerks in front of her. Meanwhile at the truck the food was boiling over and all the stove gas was leaking out.
Snuck out on a rarely used Navajo road to do some camping. Apparently you are not supposed to camp on the reservation without a permit.
Weird Neanderthal Rock
Ginny at Grand Canyon (obviously)
Ginny at the Grand Canyon. It is so much cooler than pictures can ever show.
Steve on the trail down into the canyon
Grand Canyon. Grand!
Steve at . . .
Cool scalding trail down.
Aggressive Monster Squirrels!
Hanging on to the tree so as not to be blown into the canyon by the hurricane force winds!
Yep
Ginny about to go on a suspension bridge at the bottom of the canyon. Yay suspension bridges!
Morning in the Grand Canyon.
Down, down, down...
Mules still carry supplies to the bottom of the canyon. That is probably why a can of Tecate at the canteen near the campground costs $4.50
Carley said to look for Giant Sloth in the caves. Ginny totally found one!
Our last day's hike was this point to the highest point in the distance.
Bowie!
Steve tries to bribe a deer for a hug by feeding him lots of watermelon.
Steve and Jim catch up.
Ginny sits on top of a waterless waterfall.
Hiked up to Crystal Cave, but we couldn't get in!
TARANTULA!!
Tarantula!!!
Dinosaurs we found for picnicking under! Yay! :)
Hugging Gma goodbye
Aunt Mickie! (Ginny had to make the rounds to get pictures because no one wanted to get up and pose.)
Uncle Bill!!!
Sir Galahad!
Aunt Carole!!!
The fam, minus mom who left for vacation the day after Gma's bday. All the pictures from the birthday party were lost :( Los Angeles, CA
Steve naps with the cutest dogs EVER at Ginny's sister Kathy's house. Fresno, CA
Carley and Steve toast the candy store across the street. San Francisco, CA
Hobo smokes Hobo Smokes
Carley and Ginny in Chinatown
Thieving sushi boats.
Boat Sushi
Vineyard in which we camped. We got kicked out in the morning... Napa Valley, CA
Canoed the Gualala River until it hit a sandbar. On the other side was the Pacific! Gualala, CA
Carley fashioned some incredible driftwood sandals because the sand was burning our feet off.
Steve throws up some kelp for homemade sandals v.2.0
Steve tries to help Carley figure out how to make her sandals.
Traffic jam at the drive-thru tree! Steve could not have been less excited
Drive-thru tree. Not shown: Horn honking and blasting mexican music, courtesy of Steve, who wanted to make the most of the drive-thru tree experience.
Camping under "Juggalo Bridge." In the morning we woke up early and drove 13 hours from Humbolt County California to Seattle, WA.
Thurston is obviously very excited to see Ginny.
Snazz too.
Sebastian actually enjoys wearing this sweater, we promise this isn't cat-abuse.
Basil and Thurston survey their backyard jungle.
Ben refinishes the backyard table for Jenna.
Taking the ferry to Bremerton to visit Steve's parents.
Steve shows his parents pictures of Pepper.
What a good son!
Ken explains why he has a frozen fox in his backpack. (p.s. He has a FROZEN FOX IN HIS BACKPACK???)
Steve and his brother David talk boats.
Coming back on the ferry.
Jenna and Ben slaving away in their sweat shop making awesome clothes which you should all buy.
Thurston does a jig!
Steve's friend Tzaddi had a party for us. Here is a random jumbled shot.
Everyone was very happy, but not necessarily about getting their pictures taken...
Another random party shot, Steve played accordion and their was much jubilant dancing.
Dan, Betty, Tzaddi and Victoria enjoy some tunes
Dancin' Dan encourages his reputation.
Jenna teaches Ginny the proper way to snuggle Basil. And to think, Steve accused Ginny of not making any progress on the "to do" list.
!!!
Buster lurking in Danny's backyard.
Buster creepily lurking on the porch.
Danny, Buster and... Buster?
Red!
Steve plays a tune on his dad's accordion, while George warms up for his performance in the wedding.
Steve's dad performing at niece Kat's wedding on Whidbey Island.
Kat's wedding was beautiful. Congratulatons guys!
Spent a couple days fixing Steve's fence at his house in Pacific after a winter storm knocked part of it down. Let it be known that we are amazing fence fixers!
Steve helps his friend Eileen take some old junk and extra kids to the dump.
Removing the old rotten gunwales.
Sebastian naps warily in unusual proximity to the notorious Snazz Monkey.
Jim was in Seattle visiting his kids and we all took a day trip out to the Ballard Locks.
