Twin Peaks Tree

A very old tree stands "next to" the Twin Peaks in Tahoe.

Acadia :: Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse

Tuesday - September 11th - - The day dawned bright and clear with sunshine and beautiful blue skies. The first stop was at the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse just a short distance down the road from Seawall Campground. This map shows the layout of the Island. Seawall campground and Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse are on the southwest tip of the Island.







From the parking area, there was a short but rather steep trail to traverse. A stairway made the downhill portion of the walk easy, but it was still quite a ways down to the rocky shore.





I climbed over the upper portion of the rocks to get this shot. To get a really nice view of the lighthouse you would have had to have been on a boat in the water!





I ventured down a little ways but the rocks were slippery and I just didn't feel comfortable going further out.

Local Ice Conditions

A few pics of the local ice taken today...











































My Christmas present!

Flashfloods

As soon as we left the Valles Caldera it started raining. It poured for a while so we pulled over and had some snacks of canned beans, chips, and cookies. When we got back down to Jemez Springs we could tell it hadn't rained as hard there but there are several low places on the road through town where the water pours across it when it rains in the higher elevations causing some smaller flashfloods. Flashfloods can be deadly if you get caught in a big one. We had seen were the road crews had be doing some work in these same areas when we had come through in the morning. Now they were going to have to work them again. In fact we had to wait about 15 minutes at one place to let the grader make it safe enough to cross. Here are some cars that were in front of us as we went across the bad places and some of the water running on into some natural ditches beside the road.



In this wash out the pavement had let go and there was a drop off of about 5 or 6 inches and then you had to go back up on the other side.



















Much worse than these and the road would have been closed.

Red Vase

I think that this red vase may be depression glass or carnival glass. Other than that I know nothing about it.

Local ice conditions photos

Some of the ice in SWPA is still in decent shape! For today...

Laura and I spent a few hours today checking some of the local ice climbing areas. Some were in bad shape and will surely fall down, while others... well they look good for now and will hopefully survive the warm spell ahead of us. Today temps at the different crags varied from 46 to 36°. The forecast is calling for temps up into the mid 50's and possibly even 60° over the weekend with cooler weather coming after that. Looks like dry tooling until then. Speaking of dry tooling, we did spy a few new lines that may receive some attention over the warm up. Keep posted for details on that. For now on to the current conditions




IRISHTOWN, Lower wall

Mouth of Madness WI5- and The Prow WI3 M4R, started, but never filled in

Dynamite M6+ is waiting for you

Dirty-T M4+ ready to go...

New dry tool line? #1

New dry tool line? #2

OHIOPYLE, Lower Meadow Run

Laura walking across the bridge on approach

Ice lines are sunbaked and never fully formed

Main Flow WI3+ will need to reform

Anger Management M6 and Caveman M7 were climbable

The start to Captain Caveman M7

Elsewhere in SWPA

This 200' beauty was sweet!

The Sick-le WI5+ M6 free hanger is 40-50' long currently and
still not touching...Going down, in a bad way!

Leaning to Tie

Stormy and Travey are discussing this strange thing that humans want them to do of being tied to a post

The Geldings

Tucker and Caesar are Desi's geldings. Tucker is a big boy. The tallest and heaviest of the horses.

Stellar weather and long term forecasts

I found this long term forecast from the Climate Impacts Group. They've done a little weather projecting into the fall and winter (and even the spring). Here is an excerpt,

The seasonal outlooks through spring 2007 suggest... a continuation of warmer than average conditions throughout the region for the coming fall, winter, and spring seasons... pointing toward[s] a weak-to-moderate intensity El Niño event for the next few seasons... suggest[ing]... an anomalously dry fall and winter for much of the region.

Of course there were some serious disclaimers, but if you follow this prediction, the forecast doesn't look so hot for skiers.

In the meantime, it's warm and dry on the mountain. Camp Muir enjoyed a balmy low of 49 last night! It's at 59 degrees as of 9 AM.

Image by Rob Veal

Best. Yard. Bird. Ever.

My Yard List has a Bald Eagle on it, does yours?



Hee hee hee.

We actually got two new yard birds yesterday -- the other was a Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto). But this immature Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) was the big surprise.

We are sometimes liberal in what we consider our "yard", but if we can see it (without binoculars!) from the kitchen table, there's no question.

This beautiful creature has visited us three times since yesterday afternoon. Twice, he was chased off by a pair of Red-shouldered hawks that persisted in dive-bombing the poor thing. He didn't appear overly worried until the actual body-slamming began.

The hawks looked so tiny next to him. They must have a nest nearby... I've seen lots of Bald Eagles, but have never seen them mobbed by hawks.

The Eagle chased off a Great Blue Heron this morning, before settling onto this perch to be poorly digiscoped. He eyed a large fish lying on the ground (more about this tomorrow), then was in turn driven away by the hawks (with Blue Jay backup).

More on this saga later, including why (I think) the Eagle came to call in the first place.

The Phend Surname

The "Phend" surname, as you might imagine, is not a common one. The index to the book on the Phend Family that was published in 1991 only includes 331 people with the surname, and that included everyone that I had found since the family came from Switzerland to the United States in 1832. Johannes Phend, the progenitor of our family, had two daughters and two sons, John and Jacob. John didn't have any children. Jacob had seven children, six sons and one daughter; there were 43 grandchildren, 29 grandsons and 14 granddaughters. In the next generation the numbers flipped and girls outnumbered the boys by about 2 to 1.

