Acadamia!

School School School!  

First of all... Prescott College ROCKS!  Orientation ROCKED!  There were 9 students in my group with 2 great alumni leaders.  Despite purposely lying on my application form, saying that I can't swim, I was placed on the most water intensive course.  My group hiked two slot canyons about 45 minutes from Prescott.  The first was West Clear Creek, where we started at the mouth of the canyon and hiked 9 days, some through the creek in the canyon, some across the dry hot mesa above the canyon (to avoid overly technical areas).  The 9th day, we swam for the first time through three icy cold pools, then hiked through painfully dense shrubby ground cover (all plants in the desert are sharp!) out of the canyon, then across the mesa to a farm to meet up with two other groups on our course for 're-supply'. 

I'll answer a couple questions you probably have...    No we did not change our shoes to hike through the creek.  We wore our boots.  Some of the creek crossings were ankle deep, some were waist deep.   To swim with a 65 pound backpack on, you simply walk into the water until your feet don't touch the bottom and you just keep 'walking' forward.  It's actually more like riding a bicycle than it is walking.  The backpack floats because it is lined with at least six trash bags which are tied off at the top, so they hold a lot of air.  'Waterproofed' backpacks float so well that by the end of the trip I had mastered the swim so well that my bellybutton didn't even touch the water.

First half photos here....

After 're-supply', the three groups split up and our group hiked 13 miles across the mesa to the rim of the Wet Beaver Canyon.  (Don't worry, we heard every joke in the book.)  The second half of the trip, we swam every day, all day.  We hiked, we waded, we crossed the creek, we crossed the creek again, we swam, we crossed, we waded, we swam... then we camped.  And ate.  Both canyons were so stunningly beautiful, it was such a privilege to sleep beneath the stars every night and wake up knowing that the day would, again, be long and hot. 

Part 2 photos HERE

Between the Orientation 'block' and the fall semester there is a week of 'student directed days'.  It's just a break.  So Shaun and I piled in the old subaru (now named Loretta) with our roommate and some new friends and drove as fast as we could through the desert at night to see the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean.  We took our sweet time driving up the breathtaking Highway 1 to spend 2 days in San Fransisco at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  We had the amazing fortune of staying in the yard of one of our friends houses with 15 or so other Prescott College students literally a stone's throw from the beach, 10 miles north of San Fran.

  

Amazing Weekend Roadtrip photos HERE

Ok, enough about how amazing my first month of school was.  October has been the 'real' first month.  I have actually had to sit in a classroom and read books and have discussions with classmates.  Fortunately the classes are awesome and one of my three classes requires me to hike around in the woods or the desert for the entire day.  Last Thursday my class attempted to summit a mountain.  

I can't wait to see what's in store for the winter block and spring semester!  All the classes here look so great I'm dreading having to choose!  As a bonus for the 11 half of the 10-11 school year, Shaun just got accepted and will start his wilderness orientation in January, hiking a section of the Grand Canyon.  Yeah!  I know!  I'm so excited I can hardly even type!

I still can't believe that I live in Arizona.  And am going to school?!   Everything is working out so well here (finally!), we should have moved ages ago.

Now off to do homework (on the desk I built today)... hopefully I can get it finished tonight so tomorrow I can attend the second weekly meeting of Club Sandwich, an exclusive club only for friends of the Bear Claw Household (that's us) that rock climbs in the morning and makes kick ass sandwiches for dinner in the evening.  This weeks sandwich is pulled pork which I plan to eat on our roommate's new trampoline.

In other Bear Claw news, the fish tank actually has fish in it now, 7 of them... The dogs are both doing great, just being dogs as usual.  I've taught them a great new trick called 'Go See the Chickens'.  On the command, Go See the Chickens, both dogs run out the door as fast as they can to the backyard to see the chickens.  This trick was inspired by the awful discovery that an intruder had killed two of our four chickens.  Bad luck for chickens on this property... maybe the fourth time will be a charm.

That's all for now folks.  Another long blog in a month or so?  

School has officially started.  Today was the first day of class for returning students and the final day of paperwork and registration for all of us new students.  Today is also the beginning of our orientation course.

Our bus leaves at 2:30 today, so after finishing our registration, Niels and I came back to the house to go through our gear one more time and take it easy for a little bit.  As a last minute going away gift, another one of our chickens decided to start laying!  Finally, one of the americaunas left us a pretty little blue egg.

This is today's egg collection...  

I can't wait to see what's in store for us when we return!

I promise to post again at the end with all the exciting details and freshly acquired college knowledge!

Time Flies (when you're having fun!)