We got to watch lots of boats go through the locks, it was cooler than it sounds.
This may have inspired Ginny and Francis' Spiral Family, the greatness of which you'll never know.
Francis watches the Salmon try to acclimate to the fresh water.
Jim, his kids and some bearded guy.
Waitin' for a bus
We repainted the inside of the canoe.
Scrapin' the Squeezins
Cloudy gunwales! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sebastian being chained up for a crime he didn't commit. Someone call PETA!
Steve's new accordion case is almost complete. It's built to withstand hurricanes, though in the case of a hurricane we'll probably have a bit more to worry about than the accordion.
Yay!
Happy Birthday Violet!
A three pitcher night! Goodbye favorite dudes!
Saying goodbye to Thurston is tied for the hardest thing about leaving Washington. (note the awesome skirt Jenna made Ginny)
Saying goodbye to Snazz is the other hardest thing. Is Steve crying?
Our first night out of town we slept by a cemetery in Entiat, Washington.
The old Conconully log cabin!
Yay Conconully!
Looking for the old abandoned swimming pool. Ginny begins to wonder if it really existed.
Oh Canada! The promised land comes glowing through the border.
Two of the nine Canadian deer running around our camping spot. Once we had accidentally scared them off they went bounding for the nearby vineyard.
Steve happens upon a piano at the Kelowna arts centre.
Stopped by Kelowna, BC hoping to view our friend Victoria's art exhibit. Steve shudders with woe as the doors remained locked. Apparently Canadian artists don't believe in Mondays either.
Tunnels in the Canadian Rockies
Do those guys know what's going on below them?
Lake Louise!
Just a taste of what you are missing.
and another
Steve enjoys the scenery.
Elk love Curling, though I think the little ones are more into Hockey.
We canoed the Bow River upstream from Banff, then back down again, careful to get out before the waterfall everyone kept warning us about.
The hobo life is good
Launching back onto Bow River after an excursion in the woods.
Zamboni!! See, we really are in Canada.
Keeping things tidy: Steve sweeps the dust off his lightbulbs.
Downtown Calgary
Downtown Calgary at a little park in the middle of the Bow River.
Medicine Hat!
Steve unexpectedly reinacts the “Tom Jones“ scene from “Brain Candy”.
Steve flirts with the idea of taking over Canada.
The wonders of SasQUatchewan
Other people take pictures of their kids, we take pictures of our truck. And guess what? Our truck is cuter!
So weary of getting out for all the historical markers, Steve begins reading them with binoculars.
We love suspension bridges!
Steve marvels at the Canadian Geese.
Canadian Goose Sanctuary!!
Canoeing Dogtooth Lake
Lake of the Woods: Steve relaxes on the shore near our campsite.
Preparing to leave our camp after two nights on the Lake of the Woods because we ran out of food and forgot the cookies.
Loons!!!
What a handsome fellow.
A classic example of the kind of roads we find camping down. Often the smell of burning bread could be smelled as our truck ate up the vegetation.
A mosquito ripe with our blood. We shall have heirs at last!
Canoeing through the town of Atikokan, ON. The Canoeing Capital of Ontario.
Beavers live here.
oh, just another gorgeous waterfall.
Grouse!
Looking for moose.
... and another.
Secret camping.
Yes!
Some lake!
Waiting for the waterfall.
This is the park we weren't allowed into because of Steve's psychically inferred desire to stab strangers.
A gloomy day on Lake Huron. We wanted to go to Mackinac Island where Ginny's grandparent's used to vacation, but the ferry cost too much and the weather was too bad for canoeing, so we just enjoyed it from afar.
“Michigan seems like a dream to me now...”
Detroit.
There's a lot of this kind of stuff going on in Detroit, but it's not all bad, it's just that the good stuff isn't very interesting.
The prettiest abandoned factory we've seen yet.
Ghost Fake-Ghost-Town in Ohio. We were rudely kicked out of here by one of the locals.
Kentucky Tobacco
Kentucky Traffic Jam.
Breakfast
Secret possible-exploded-meth-lab camping.
The Great Smokies at sunset.
Enjoyin' a brewski in the Great Smokies.
Must be how they earned their name.
A rainy day on the Appalachian Trail.
Ending our last night of cross-continental free camping with a luxurious mud bath.
Boat building acrobatics
!
Larry preps Belle for he and Karen's two and a half week trip on the St. John's River. What a beautiful boat!
Our first adventure in boat paint, we painted the canoe complete with a graphite stripe along the keel. Yay!
We're back in domestic-mode. Steve was so proud of these cinnamon roll biscuits.