According to my Grandpa Vic, his grandfather, Jacob, pronounced the Phend surname as "pay-hend" and said that it was spelt pay-hay-a-n-day. He also told me it was originally spelled with a B instead of a P but that the B was pronounced softly like a P and that is how it got changed from B'hend to Phend. However, in Swiss records the surname has been found spelled as B'hend, Bhend, Fend, Fendt and Pend. In the United States, the surname has also been found in records as Fend, Fiend, Fin, Phind, Pheud, Phena, and Phent.

Considering that names were often spelled phonetically, and the fact that many record keepers and census takers wrote so poorly, the variations are not all that surprising. It just sometimes makes it a bit challenging to find the right records.

Johannes Phend was recorded as Jean (or Sean?) B'hend on his 1832 passport.


The signature of Johannes on his passport.


The Land Record from Carroll County, Ohio (Deed Book 11, page 367) showed John Phend and his wife Susan selling their land in 1849 - and his signature!

The family was found in census records the "old fashioned" way - by turning the crank and going through the reels of microfilm image by image, before indexes were widely available, and before the internet. Lucky for me, from other records, I knew where to look and the townships they lived in were relatively small.

1840 Carroll County, Ohio (Brown Township page 192)


1850 Greene County, Indiana (Taylor Township page 409b)

1860 Marshall County, Indiana (German Township page 56)


1870 Kosciusko County, Indiana (Scott Township page 434)

1880 Kosciusko County, Indiana (Scott Township page 33)


In 1900 and 1910, Jacob was livng with his daughter and her husband, Sophia and John Ernest, in Elkhart County, Indiana. (Nappanee, Locke Township page 232 in 1900 and in Concord Township page 56b in 1910)

Three other recent posts highlight some family records from Switzerland, the christening record of Johannes Fendt, and the family's emigration to the United States.

Dilbert okra

I think this pod has been reading the funny pages.

-----

Edited to add:

The Gallery of Suggestive Vegetables:
Dave's
Ron's

The post that started the whole thing:
Robin Andrea's

The original NPR story here.

Forest Road

Thank You, Family Tree Magazine

Early this afternoon, I took a break from research at the Family History Library and checked in on Facebook. There I saw a couple of mentions about Family Tree Magazine'sTop 40 Genealogy Blogs in .. so I clicked through and started reading the article. I was amazed and honored to find that Kinexxions had made the list in the "Story Time" category!



There are many fine genealogy blogs being written and it had to have been difficult to pare it down to just 40. I know I'd be hard-pressed to come up with such a list. But, like Randy at Genea-Musings, I was surprised to see some very excellent blogs missing. Congratulations to all of those who are listed.



For new visitors here, the post written in January for the 6th anniversary of Kinexxions, Now It's Six, provides links to the "year end" roundup posts and will give you some idea of what's been written in the past. Posts have been somewhat sparse thus far this year but more will be coming in the near future.



Thank You, Family Tree Magazine. I appreciate the honor and the recognition.

John Simac, Lee Tegner and Camp Schurman

Ed Hrivnak is a pilot and a writer (New Yorker and Operation Homecoming) and last September he took a special trip to Mount Rainier for two friends. Normally, this sort of activity wouldn't be too big of a deal (Ed flew many of the maneuvers behind the photos in my book), but his two friends have a special connection to Rainier and this trip could be their last chance to get up close and personal with "The Mountain." Here is an edited version of that flight and those men.

“I can not begin to express what an honor it was to fly John Simac and Lee Tegner around the mountain in September, 2007. As a climber and rescuer, the stories I heard from them during the flight were truly amazing. John talked about his first Rainier climb in 1932 and the body recovery of Delmar Fadden in 1936; Lee talked about being strapped into the open door of a plane while making cargo drops to the Camp Schurman hut in the early 1960's. Both reminisced about camping on the summit for a week, playing football and eating watermelon while teaching young Explorer Scouts the skills of mountaineering.

John had mentioned a flight to see the mountain six months ago realizing that at age 93, he may never see “the hut” and Mount Rainier up close again. After months of scheduling conflicts, we finally had a day that worked for all three of us.

The weather that day was absolutely perfect. There was a light wind and clear skies which made for stable air on the NE side of the mountain. This would be great for viewing Camp Schurman and the Emmons Glacier. You see, John and Lee both volunteered to build the Camp Schurman hut. Both spent many years on Mount Rainier's slopes. Both volunteered with Mountain Rescue for over 50 years. Both had given so much and I wanted to honor that.

We took four laps around the north and east face of Mount Rainier, Little Tahoma, and in particular Camp Schurman. No one was around that day; it was just us, the mountain, and the hut. After all I'd heard, I decided to pull a maneuver that would give them a clear view. I took the plane to 11 K and then dropped the flaps, pulled the engine to idle, and gently rolled in for closer inspection. We quietly glided over the glacier with the hut to our right. Then John spoke with a tear in his eye, "Seeing that hut again brought back a flood of memories that I can't sort out at once." Lee, with a smile, said, "we had a hell of a time on this mountain."

As the plane descended over the Winthrop Glacier, we watched large open crevasses pass beneath us. I looked over at Lee and John and noted that they were both lost in memories that I could only imagine. I wonder if there is anyone alive today who has volunteered more time on the upper mountain of Rainier as John and Lee. It was a privilege to pilot them for what might be a final view of a place so special. For me, I hope someone will do the same when I am 93." -Ed Hrivnak