I can't believe I haven't posted a new blog in over a month.  Either I'm lazy, or I'm having too much fun.  I do have to say Shaun and I have both been pretty busy, but we've had a little bit of fun in our time off.

Shaun has been working pretty full days for Bin 239, a wine bar down town, and I have been baking in the hot desert sun on the Prescott College campus, pulling weeds, picking up cigarette butts, and propagating native plant species.  I've been learning a lot about native plants and have started 'adopting' stray baby yucca, agave, and bear grass plants, as well as some unused rocks to make my yard beautiful!  Of course the plants are small, and my landscaping is coming along quite slowly, but it looks a lot better than when we moved in.  You have to start somewhere right?  While clearing some dead sticks and leaves to make room for my agave, I was delighted to discover a little patch of Hen and Chicks, which I have separated out and transplanted all along our walk.  Our landlord's wife told me they used to be planted all along both sides.  It sounded beautiful to me, so that's where I put them! (And it's always worth scoring some points with the 'boss', right?)  As a bonus, while trying to uncover the hose to water my fresh transplants, I found a little green stick of an old chopped off rosebush.  It was attempting to grow one sad little grasshopper-eaten leaf, so I watered that too.

  

Happenings in our yard have really been pretty exciting.  A week and a half ago Harvey and Suka cornered a skunk in our shed, resulting in the entire block reeking of the smell of burnt rubber, and very quick use of all of our baking soda and peroxide.  Every time we watered the garden for a week, the smell returned.  We've seen skunks on our evening walks multiple times since then, and last night we had another close call with one in our yard! 

I'm sure the skunk (or skunks?) are coming around to check out what we're feeding our chickens.  And the chickens!  What fun!  They love to follow us around the yard, and eat cicadas out of our hands.  The dogs have been treating them very nicely and lay down to wait patiently while they walk all around them and peck at the tips of their tails.  Our white chicken (named Colonel Sanders) has been laying the same perfect little brown egg for two weeks now, every day right around 9:30.  Shaun has been giving the other hens little pep talks and FINALLY today the little hen Jabberwok laid her first!  (It was definitely her, since the fluffy cheeked americaunas will lay blueish-greenish eggs.)  When chickens start laying, their eggs are small.  Eventually, they get larger until they reach whatever size they are going to be, depending on what kind of chicken it is... Well, along with jabberhen's new egg, we had another little surprise.  The Colonel's perfect little brown egg turned out not so little!  I guess she thought she'd make up for lost time and just go ahead and make a huge one!

The expected eggs... the new egg... the unexpected huge egg!

I love it!  For those of you who haven't spent much time with backyard chickens, you should know that they are hilarious!  Incredibly entertaining...

Anyway...

School starts at the end of this week.  The lazy campus I've worked on all summer has turned into a buzzing hive of activity and excitement.  Returning students stroll through the grounds with a bounce in their step, yelling excitedly at the friends and classmates they haven't seen for months.  The new students walk around with bewildered looks on their faces, closely flanked by a parent or two, usually carrying maps... 

I feel a little bit caught in the middle.  I'm a new student, but I've been on campus all summer, so I know a lot of the faculty and senior students.  I'm a first year student, but I'm not fresh out of high school starting college for the first time.  It's awkward right now, but I definitely have an advantage after being here all summer.

I am so nervous and excited for this upcoming adventure.  I've been looking forward to it for over a year now and suddenly the beginning is just days away.  The block officially starts for us Saturday, however I won't start any actual classes until October.  

My roommate and I will spend the first week of September on a ranch with the rest of the incoming class (150 students), then we'll split into groups of 10 and spend the rest of the month backpacking, each group in a different area of Arizona.  Poor Shaun will be all alone in the house.  At least he'll have our pups and comical chickens to keep him company.  As excited as I am, I'm dreading the time away, but it will be good for us.  

I feel like there's still so much to do before I leave.  But for a trip like this, all you can do is pack up and take it as it comes.  If I make it through (don't worry, we've been practicing hiking around our neighborhood) I'll be a full fledged student... WOW! 

To keep ourselves preoccupied and out of trouble (those bartenders at the Drunken Lass are quite fun) we've been gardening, hosting 'couch surfers' (a cross country biker, and a new prescott student waiting for his room mates to arrive), baking bread, raiding fruit trees in the lawns of businesses (apples, peaches, and plums, YUM!), brewing tasty things atop our fridge (honey wine, ginger beer, apple cider, kombucha), and fermenting other tasty things to eat (kimchi, yogurt, cheese!)!   So many good smells and flavors in this house!

With all the fruit and food scraps, the chickens and our box of worms have been very very happy... almost as happy as Niels and our jar of honey wine!

Here are some great adventure photos...