We've painted the inside of the boat. What a hassle!
We work into the dark pretty consistently.
We love this guy! Who is he, anyway?
Ginny starts making her Oobis!
Steve's birthday hat makes a good rain-catcher
Pulling the boat off the trailer.
This is scarier than it looks.
Hard at work on important business
First stroke of bottom paint.
Launching the canoe on the Yellow River. So long new paint job...
Hoping we'll have a better trip than the last guys! (look in the upper left hand corner - yes, that's a canoe!)
These rapids are too treacherous for us. We had to portage many times and still we tore up our brand new paint job on the canoe.
For some reason (incredible finickiness perhaps?) the things we want are rarely commercially available. We decided to make our own handles for the cabin sides. Steve very cleverly created this mold and we simply squeezed the aluminum bars into shape.
Steve peers into the depths of the boat while Ginny tries to crawl in.
Beautiful weather on our "escapiversary". We celebrated by crunching many, many leaves.
Steve proudly lords over his next victims!
Ginny is crammed into the depths of the upside-down boat for a foam pouring session. Behind the heater you can see the edge of one of two shelves we built after removing 18 inches of styrofoam from each side. To compensate we have to pour some deeper in. The space is too narrow to turn one's head, so in order to change position she has to first get out completely.
Our new bottom paint, the template and the first coat of “Thurston” :(
Cutting the foam for our mattress. This is dryfast foam which has the magical property that water just runs right through it.
Tearing apart an old marine battery in the rain (without gloves?!!?!)
Finally committed.
Steve lounging on our new mattress!
Our new mattress and "weather station"
Battery #2!
Melting the lead over a late night illegal bonfire. We don't always make the best decisions, but that doesn't mean we don't have fun doing it!
Pouring off the excess lead.
Anchor Buddy!
Thanksgiving celebration at the 'ole Waffle House!
Delicious!
Second Thanksgiving dinner. Talk about celebrating, we even took half the day off work!
Our friend Addison helps us figure out the electrical system while offering some perspective on the size of our cabin!
Setting up the rowing station for trials just before it started pouring.
A freezing row at Stone Mountain park.
A goodbye feast with Larry and Karen. Good bye guys, we'll miss you!
We barely made it out of Atlanta before this happened. Another Southern Atlanta freeway mishap.
Shredded!
Dropped off the first Oobi after a harrowing hike to Florida's highest peak!
Snuggliest pitbulls ever. Stephen's house in Niceville, Fl
Morty!
Kimura!
Late night at the beach.
Saying goodbye to Stephen and his wonderful pups.
Apalachicola camping. It was stormy and foggy all along the panhandle
Manatees!!
Steve gives our friend Ron the full tour.
Another lightbulb goes on. We can wash our dishes in the windshield wiper stream!
“Quit looking like you're in pain so I can take your picture”, “I'm in pain until you take the picture” :p This is where we will be storing our truck and trailer on Pine Island.
Steve plays the drums while we wait for Danny and Betty to arrive in Miami from Key West. They were to be staying here in a Haitian art gallery/ jazz club while they were in town during a layover from Haiti to Los Angeles.
I love the elephant painting!
Dancin' Dan with our new friend RaRa and his lady in the background
Dan through Steve's shirt. Don't ask.
Steve and Danny bounce in the waves like children, oblivious to the lifegaurd's screetching whistle!
Alligator!
Lounging gator.
Snuggle friends!
We finally found mayo. YAY!
Launching Thurston at Pine Island.
Ginny poses before we take off.
Leaving our “Chariot of Fire” is the hardest part. :(
Out first night out we snuck into a back channel off a lagoon. It was great because with a little wading we could climb through 10 yards of thick mangrove and appear on the road in the middle of a swanky resort. In the morning we woke up and found ourselves grounded out on the mud. This was our first lesson in remembering to consider the tides.
Weird - o Sea Slug!
We happened upon this awesome beach at just the right time.
Water tanks in action! Steve shows off his soon-to-be sprouted sprouts.
Beach at Hurricane Pass
Steve hangs out in the cockpit.
Docking on Marcos Island. “Yes Sir! We are here to patronize your fine shopping complex.”
Anchoring on the Dolphin Expressway. The only way into town from here was to walk 2 miles out through a gated community. They didn't want to let us back in!
Sand spurs!! AHHH!!!!!!
We were in his fishing spot.
Merry Christmas!
We celebrated the festivities with Christmas stockings.
Too many treats to fit in the sock, Steve had to tape a pie to the outside :)
Sailing by moonlight in the middle of the day.
Bliss.
