The Edge [of all] Journeys

This week has been a week of recovery, reorganizing and chores. After spending a week camping in the mountains for Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), we accumulated much laundry and extra camping gear that we now have to find a place to store! We went camping for a week in the mountains with about 80 or so other people for a majority of the week (including children). It was pretty cold. We ended up using all our winter stuff that I had packed and enjoyed many hot, hearty, one pot meals.

We decided to live out of our grab-and-go bags for the week. The four oldest children have their own packs and Bennah and I carried Joy’s clothes and a some extras for the others (just in case). We had done a massive thrift store shopping trip and was able to outfit all our children in good quality clothes for this camping trip and the winter season coming up. We bought sleeping bags and made do with our propane heaters and many, many, many Hot Pockets (hand warmers). We stayed in our tent for the first couple nights, then moved to a warmer, more deluxe dwelling: a pop up camper after it was offered to us by the hosts. The nights were pretty cold for the kids, although Bennah and Andrew didn’t mind sleeping in the tent in -10 (C) /20 (F) degree weather. It even snowed a few times during the week!

Sukkot is probably my favorite feast. It is the biggest and longest of the biblical feasts and it has so much significance to me, my family and our family of believers who celebrate this with us all over the world. Sukkot is a time to celebrate and remember when YHWH’s spirit dwelt with Israel in the wilderness, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. After Israel entered into the promised land, Sukkot became more of a feast of in-gathering and celebrating the fall harvest since it occurred right around the harvest time. King Solomon dedicated the very first temple during Sukkot. It’s also a time to look forward to when Jesus/Yahushua will return and we will reign and dwell with Him in His kingdom. Yahushua was also born during Sukkot (scriptures says He came and dwelt among us. The word to dwell in hebrew is the same meaning as to pitch a tent or tabernacle). It makes sense that He would come to earth during a feast that is about looking forward to His return and dwelling with His people. In 1621, the first pilgrims celebrated Sukkot as a thankful celebration of their harvest. About 200 years later, it became known as Thanksgiving.

Anyhoo, we were excited about it. It was a lot of fun. I wore my hat for almost the entire time, but it was fun. The week was full of times of fellowship, shared potluck meals (in a heated garage, yay!), teachings, informal discussions, activities for the kids, and much tromping through the woods, breathing in the crisp, clean mountain air and catching snow on our tongues. All this with a spectacular background of snow covered Colorado mountains and golden aspens.

A couple days ago we made the short trip up to my grandmother’s cabin in the mountains to turn off the water (before winter brings the threat of busting pipes) and take care of a couple other chores (like eating the chocolate zucchini bread Renee made and drinking coffee on the deck overlooking the meadow and the Rockies). When we got there we discovered that there had been a decent amount of snow a few days prior, because all the meadow grass was matted down and there was still a bit of snow left despite a couple warm days since the precipitation.

Turned out to be the perfect day to go sledding in warmer than 70F!

Speaking of photos, here are a bunch more as I am catching up:

A few days ago I headed into the mountains with my dad and mom in search of some fall colors to photograph. We found some, but not as many as we’d figured would be up there already. Still, we got some amazing shots and had an incredible time. It was the perfect weather and lighting all day long:
http://edgelore.smugmug.com/Adventure-Photos/2009-09-Fall-in-the-Rockies

Working my way backwards, we had a wonderful time celebrating our niece’s 2nd birthday in Winnipeg before we headed west and south again (I know I already sent this to some of you):
http://edgelore.smugmug.com/Events/Ellas-2nd-Birthday-Party

In the “hey that was a long time ago” category, here are some shots of The Dredge I explored back in August if you are even remotely interested in the exploration of the old, decrepit, abandoned, wrecked, decaying remains of human endeavor and technology:
http://edgelore.smugmug.com/Adventure-Photos/2009-08-The-Dredge

Also in August: the Rempel Family Gathering near Dauphin, MB:
http://edgelore.smugmug.com/Family-Photos/2009/Aug-2009

So, there… that gets things a little caught up photographically speaking.