A recent bike ride.

Some cool things around town.

Our house, bugs, and sunsets.

Don't look for another blog for a while!  I'll post again in one more month!

Wish me luck!

High Country Life

I imagined the desert to be rather desolate.   Prescott is high mountain desert and is full of amazing life!  Bugs, beetles, lizards, frogs, plants, everything is just so cool!  The life here is so vibrant and so unique. 

Shaun has been working two jobs.  Although he's at the tail end of one job and at the beginning of a better job, it's still a ton of work.  I've been working at Prescott College through the federal work study program doing grounds maintenance.  I'm always outside pulling weeds, gardening, and swinging axes at trees.  I really like it and the job will allow me the flexibility I need to go to school.

In our time off, we've been trying to get out and explore the area as much as possible.  I've found great pleasure exploring the rocks around nearby Willow Lake.  I try to make it to the rocks before sunset in order to catch the amazing colors.  The dogs have been so happy swimming, jumping off the rocks, and chasing lizards.

At night, we open up the house to cool it off, and have been often surprised by incredibly large beetles and quite a few dragon flies.  Unfortunately, lots of the insects meet untimely deaths at the jaws of dogs before I can catch them and return them to the outdoor world.

Our chickens our thriving, thankfully!  They've been enjoying the afternoon thunderstorms and the times we let them roam the yard to eat bugs.  They should be popping out some eggs any day now and I have a feeling they will be so so delicious!

Our new roommate, Niels, arrived a few days ago and we have really started to launch into home improvement projects.  Shelves, fence gates, and improved chicken coops are all on the list, as well as many cooking projects and fermentation experiments!  Beer, wine, kombucha, and kimchi are all soon to be bubbling in our kitchen and there has been no shortage of fresh baked bread and fresh cut herbs.  I have cuttings of rosemary soaking to form roots for planting, and my job at the school allows me to take home transplants like mint, and agave.

It's been a month and we are finally starting to make some friends.  Having jobs helps, and almost everyone on our street is a fellow Prescott College student with similar interests.  Even the dogs have made friends.  A couple of pooches from across the street like to come over for visits almost daily, however if they don't stop using the bathroom in our yard, I'm going to have to beef up our fence.

Life here is good.  And it's only getting better.  I can't wait to see what the future will bring us!

A good swim in the lake.

The sun setting over Granite Mountain.

Snails in my yard after a rain.

A long horn beetle on our porch.

Another gorgeous sunset over Granite Mountain.

Can it get any better?!

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Anytime you move or visit somewhere new, a lot of exciting things are bound to happen.  Really, it's just because everything is unfamiliar and there are a lot of new 'norms' to get accustomed to.

In the desert, not a whole lot gets accustomed to the mid-day heat, so all the action happens at night.  Here in Prescott, there have been live music shows, craft fairs, movies, and street dances almost every night in the Courtyard downtown.

And of course, after the lights go down and the crowds disperse, all those other more silent, sneaky things that go 'bump' in the night come out to play.

A couple weeks ago, Shaun and I went on a midnight bike ride to buy ice-cream, just a couple blocks from our house.  Just around a bend, Shaun stopped in the road to tell me he saw a javelina.

Upon hearing the unfamiliar word, I saw an image of a chupacabra in my head, and immediately flipped a U on my bike and was pedaling as fast as I could the other direction.
A Chupacabra is a mysterious dog-like/reptile-like creature of modern myth, mostly in Latin cultures, that kills farm animals and sucks out their blood.

Needless to say, I saw whatever Shaun was talking about out of the corner of my eye, lurking in the dark, and it scared the hell out of me!
Turns out a javelina is actually a Collared Peccary and we had rode through a whole herd of them, babies and all.

When Shaun yelled at me to stop and I actually got a good look at what I thought was surely going to eat me, turn out it was actually pretty cute with it's eyes shinning in my bike light.  I probably scared them more than they scared me.  
So, the javelinas scattered into the rocks and we bought our ice-cream, but my heart didn't stop racing until we returned to the house.

A couple nights ago I saw some huge dark lump crawling across the living room floor.  At first I thought it was a large cockroach, but it was moving rather slowly and clumsily.  The dogs were pretty interested in it, but good thing they didn't try to eat it, as it had some rather powerful mandibles.  I captured the crawly insect to discover that it was 3 inch long Longhorn beetle.  Cool!

(not my photo)

Not so cool... Last night I switched on the light and stepped out the front door to find myself face to face with a giant black widow!  The black beauty was mid-construction of her tangled web, right across our front entry.  I have never seen a black widow so big! 