Grounding out on Jerk Beach. This is the East side of Panther Key where we first landed. The other campers were friendly at first, then decided we were a threat to their happiness (I guess?) and asked us to leave before our other boating friends came. It was pretty bizarre!
Mangrove at low tide.
Steve gets artistic. We holed up in a chip shop in Everglades City. Soaking wet because we got there too late, we had to wait out the rain with masses of tour group people.
Lake Placid, the East side of Everglades City.
Sitting on the Everglades City City Hall porch, jacked into their wifi and Christmas lights.
Manuevering through the mud back to our anchorage at Chokoloskee Island.
Pelican friend.
Around the campfire at Panther Key where we met up with some fellow boaters, the same boaters feared and loathed by the weirdo canoers on the other side of the island. Terrifying!
Rowing the channel which cuts Panther Key in two.
Strange flower in the meadow of an otherwise mangrove island.
The “Arctic Blast” killed fish all over the 10,000 islands. We saw their corpses on the beaches and floating in the water. Some of them were still alive and swam upside down on the surface, only diving down if our oar got too close. Some smaller fish treaded face up towards the surface, tail straight down. A strange sight to see.
Filthy Hippy Crab.
Dead shark :(
Monkeying through mangrove to get back on the boat
Nothing but dolphins everywhere.
Cool birds
Our stuff strewn all over the beach just as Larry predicted. We found a gallon and a half of saltwater in the bilge and had to empty everything to find the source of the water.
The beach where we unloaded was made entirely of tiny tiny shells.
Steve tries to capsize the boat .
It wasn't very difficult
Climbing aboard to right her.
Also (fortunately) not too hard.
We tried it with the masts too.
This was more difficult.
We have done a lot of mud exploring lately.
I lost my shoe!
Pulled it out of the ooze and and squished it back on again.
The back end of the storm.
Our beautiful camping site by the coastal praries of Flamingo.
Bottomed out on the eel grass with the low tide. Much nicer than the mud pits in which we had been finding ourselves.
Hiking back to the boat by moonlight.
Trail Turtle.
The eel grass was very popular with all sorts of birds.
Sailing isn't just for sissies.
Our last shoal in Florida Bay before Islamorada, Steve got out to pull, but we just couldn't make it off and ended up having to wait until the hightide after dark, putting our arrival in the keys off another day.
The channels around all these local shoals are sometimes difficult to spot.
The locals had a unique solution to this problem.
We made it to the Keys!
Taking the mattress to the canvas shop in Tavernier for new foam. Steve is soaked after a long wait in the rain for the cursed bus whose schedule is enragingly erratic.
Man-of-war Jellyfish and her little friends. A ton of these came up on the beach in Islamorada one day.
The anchorage at Islamorada.
An abandoned house at “The Old Hippy Boatyard”. A secret anchorage we found in a hidden channel with land access through this abandoned property, which was once a Hippy Boatyard and is now a sometimes hobo hangout. The entrance to the trail into the land from the road is even marked with glow-in-the-dark paint! Our last location in Islamorada.
A lot of weird things grow in the mangrove.
This is a squid we saw through the water one evening. It looks like one of those fake alien pictures, but it's real, I swear!!
Steve rows over to visit the new Sea Pearl in the neighborhood in our new dinghy “Hugs” (aka “Uproar”).
Our anchor dragged one night during 30 knot winds and we ended up banging against this guy! Fortunately the owner was understanding.
We were stuck tied between two pilings until noon the next day with the wind pounding on our side. Not the most comforatable night's sleep, but it could have been a lot worse!
Our new anchoring spot hidden between some mangrove islands with a lot of shallows between us and the other boats.
Another homemade tool for another precision project in the boat. Bulkheads for the aft sides of the hull.
There's an old hobo camp on the dredgings from a channel on the edge of Boot Key Harbor. We took over the camp for our projects and an occasional picnic! Here we are working on the bulkhead.
At the end of the Landing past the hobo camp is a wall which leads to Home Depot. We climb this wall quite frequently for supplies and a free way into town. Here Steve is getting ready to pull himself up.
Steve makes his way back to Hugs while Ginny spies on him from across the way at the Dockside Marina.
When the tides were very low Steve got out to explore the ruins by our boat for rumoured springs. He found the water tasted like sulfer.
Here he struggles to return to the boat.
There's Thurston, hidden by the mangrove.
Steve and our friend Meryl row around by our other friends John and Karen's Sea Pearl 28 trying to find a lost anchor.
Monkey man!
Steve at the top of our friends Jim and Melody's 40' mast. He only admitted nervousness on the way down.