Yesterday Bennah and I broke out the mountain bikes and had some awesome trail rides… we had been planning the adventure for weeks, and it was a blast to finally get on the dirt. There are some long and excellent trails that weave through the city while managing not to feel like the city. I am definitely going to have to take the cameras back there and get some shots and video.

Well, we made it… safely I might add. 1200 miles (1900 km) in three days… 515 miles the last day. From north of Calgary to south of Denver, climbing and falling and re-climbing hundreds of feet each day – it felt like 2/3rds of our time was spent chugging 40 mph up long hills and often even slower by the top. Our 32′ trailer is definitely going on a forced diet while we’re here, and we will most certainly have the Second Great and Ruthless Purging of 2009. We weighed all three axles somewhere in Alberta again but haven’t run the conversions from kg’s yet to figure out where we were at in terms of lbs. But we’ll know soon. And then we will purge some more.

Sorry this is so random. Not quite as obscurely flowing beautiful obtuse beatnick as I’d like, but certainly not orderly or carefully constructed either. Sort of shot from the hip. Like the status of my sleeping. Or checking items off the massive to-do lists we’ve accumulated over the last 5 months.

The last two hours into Denver as the sun set and everything got dark and the friday night traffic became possessed / obsessed with diving insane margins between speed and safety thinner and thinner like sheets of onion paper while I lumbered on at the speed limit or GASP often slower using every ounce of willpower to stay between the same set of dotted lines and Renee kept the peace in the truck like a sheriff out of the wild west was something that rivaled our infiltration of the downtown Chicago construction wind toll madness fortress. Was that on a friday night too? I don’t know why I insist on striking straight into the heart of crazy cities in the dark on friday nights. I always say next time I’ll go around. But I guess I chafe at routes that are longer and might be just as bad for traffic anyway and so on… oh, that and the fact that my GPS couldn’t come up with a route that intelligently balances time of travel with distance and rationality to save its life. In fact, I am quite vehemently frustrated with my GPS, but it’s a squall that has been building for some time. I had already started shopping to replace it, but when it tried to prepare me for a left lane exit – and I dutifully got over early – when the exit was, in reality, three lanes over to the right and the only way I made it without causing a massive crash was YHWH’s grace in the timing and an understanding driver who gave me the all-clear hi-beam flash the same split second I had to decide whether to stay on or get off.

It was a narrow escape, but YHWH answered our prayers as we pray every day and put our trust in His protection and provision on the road.

That GPS is definitely done. Personal opinion: TomTom bad. Garmin good. TomTom was a compromise because that’s what came built into the HP Travelmate I got on an irresistible company discount 2 years ago. After the maiden voyage on that summer road trip I wen’t back to my much older Garmin that was superb (if a little slow). Before we pulled away in April, that old trusty Garmin took a spill and didn’t make it out alive. The TomTom was all that was left, and at the time I couldn’t justify spending money on another new unit. Now, I’d pay good money for anything else. Replacing the GPS is definitely on the massive to-do list.

Sleep is too… but somewhere beneath the item labeled “Processing and editing the 1400 photos and stitching the panos that Josh and I took in Kananaskis Country on our backpacking / camping trip.” Went with a great bunch of guys. Many stories in all of that. Tackled some seriously crazy trails (at least for this out of shape body… I’m in decent condition overall, but these trails kicked my butt). Felt SPECTACULAR! I could barely walk and basically stumbled to the shower and bed that night we returned with a belly full of Irish Stew and a pint of Alexander Kieth’s from an amazing little place we hit in Canmore upon returning to civilization.

So, here we are parked beside the house where my wonderful parents and awesome sister and brother(-in-law) and their 2 kids live. We’re excited about the next couple weeks… Tomorrow Reayah turns 6 and the Feast of Trumpets – Yom Teruah – kicks of the Scriptural fall celebrations that are shadow pictures of things to come – Messiah’s return and the fulfillment of all things in the Bible.

Then we’ll have some adventures riding out the onset of winter here and figuring some things out before we head east and then south again eventually.