I took a couple pictures until she shied away from the light and hid in a corner.  I called around town today to find out if there was any naturalist who would want the damned thing, but no luck.  I'm going to let her live in the dark on our porch until she starts making an egg sack, mostly because she is just too cool!, and partly because I am too afraid to get close enough to kill her.  

Normally I suck spiders up in the vacuum, but something tells me that's not gonna work on a spider of this size and caliber.

Two Dogs Free To Anyone Who Wants 'Em

Tragedy struck in the Karlan/Davis household today.

I got out of bed around 8 to find the bathroom door open.  I asked Shaun if he had already taken our little chicks outside to the coop.  

He said 'no'.

Harvey's favorite thing in the world is to pull the stuffing out of squeaky toys until he finds the plastic squeaker.  A whole box of squeaky things locked in the bathroom...  Poor Harvey, I can only imagine his disappointment to find that the fluffy little things had no squeakers.

But no matter how happy, sad, disappointed, or proud of himself he was, I can guarantee it was no match for how upset I was.

Of course, not all the blame can be placed on Harvey.  Suka has been know to magically open doors...


My first urge was to kick them out on the street with 'FREE' signs duct-taped to their faces.  Luckily for the mangy mutts, my rage was lessened by my attendance of a seasonal parade, and the fact that our neighborhood has at least two ice-cream trucks.


I guess I will consider apologies.

2010 Roadtrip, Završni Dio, Arizona!

Final Part, The Grand Canyon State
~Home~


My god, we've already been in Arizona three weeks.  So much has happened, I can't keep up.  I'm going to fly through all the details here in chronological order so I can get back on track.  


Here goes...
June 9- Drove across the Grand Canyon.  Wow!  Stopped at Lee's Ferry, where the Canyon raft trips start, and played in the water.  Drove to Flagstaff where we had some drinks with a friend, then camped in the woods and bouldered some until we found poison ivy.  Spent the rest of the evening catching ants to feed to antlions.


June 10-  Played frisbee golf in the park, then climbed for just a little bit in the afternoon.  We made it back to Flag to catch our friend closing up at work.  We proceeded to paint the town red and watched the sunrise from the top of the hospital parking garage.


June 11-  Nothing happened.  Too hung over to move.


June 12-  Shaun and I volunteered to work at the Flagstaff Pride Festival.  We sat in little cage and sold tickets for half the day.  We couldn't even see the festival happenings and the tickets cost too much, so nobody really liked us.


June 13- Left Flag around 8 am.  Made it all the way to Cottonwood, 30 miles from Prescott, and our car broke.  For some reason it wouldn't rev over 3,000 rpms.  All shops closed on Sunday, so we drove very slowly over the mountain, through Jerome, to Prescott.  Very pretty scenery and amazing views from Jerome.  Must have been Corvette day or something... every Corvette in the country was driving the road over the pass.  Probably saw 300 Corvettes!


June 14- Bought a hotel room for the week at Apple Creek Cottages.  Really cute little place by a stream, great courtyard with bbq grills, and very dog friendly!


June 16-  Found a house to rent very close to the college, very cheap rent, very cool landlord, and in the 'Eco-hood'. All college students, hippies, and chickens, with a garden in every yard! The landlord gave us the rest of the month free, so we could clean the house...it needed it! Shaun and I each bought a new bike for commuting around town.


June 19- Shaun found a job and started immediately.  Little restaurant that really fills the niche for old people.


June 22- Got the car into the shop.  Fixed in just a couple hours and thankfully was cheap!


June 27- Climbing!  Too hot out and Shaun got a good burn.


June 28- Rode our bikes to the grocery store around 11pm.  Rode through a herd of javelinas in the road.  Scared the hell outa me!  They look like boars, but they are actually peccaries.


June 29-  New roommate showed up.  Really cool med student only staying for a month.  The room is super cheap and 1/4 mile from the hospital, so it worked out perfect for him, and helped us pay our first month's rent!  Someone gave us a young chicken, food, and feeders for free.  Yay!


June 30-  Bought a car and 5 baby chicks!


Now we're up to date!  So, today-  Young chicken disappeared.  She escaped from the yard somehow, and I don't think she's going to make it back.  Had to have the new car towed back to our house, but it's an easy fix and Shaun has done it before.  The High Sierra Music Festival starts today in Quincey, California.  We're not there, obviously, because we had to sell our tickets to pay our rent, but that's ok.  There is a lot happening in Prescott right now.  The world's oldest rodeo is going on right now, and there are events every day in the park.


Things seem to be working out really well, and I think we've broke the 'we-shouldn't-be-here' streak.  Bozeman feels very far away, but it's not a bad thing.  Prescott feels right.  


Photos of our home in Prescott here.