So many memories from the last few weeks… Had an amazing wonderful time with our cousins near Calgary and their family. That kind of time is always too short. Even squeezed in IKEA and MEC trips in Calgary… that’s why our travel was compressed into 3 days instead of 4…. originally planned to take 4 days to get here. Lots of good scenery on the road. Lots of other things…

Ok, back to Kananaskis photos.

Day 150: Adrift in Alberta – no internet perhaps for days – updating via txt – only 1 other camper here – darn – not the only crazies.

Day 152: Update – finally have a connection and this entry was stuck pending review… so, what’s the point of being able to publish via e-mail when the post still has to be approved… need to investigate.

Uploading loads of vids to youtube… explanatory notes with fancy playlist embedded objects coming soon… If you can’t wait for the official entries, go get them on my channel: http://www.youtube.com/edgelore

Introducing one of the media threads I hope to maintain periodically: Adventures with Andrew.

I was in REI a couple months ago in Missoula, MT and this little guy caught the corner of my eye – the HERO camera (http://www.goprocamera.com/). It caught my eye because my dad had told me about it just a few weeks prior and sent me the link. It was easy to justify the purchase because I wanted to see if I could also use it to produce acceptable stock video clips using it’s rudimentary time-lapse features. Yes – the business angle.

In fact, some of my initial experiments have already been accepted at Shutterstock, for example:

• http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=505738&rid=85224
• http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=505723&rid=85224
• http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=505726&rid=85224
• http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=505720&rid=85224
• http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=505732&rid=85224

Those were all shot using the HERO camera. I’m in the process of submitting them at a couple other stock footage sites, and I’m looking forward to squeezing more stock-worthy content out of the little camera. But enough about business… this particular introduction is about having some FUN with the new toy.

So, I had this idea to start up a little series of episodes connected by a particular theme along the lines of exploring some strange places and attempting some adventurous (i.e. crazy) escapades… and I’d capture chunks of the adventures and edit them together into fun little YouTube clips. Of course, they would have to be called something cheesy like “Adventures with Andrew.” Maybe I’ll even start taking requests for Adventures through comments here and on YouTube… for example, if you give me a crazy (but it better be good) idea of something to try or somewhere to go, I’ll shoot the adventure with the HERO cam and you can have your very own made to order vicarious adventure with me. You’ll almost feel like you were there!

And then again… maybe the world is not ready to go on Adventures with Andrew yet. But I guess we will find out. I have several more episodes that I’m still editing to post, but here is the first one in all its glory.

A few interesting facts about this particular adventure:

• Location: West Cost, USA near Lincoln City, OR
• Time: very very early
• Water temperature: not as cold as the ocean itself (at least 55F)
• Air temperature: about the same as the water
• Gear: Vibram Five Fingers Footwear, swimming suit, dry bag, t-shirt, fleece
• Original video length shot: over an hour, but most of it was really boring, just crawling through overgrown bush on a steep incline that you can’t tell was steep on the video

Adventures with Andrew Episode 1: Exploring the Foggy Forest Timber Playground

Andrew swims across a river to explore an otherwise inaccessible overgrown wasteland of fallen trees and wild bush. He climbs, hangs, jumps, crawls, walks, and slides over the seemingly impassable terrain. Join him on the very 1st Episode of Adventures with Andrew. Ok. It’s cheesy, but you love it.

This morning for breakfast we had homemade biscuits and crab apple butter. The campground where we are staying has 3 large crab apple trees that have apples the size of regular apples and almost just as sweet. My mom came by to visit yesterday and helped the kids and I fill about 2 grocery bags. Last night we had an assembly line going in the trailer while we peeled and chopped apples for the crock pot. This morning, it was ready. It’s a little more tart than other apple butter, probably because it was made from crab apples and I only put in a little maple syrup to sweeten it as opposed to the ridiculous amount of sugar it commonly calls for. It was very yummy! Andrew says it’s not sweet enough (but then, nothing can ever be sweet enough for him!).

We are outside now, and we are being attacked by mosquitoes. We’ve sprayed ourselves down, are wearing those repellent bracelets and have a bug zapper going. Still, I’m about to cave and bring out the Deet.

There are still many more apples to gather and use. The kids want to bake apple pies for all our friends here. Sounds like fun, and a lot of work! The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak :). Of course, I would rather bake sugar free whole wheat apple pies, but that might not go over too well. So, we’ll probably head to the store and buy a bunch of pre-made frozen pie crusts and a big bag of sugar. Yikes! I haven’t bought (white) sugar for a few years now. Haven’t even had it in my house! There are plenty of other natural things to make things taste almost just as sweet. Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now. 🙂

Ahhh, Andrew is making a wonderful fire and the smoke is chasing those little buggers away!

If any of you would like some crab apple pie, come on by Welcomestop, site # 10. I’ll even let you specify, regular or sugar-free!

Please be sure to check out Andrew’s photo blog below of our travels in July. I think I stole his thunder a bit by posting this blog so soon after his.

So, I’m still working on a bunch of media updates for the blog… videos… The Map (which is giving me some headaches)… all kinds of great stuff. And I had originally intended to put it all out at once, but I figure I better pace myself since everything takes so long to edit and upload. So, here’s a window into what our July was like:

Click through to go through the gallery in order… or just watch random moments from our July right here. There’s nearly 200 photos in that gallery. And, as if that wasn’t enough, I had to give our family time in Neskowin, OR a separate gallery of it’s own since there were so many photos from that week with my brother, sister + her family, and our parents celebrating their 40th anniversary:

You might have also noticed the Twitter feed that I added a couple months ago near the top of the side-bar to the right. It automatically updates whenever we save a new post here, whenever I upload new photos from Lightroom to SmugMug, and whenever who knows what else my geekiness will think to wire up. Once in a while I even update it manually. If you like Twitter, you can follow my feed directly here: http://twitter.com/edgelore

Enjoy!

At this moment, Joy is asleep on my lap, Reayah is quietly reading books, Bennah is out riding his bike, Jaiden and Zach are asleep and Andrew is working on his photos. About an hour ago, Andrew and I we were enjoying the warm sunny day, sitting outside under the awning, drinking coffee and watching everyone play in Shawn and Shelley’s back yard. Reayah was shelling peas, our younger boys were playing in the water and Bennah was reading. I took a sip of my delicious hawaiian hazelnut coffee and looked out at everyone happily entertained and thanked YHWH for Shabbats. To top it all off, a loud choo choo train went by only a few yards away on the tracks that run right behind their house.

Little boys love their trains and fire trucks! Since we’ve been traveling, we’ve seen many trains. Some have even blown their whistle for us as they passed us and probably just happened to glace out and see a blue Suburban with all the windows rolled down, filled with kids grinning widely, hair blowing wild in the wind and waving frantically at them. On one rest stop in Saskatchewan, we stopped for some burgers at A&W.  A beautiful bright train just happened to pull up and stop right in front of the kids. I jokingly said “Maybe they stopped for a bathroom break or a lunch break!” Just then, out stepped 3 conductors. They walked along the tracks and headed straight for us. They graciously waved back at the ecstatic children and walked on to A&W for some lunch! We are constantly trying to teach the kids that everything good thing is a gift from YHWH. The kids love the trains so much, that they have started to thank Him every time they see a train. And why not? He knows the desires of our hearts and wants to give us good things to make us smile. Even if it’s something as common as seeing a train up close and having them blow their whistle just for you.

He has answered our prayers and is constantly blessing us with good gifts. In Oregon, on our way to the coast, I had prayed that Father would help us to eat healthy on the road and help us find good food to eat. Within what seemed like minutes, we saw signs for an indoor farmer’s market with fresh daily picked produce. It was in the middle of nowhere and had a HUGE gravel parking area that was perfect for RVs. I was blown away at how quickly He answered my prayer. From fresh cherries, yellow watermelons, berries, raw honey and green beans, we all enjoyed the wonderful bounty of the local farmers. The little blessings that we all receive everyday are actually a big deal when you consider who gives them and why they are given.

Shelley and Danica are out picking beets for the beet borscht she’s planing to make. I should go out and see if she needs any help.